Do You Remember the First Time?

Hang on a minute …’
    I was scarcely listening, my pulse was racing so fast. I was still having trouble catching my breath. What on earth had I just done? ‘What?’
    ‘Are you really thirty-two?’
    I couldn’t work out why he was asking me. He didn’t suspect, surely.
    ‘What do you mean, am I thirty-two? Are you thirty-four? Anyway, how would you know? It’s not like you ever attend any of my birthday parties.’
    This seemed to put him off the scent and we walked in silence for a while. I snuck a sideways peek at him. He looked relatively unruffled, certainly not angry with me. Maybe I’d got away with it.
    ‘We’re walking round the block again!’ hollered Stanzi, disengaging suction. We followed.
    ‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt thirty-two,’ I said finally. ‘I think I’ve always felt like this.’
    ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Me too, probably. But if everyone behaved like that …’
    ‘There’d be a lot fewer wars.’
    ‘Are you joking? You and that gorgeous dark-haired girl would have let off nuclear weapons at each other by now.’
    ‘Oh, yeah,’ I said. I hung my head in shame. Could I have behaved any worse than I had tonight? ‘Well, boys have no idea what it’s like at school. You have no idea how nasty people can be.’
    ‘Are you nuts? Don’t you remember me getting my head kicked in for wearing Robert Smith-style lipstick?’
    ‘You were asking for that.’
    ‘That’s unfair.’
    ‘Well, yes, but Tom Philmore kicked your head in, and you were playing football with him the next day.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘Girls can make this kind of thing last for months. Also, psychological torture’s much worse than physical stuff.’
    ‘I’ll ask you about that again next time you’re about to get your head kicked in.’
    We’d reached the gate. Stanzi and Kendall were enmeshed in each other like a science project. I’d almost managed to clear my head of the stolen kiss.
    ‘Stanzi, we have to go before my dad comes out,’ I said. It was near the witching hour of one a.m.
    ‘You tell him, I kill you,’ she managed to get out without even coming up for air.
    Clelland and I hovered for a while.
    ‘Sorry I lifted you up in the air,’ he said.
    ‘God, no. It could have got a bit unpleasant in there. Thanks for saving me from a baying acned mob.’
    ‘Anytime,’ he said.
    ‘Plus, I bet you liked doing it,’ I teased.
    ‘Only wish I’d thought of it earlier,’ he said. I looked at him in the light from the streetlamp. There was a little line between his eyebrows, just the tiniest furrow.
    A light went on upstairs in the house.
    ‘Now!’ I said to Stanzi, grabbing her. She popped off like a sucker from a car window.
    Clelland smiled ruefully. ‘Mind you don’t miss your curfew now,’ he said.
    ‘Hey! I get enough of this shit from Tashy, I refuse to take it from you.’
    ‘OK, OK. Go.’
    I looked up at him once again. And he smiled, pulled me over to him and gave me a kiss, right on the forehead.
    ‘Goodnight,’ he said softly.
    ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I’d like to say I had a good time tonight.’
    ‘Hurry up!’ said Stanzi as the hall light came on. Kendall had already scarpered.
    I went in, but it wasn’t my dad who was there to greet me. It was my mother.
    ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I thought it was …’ Then she choked and turned her face away.
    ‘Mum? Mum! ’ I said, genuinely concerned as her face crumpled up.
    Stanzi, silently disappeared to the spare room.
    ‘He’s … I thought he wasn’t going to be so late any more.’
    I looked at my watch. ‘What do you mean, “any more”? How often is he this late?’
    My mother bit her lip. ‘I’m not the bitch in this family, Flora. You have to believe that.’
    I made her a cup of tea. Her hands were shaking. Then I put my arms around her and I gave her a hug.
    ‘Ssh,’ she said. ‘It’s alright. Go to bed.’
    But it wasn’t alright. She shooed me up the stairs, where I lay on the bed, curled in a tight ball with my eyes closed,wishing and wishing and wishing this wasn’t happening; wishing it wasn’t my fault that my mother was going through this again.
    At two thirty, the front door opened. There were raised voices, then tears. Voices raised again, then hushed quickly. I heard ‘You’re never!’ and ‘Not the first time’. I put my fingers over my ears. The last thing I heard before I drifted off to sleep was my father trying to calm my mother; saying, ‘It’s going to be alright.’ I