Chapter One
I love being in love. I love the wallowing and the dreamy sighing and the sheer wanting that goes with it all. In high school, I was in love with a boy called Roderick for four years. I gazed at him from across the classroom, scribbled our names together on my textbooks and on toilet walls, and listened to love songs over and over, convinced they were telling our story. Not that our relationship ever got past a few mumbled exchanges about homework. I got right through to sixth form without ever having a proper boyfriend, and only one kiss and a fumble, with Bradley Nicks from Chemistry, behind the sports hall. He tasted of crisps and stolen fags.
The first few months of sixth form, I was in love with my history teacher. I tried to keep the gazing to a minimum, and thought myself a bit too sophisticated to be scribbling in my books like a school girl, but I managed to construct a whole fantasy relationship in my head, with the help of my favourite pop ballads of course. When he left to be replaced by our current teacher Ms Ladgate, who smells of onions and has a squint, I was devastated. My best friend Dannii – she insists on the double vowel – shakes her head at me sadly.
‘You need to get yourself a proper boyfriend Ash. People are starting to think you’re a secret lesbian’.
Truth is, I’m just not interested in the boys we hang around with; slouchy guys in hoodies or with boy band hair, whose main topics of conversation seem to be playing computer games online and which girl in which pop group they think is the hottest. I had liked Roderick because he was quiet and artistic, different from the usual crowd. Deep down, I’m pretty sure I’m different too. I mean, I have never been into smoking and trying to get into the latest clubs; what little popularity I have is mainly because of my friendship with Dannii. But it’s not cool to be different, not unless you’ve got a group of friends that are different too, which doesn’t make much sense. So I have to settle for being the nerdy friend of the popular crowd.
‘I am not a secret lesbian.’
‘I know, but people think you are. Even your mum thinks you are.’
‘She does not!’
She probably does, if I’m honest. Mum has been asking me if I have a boyfriend ‘yet’ on a weekly basis since my fourteenth birthday, and her tone is becoming more and more desperate. I think she worries that I’m scarred from her break-up with my dad, who now lives in Australia with his new wife. She’s also totally oblivious to the fact that all my male friends have got major crushes on her, and only hang around the house to catch a glimpse of her. Mum was only sixteen when she had me, so she’s not even thirty five yet, and she’s gorgeous, all copper curls and big blue eyes and petite curves. Dannii says I look like her, but I know I don’t have her sparkle or charisma. Mum’s an artist and scrapes a living illustrating children’s books, just like Susan from Desperate Housewives, which used to be her favourite programme, except that we don’t live in a fantastic house in the suburbs where everyone has perfect teeth. She’s a bit quirky, but my mates think she’s cool. Whereas I’m just a boring history buff. ‘I don’t want you to end up like me,’ she’s always saying. I should be so lucky.
‘It doesn’t matter if you are you know. Nobody cares these days.’
I look at Dannii nonplussed, totally confused.
‘If you’re a lesbian,’ she says patiently. I start to protest again, then sigh as I see the corner of her mouth twist up in a smirk. She’s just messing with me. Dannii after all knows about my penchant for impossible crushes and has long since given up trying to pair me off with any of our lad friends – most of whom are her cast offs anyway. Dannii goes through boyfriends like I go through books, and I’d probably be jealous of her if it wasn’t the fact she’s completely blasé about her own beauty. Unlike me, she’s not a romantic at all.
