is too far and our A-level pass rate is high.
‘Swimming tomorrow?’ Ange says. ‘We should train even if we don’t have any proper meets coming up.’
‘It’s so lame they won’t let us race during exams.’
My phone pings. Courtney. Again. Do I want to meet up tonight?
‘Him again?’ Lizzie asks, and I nod, chewing my bottom lip, trying to think how to respond.
The lethargy in the group evaporates and I’m sure Angela purrs. We’re on heat all the time. Sex is everywhere in the summer, and we’re like dogs waking up to it, sniffing it in the air. We’re nearly adult. Sex is part of that. It’s what adult is in many ways. I hadn’t wanted to do it with Courtney on Saturday, but I had wanted to do it, and I get a strange thrill remembering the feeling of him inside me and the sounds he made when he came, and it all seemed so different to the things we’d done before, even though I liked that stuff better. I spend so much time thinking about sex. Just not sex with Courtney. Sex with him.
‘He loves you, he wants to kiss you …’ Ange mocks.
‘Oh, shut up.’
‘When are you going to do it again?’ Lizzie says, blunt. She’s always so direct. ‘It’s better the second time.’
‘Like you’d know,’ Ange says.
‘Better than you.’
It’s probably true. Lizzie is a year older and is on the pill. Ange figures it’s only to regulate her periods, but at Christmas when Lizzie went out with Chris or whatever his name was for a couple of months, she swore blind they’d done it. She went into pretty graphic detail, and Lizzie isn’t a liar. Maybe I should talk to her about what pill she’s on. Just in case. Not that I’m worried. My period is due soon and my boobs are getting sore like they always do, so I’m sure it’s fine.
‘I can’t see him tonight. My mum won’t let me out in the week while the exams are on.’
‘Your mum never wants to let you out past eight,’ Ange says. ‘Like primary school.’
‘She’s got better,’ I answer. It’s true, she has. And as much as she drives me mad, I still have pangs of loyalty to her. It’s always been just us and now I’m growing up and abandoning her. I don’t mind slagging her off myself but it bothers me when Ange does it.
‘Ava!’ The voice sounds distant through the door but instantly recognisable.
‘Jesus, what is she, psychic?’ Jodie says and smiles. It’s not malicious like Ange was. She gets it. Weird mums club.
‘Ava! Can you come down here for a second?’
I groan and roll my eyes as if this is the biggest pain in the arse, but actually I’m pleased to get off the topic of Courtney. I know I’m not behaving as they expect so I’m trying to cover my tracks. I made some comment to Ange at lunch about him being needy, so while I’m out of the room she can share that snippet with the others. We’re best friends. We talk about each other almost as much as we talk to each other. MyBitches. Sometimes the WhatsApp group name is too true. The group is like a hub, but then we splinter off to discuss the things one of the others says that pisses us off.
As I slouch down the stairs I wonder if boys’ friendships are the same as girls’. Do they give a shit about the minutiae – a look or comment or a pound of weight or two put on – the stuff we so obsess about and judge each other on? I don’t think so. I don’t think they have the same high expectations of each other that girls do. We demand everything of each other and it’s impossible to deliver.
Still, when it comes to the crunch we may be bitchy at times, but we have each other’s backs.
‘Did you knock this off?’ She’s standing by the hall table holding a broken photo – it’s a picture of the two of us from a few years ago. Alton Towers? Marilyn took it, I think. The glass is smashed in the frame.
‘Nope.’ I’d forgotten it was even there.
‘What about the other one?’
‘What other one?’ She looks angry, her soft, doughy face pinched and tight, and I feel suddenly defensive. She never gets angry. Disappointed and hurt and all that shit, but rarely angry. My loyalty of moments ago fades.
‘There was another picture here. Of you. Your first day of Year Eight. It’s gone.’
‘You must have moved it.’ I don’t know what the big deal is. They’re just old photos.
‘I didn’t,’ she snaps.
‘Well it’s nothing to do with me!’ I bite back; it doesn’t take much to light the touchpaper between us.
‘What about your friends? Could they have done it? By accident? Maybe thrown the other one away?’
‘No. They’d have said. They’re not idiots.’
She’s looking down at our younger faces through the broken glass as if this is some major deal.
‘Can I go now?’ I’m surly. All my guilt, the sex, him, bubbling out in moodiness. He tells me she’s too clingy. She should let me be free. He’s right. He understands me. She wants me to stay a little girl.
‘If it was you, tell me. I won’t be angry.’
And there it is. The pleading tone along with the pathetic facial expression that makes all the fine lines on her forehead and around her mouth crease and deepen.
‘For God’s sake!’ I explode, as if she’s accused me of stealing or something. My jaw tightens as rage surges through me. My fingers curl into claws. I feel more animal than human. ‘I’ve already told you! No! Anyway, they’re just stupid old photos, so who cares! Maybe it’s a poltergeist or something!’ I don’t wait for her response but turn and stomp back up the stairs.
‘Oh, and my exams went fine – thank you for asking!’ I send the words down to her with enough venom to make them poison arrows in the heart and leave her there, clinging to the old photo frame. Maybe that’s why I’m so angry. She misses those days. I know she does. And I do too. Life was simpler then, with no tits and no sex and no becoming something new, but I can’t help growing up – I want to grow up – and she needs to let me get on with it.
‘Everything okay?’ Ange asks when I close the bedroom door firmly behind me.
‘Yeah. Exam stuff. You know.’ I force a smile. It’s a lie, and I have a feeling Jodie knows it because as I pass her she flashes me a sympathetic look the others can’t see. Weird mums club. That, or they all heard me shouting.
‘Jodie was telling us how she likes old men.’ Lizzie snorts as I flop on my bed. ‘So gross.’
‘I said older, not old.’
‘I don’t think it’s gross.’ I try to sound nonchalant. ‘A lot of older guys are hot.’
‘I don’t think she means like thirty.’
‘Neither
