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won’t mind.’

      ‘I really, really don’t feel well.’

      ‘Oh, dear, let me think…’

      ‘I want to go home.’

      The challenge. Who comes first?

      ‘I’ll catch you later.’ Gordon slunk off quietly.

      We got into the car in a cloud of apologies. Apology and regret equals blame. We stopped at the end of the village.

      ‘Jo, if you’re feeling sick, perhaps you’d better swap with Eliza and sit in the front. It was your turn to sit in the front anyway.’

      ‘It’s all right. I’m feeling much better.’

      ‘But it was your turn.’

      ‘Get a life.’

      There are different types of silences. There’s the easy, comfortable silence you share with friends. I can sit with my best friend, Scarlet. We can sit in silence like soaking in a warm bath. Then there’s solitary silence, but your own thoughts make it a noisy, frantic silence. The silence in the car was thick and heavy. Like wet concrete waiting to set into something solid. Eliza eased into the silence with soft humming. I thought my mother would slice through it with laughter. Or a shrug-of-the-shoulders remark. Instead, she made us sit in it. She turned on the radio. Radio Two. She hummed along. But too high-pitched.

      When did I first feel I’d let my parents down?

      I remember when I was six years old. It was our school sports day. I was entered in the sack race and the obstacle race. Lucy Button was better than me. On the day, I stayed at home. I told my mother I hated school. I never wanted to go again. Mum and Dad argued. Dad had taken the day off work. Mum liked to talk to the other mums. I was off reading schemes. I could read what I wanted and Mum liked to tell everyone.

      After that, I practised running in a sack all year. I practised crawling under tarpaulins. I practised throwing a bean bag into a hoop. The next year I won both my races but Mum was in hospital, having Eliza. Dad was with her. When I got home, I had to go to the hospital. I saw that Eliza was ugly. I didn’t want her to live in our house. She had my mother’s name and I didn’t. I asked why. I said what about me?

      I think Dad was on my side. I don’t know, but there was shouting, right there in the hospital. I had caused a rift be-tween my parents. So? They’d missed me winning my races. Life needed to be balanced like that. Neat and tidy. Ordered and fair.

      When we got home from the wedding, I went straight to bed. I was still feeling shitty. That night I dreamt I was running along a winding path towards a big house. I knew I had to run through the house and get to the other side. I didn’t know why, I just knew it had to be done. I ran along corridors but kept coming across dead ends. Then I realised I had to go down some stone steps into a dark cellar. That way I would be able to run through the cellar, climb up some steps at the other end and get through the house. But I lost my way in the dark. Then I woke up and my stomach felt full. I felt like I had been stuffed with cotton wool like a teddy bear. My throat was dry. My forehead was hot. In the morning, Mum left warm toast and a mug of steaming tea on my bedside table. She told me to rest.

      There were two weeks left before term started. Sixth form waited ahead like a mountain. Daunting, imposing, frightening. Somehow the wedding had changed things. Another mountain was in view. The future was too steep to climb.

      I would make a list. A list limited the time ahead you had to think about. I would make a list of what I needed to do in the remaining two weeks. I got out my pad and pen and stared at the blank page. I didn’t like blank pages. They looked uncertain, open, ambiguous. I started to write, to cure the page of its emptiness, to cure the future of its uncertainty.

      • Read through AS curriculums.

      • File away GCSE work.

      • Tidy desk drawers.

      • Keep dream diary.

      • Buy Screamhead’s new album.

      • Mend puncture on bike.

      • Collect photographs.

      • Get a new boyfriend.

      • Lose a stone.

      • Phone Scarlet.

      I decided to start at the end and work backwards. Maybe life should be like that. Start off as a crinkly with all that experience. Then feel yourself getting younger and fitter. Life would get better, not worse.

      ‘Hi, Scarlet. Do you want to come over or shall we meet in town or something?’

      Mum came into my room.

      ‘Only two weeks left of the holiday. It’s flown past, hasn’t it? Eliza’s round at Katie’s for the day. I thought you and I would hit the shops.’

      ‘I’m going out.’

      ‘Oh. Right. Where are you off to?’

      ‘Just out.’

      ‘Are you meeting Scarlet?’

      ‘Probably.’

      ‘Well, maybe we could meet up afterwards. I’ve got a few things to do in town. What do you say?’

      But I said nothing. I don’t know why. The wedding seemed to have changed everything. Maybe that’s why I keep thinking back to that day. Even now. It was the start of something. Or the end of something. It was an unhappy day, I know that. It’s just been so hard to recall the feelings, the essence, of the day. All I really remember is the sequence of events, like it was a film or something.

      I met Scarlet at Tramps coffee-bar. I had a black coffee. Scarlet had a latte. She spooned three sugars into it, automatically, and stirred it round and round and round. Her arm jangled with the rows of bracelets. The dolphin tattoo on her shoulder bobbed up and down. She put her elbow on the table and propped her head up with her hand. She carried on stirring.

      Tramps had an uneven wooden floor and thick pine tables which wobbled when you leant on them. The hiss and splutter of the coffee-machines, the droning chatter of its young customers, the revs and buzz of the traffic outside drowned out our silence. The place smelt of froth and coffee beans and sweat and cinnamon.

      ‘Life is full of shit,’ sighed Scarlet eventually.

      ‘Something wrong?’

      ‘My parents are splitting up—no big surprise—and Blaise has dumped me and I think I’ve picked the wrong subjects for AS levels. It’s all happening at once and I feel like shite. I am so-o-o-o stressed.’

      Scarlet started to cry. Large solitary tears like a tap dripping slowly. She cried easily, unashamedly, as if it was normal.

      ‘Look at me.’ She laughed, and brushed her tears away with the back of her hand.

      ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I asked, and put my hand on her shoulder. Then we hugged. Scarlet was the only person I touched, except perhaps Mum. Mum doesn’t know how to hug me any more. Except sometimes when she forgets I’m grown up. Am I grown up? Anyway, she hugs me like I’m three or something. Like she wants to kiss it better and put a plaster on it. Scarlet’s my best friend and her secrets are my secrets. And my secrets…Well, you have to know what they are yourself first. We hugged in the café so I could share some of my strength. If only I’d had any.

      ‘Not much to say really,’ she said.

      But there was. Scarlet told me her dad was moving thirty miles away and that she had known it was coming but it was still a shock when it happened. That she’d racked her brains to see if there was anything she could have done. That Blaise was a bastard and she hated him. That she thought sciences would be too hard and would make her so-o-o stressed but she might stick with biology. That she felt uncertain and confused and muddled and shitty.

      And all the time she cried and sniffed. She

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