Anyway, I’d been going out with Garv for about six months and I was perfectly happy with him – then Shay Delaney began to pay me attention. Giving me warm smiles and one-on-one conversations so low they excluded everyone else. And it seemed like he was always watching me. We’d all be there, hanging around a wall, smoking, pushing each other – the usual messing – and I’d look up to find his gaze upon me. If he’d been anyone else I’d have assumed that he was flirting, but this was Shay Delaney, he was way out of my price range. And then, after a week when he’d cranked up the intensity of his smiles and intimate conversations, there was a party. A fluttering in my gut let me know that something was going to happen and sure enough, when Garv had been sent out to buy more drink, Shay headed me off as I emerged from the kitchen, then pulled me into the cupboard under the stairs. I protested breathlessly but he laughed and shut the door behind us and, after some half-teasing compliments about how I was driving him mad, tried to kiss me. Squashed up against his bigness in the dark, confined space, finally knowing that I hadn’t imagined his interest in me, I felt him move his face down to mine, and it was like every dream I’d ever had had come true.

‘I can’t,’ I said, turning my head away.

‘Why not?’

‘Because of Garv.’

‘If you weren’t with Garv would you let me?’

I couldn’t answer. Surely it was obvious?

‘Why me?’ I asked. ‘Why are you bothered with me?’

‘Because I am. Big time,’ he said, pulling his thumb along my mouth and making me dizzy.

I never really got to the bottom of why he wanted me. I was nothing like as good-looking as his other girlfriends, or as sophisticated. The best I could come up with myself was that as his father had left them and his home-life was a bit chaotic, I represented stability. That my normalness was the most attractive thing about me.

So, shallow cow that I was, I broke it off with poor Garv. We kind of pretended that it was a mutual thing and insisted that we’d stay friends and all that other crap you talk when you’re a teenager, but the truth of the matter was that I dumped Garv for Shay. Garv knew it as much as I did. From the moment Shay had decided he wanted me, Garv hadn’t stood a chance.

Later that evening, Dad sidled into my room, a brown paper bag under his arm.

‘McDonald’s!’ he declared. ‘Your favourite.’

When I’d been eleven, perhaps, but I welcomed the company. ‘Chicken nuggets,’ he announced proudly. ‘With two different dips.’

‘What’s this in aid of?’

‘You have to eat. And your mother…’ he paused and sighed, his expression wistful, ‘… well, she tries her best.’

Since the night I’d left Garv, the mere thought of food had been anathema – it didn’t make me feel sick, just amazed. But this evening I was going to have to try, because as well as the chicken nuggets, Dad had also got me a large fries and a coke and, by the look of things, a Happy Meal for himself. It came with a free robot.

‘Eat a fry yoke,’ he tempted. (He feels silly calling them ‘fries’. The real name, he feels, is ‘chips’.)

I’d almost have preferred to eat the robot, but because I felt sorry for him, I tried. The chip (or fry, if you prefer) sat in my mouth like a foreign body. He watched me anxiously and I attempted to choke it down my closed throat.

‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked. ‘Brandy, vodka, cider?’

I was stunned. That was one of the strangest questions I’d ever been asked in my entire life, bar none. The only time my parents ever have drink with their meals is on Christmas Day, when the bottle of warm Blue Nun is wheeled out – always assuming that it hasn’t been discovered and drunk the night before. Besides, there wasn’t any – what had he suggested? – brandy, vodka or cider in the house. Then I realized Dad wasn’t offering me a drink. He was simply curious, trying to gauge how bad I was.

I shook my head. ‘I don’t want a drink.’ That would be a huge mistake. When I was depressed, alcohol never cheered me up. In fact, it probably made me worse – maudlin and self-pitying. ‘If I got drunk I’d probably kill myself.’

‘Good then. Marvellous.’ Suddenly he was as happy as his meal. He ate with relieved gusto, attempted to play with his robot – ‘What does this yoke do?’ – then departed.

A few minutes later he was back. ‘Emily’s on the phone.’

5

Emily is my best friend. Best girlfriend, that is, and actually, since Garv and I have gone weird on each other, probably best friend.

Gawky twelve-year-olds, we met at secondary school and instantly recognized in each other a kindred spirit. We were outsiders. Not total pariahs, but we were a long way from being the most popular girls in the class. Part of the problem was that we were both good at sport: genuinely cool girls smoked and faked letters from their parents saying they had verrucas. Another black mark against us was that we’d no interest in the usual teenage experimentation with cigarettes and alcohol. I was too terrified of getting into trouble and Emily said it was a waste of money. Together we pronounced it ‘stupid’.

At school, Emily was small, skinny and looked like ET with a bad perm. A far cry from how she looks today. She’s still small and skinny, which we now know to be a Good Thing, right? Especially the skinny bit. But the bad perm (which wasn’t a perm at all, but the real thing) is just a distant memory. Her hair is now swishy and glossy – very, very impressive, even though she says that in its natural state she could still double for a member of the Jackson Five and that to get her hair fully frizz-free, her hairdresser sometimes has to put his foot on her chest and tug hard.

Her look is very pulled together and confident. When a certain style is in vogue, I usually buy something from the ‘new-look’ and team it with the rest of my ‘old-look’ wardrobe and think I’m doing pretty well. But not Emily. For instance, remember when the rock-chick look was in? I bought a T-shirt that said ‘Rock Chick’ in pink, shiny letters and I thought I was it. Emily, however, appeared in bandage-tight snakeskin jeans, purple stiletto-heeled cowboy boots and a pink leather stetson. But instead of looking preposterous – and she could have done, that pink leather stetson was borderline –I wanted to applaud. She’s also a woman who knows how to accessorize. Coloured shoes (a colour other than black, that is), handbags shaped like flowerpots, kooky barettes in her hair if the occasion demands it.