Do You Remember the First Time?

autumn sky. I closed my eyes and let the feeling wash over me.
    I heard him give out an agonised gasp as he clasped my high young breasts. How long had it been since I’d so excited someone they’d gasped, and kissed me as if they were drowning, or would die if they couldn’t feel my body against theirs? A bit bloody long.
    ‘What the hell are you two doing?’
    Clelland was storming out of a little black Fiesta that had pulled up to the kerb. Maddie was sitting behind the wheel, looking incredibly disapproving. He was looking from one to the other of us in disbelief.
    I swallowed hard. What the hell was I doing?
    ‘Chill, bro,’ said Justin. ‘Just chill.’
    Clelland looked murderous. Then, and you could see it happening in his face, he swallowed heavily as if to draw the anger back in himself. His eyes were black, though, furious and burning. He turned to me and I felt my heart sink.
    ‘Get away from him,’ he said.
    ‘Erm, yeah, excuse me, just ignore me, I’m just here for nothing,’ said Justin, desperately trying to look unfazed.
    ‘Stay away.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I just got—’
    ‘I can’t … I can’t believe you would do this, Flora. I just can’t. I mean, it’s like … it’s … with everything …’
    ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t … I didn’t mean—’
    ‘What would this have been like if you were a boy, and he was a girl, eh? Have you thought about that?’
    ‘Eh?’ said Justin.
    ‘It would be different,’ I said. The tears from lunchtime started to wend their way up again.
    ‘No, no, it wouldn’t, Flora. Do you understand?’
    ‘But—’ I began.
    ‘You’re disgusting. Is this some kind of twisted revenge? On me?’
    ‘No!’ I said. ‘Definitely not. No.’
    ‘That’s not what it looks like.’
    ‘What the hell’s going on?’ said Justin, looking scared. ‘Is there something going on?’
    ‘No!’ we said in unison.
    ‘God,’ said Clelland. ‘You’re just … I’m just so ashamed of you.’
    Justin looked at me, then at him. I was shaking, I really was.
    ‘Come on, Justin. You really don’t want to be anywhere near her.’
    Justin looked back at me with a longing in his eyes.
    ‘Goodbye,’ I said, choking just a little.
    ‘Oh, look at the little girl crying,’ said Clelland. ‘How deserving of our sympathy. She’s only naïve. So new to the world. So many mistakes to make. So fucking many.’ He glared at me.
    I stared at him, open-mouthed.
    ‘Will you tell me what on earth’s going on?’ Madeleine had got out of the car and was standing by the door, looking at the three of us.
    ‘Nothing’, barked Clelland. ‘Nothing you’d understand.’
    ‘You think?’ she barked back at him. ‘No. Because I don’t understand anything, do I, John? Except trying to do the right thing , of course.’
    She got back in the car and slammed the door. Clelland manhandled Justin towards it, they got in and drove off without a backwards glance.

Chapter Fourteen
    For the next four days, as the wedding ticked ever closer I kept my head down in the pillows, crying myself into a teenage frenzy yet again, as my parents worried about me downstairs. I felt alternately sorry for myself and utterly ashamed. Mum brought me up cups of hot chocolate, which made me cry even more, whilst feeling ridiculously grateful for the existence of someone in the same house who would bring me hot chocolate.
    No phone call from either of the boys. Well, of course not. What on earth was I expecting? Justin to suddenly transmogrify into a terribly thoughtful grown-up? Clelland to rethink that actually, no, it was pretty cool for a thirty-two year old to cop off with his baby bro? And it hadn’t even occurred to me that he ever thought about us for a moment. Not in that way, not at all.
    Clelland was right. It was disgusting to snog a seventeen-year-old boy. Or was it? I felt defiant suddenly. Kylie got to snog Justin Timberlake, and she was nearly old enough tobe his mum. Rod Stewart was always going out with teenagers. It was just because it was Clelland’s brother that he was coming over all Mr ‘I’m so protective, wooh!’ on me.
    I’d been carried away. No doubt about it. But Clelland wasn’t the one living in the body of a teenager. And it was him who’d said I had to take this life as a gift, take it and enjoy it to the full, because, more than ever, nobody knew what was coming next …
    Guess that didn’t mean seducing his cute little