Do You Remember the First Time?

dad. I looked at him, panicking slightly. By my reckoning, they had about a month left together. A month. Things certainly were going to change around here.
    I slouched up to bed, the sound of their bickering ringing in my ears, very unwelcome after all this time.
    I woke up the following morning with a start. That was the weirdest dream of … no, shit, piss, bollocks. Here I was, still underneath a gingham duvet, trapped in a ridiculous prison for God knows why. Even more trapped now I wasgrounded. I cursed myself for not realising how stupid it would be to disappear for twelve hours. But being sixteen took a bit of getting used to. I squeezed my cellulite-free thigh for some reassurance, but it wasn’t cheering me up properly at all. Then I thought of my lovely coffee maker. There’s nothing that makes me feel grown up in the morning so much as grinding my own beans, then getting in the shower and letting the smell of fresh coffee permeate the flat. But in this house, as it had always been, it was Nescafé. For some reason it was the small details – the coffee; my wardrobe, full of nice suits and beautiful shoes; my Clarins products in the bathroom rather than own-brand mega jugs of supermarket shampoo – that I suddenly missed more than anything else. I sniffled away to myself.
    ‘GET UP!’ my mother was shouting again. ‘Your dad’s dropping you at school. Wants to see how your first hangover’s going.’
    I heard some muffled protest about this, and got up, nervous as … well, as a kid on the first day at school. Except this would be far, far worse, because it wasn’t as if I didn’t know anyone. If my mobile was anything to go by, I did. I just wouldn’t be able to recognise anyone or know anything about them.
    I hid my head under the duvet.
    ‘I feel sick!’ I shouted. Actually, I felt fine. I’d forgotten how quick hangovers passed when you were young. Nowadays I take two days to get over them. Or did, when I still had a ‘nowadays’.
    ‘That’s how it works,’ shouted my mum. God, was she always this assertive?
    I tried to put a brave face on things as I got dressed inmy old school uniform, crying only once in a tie struggle. Dark green, grey, light green. I looked like a mildewed pond. Spice Girl-style loafers, which I couldn’t have loathed more.
    OK. I swallowed hard. I had hated school. But that was then. This time I was going to do much better. No one was going to call me Scurrilugs, and if they were, hell, I’d dealt with enough junior analysts and work-experience people to bother about that. And this time round I was going to be cool, cutting and smart, and nobody was going to get to me.
    Likewise, I was extremely unlikely to get mega-crushes on any of the boys or teachers, seeing as that would be child abuse, and I certainly wasn’t going to be insanely self-conscious, because I had a fabulous body and looked great. Hell, I peered into the mirror, where did that spot come from? Never mind. And I wasn’t going to squeeze my spots this time round either. Though it looked so tempting …
    And I was going to know everything. I’d seen three different productions of Hamlet now, so they could hardly catch me out on that, and anything sum-related should be pretty nifty too, what with the old accountancy degree. I was going to keep my head down, my mouth shut, and in a month’s time I’d go back to Tash’s wedding, and, well, and …
    ‘FLORA!’
    I was not nervous. I wasn’t.
    Fuck.
    My dad seemed a bit off in the car too.
    ‘I won’t be able to pick you up tonight,’ he said. ‘Tell your mother.’
    ‘Where are you going?’ I asked, immediately suspicious. My mother had talked about how late he’d been for a year. Being so wrapped up in myself, of course, I hadn’t noticed at the time.
    ‘Just out, darling,’ he said, looking surprised I’d asked.
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Nowhere you can go, that’s for sure.’
    ‘Dad,’ I said, ‘you should keep an eye on Mum, OK? She’s not feeling so good just now.’
    I watched him go slightly pink and grasp the steering wheel hard.
    ‘Don’t you worry about your mother and me,’ he said.
    ‘I can’t help worrying, Dad,’ I said. ‘You know, in the next couple of years I’m going to leave the nest, and that’s a real danger time for lots of marriages.’
    He looked at me as if I was a changeling. ‘What the hell do you know about it?’
    ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Well, I’ve read a lot of the literature.’
    His