‘Sorry, Rachel,’ he muttered, not looking at me.

‘It’s OK,’ I replied in an undertone, not looking at him either.

I would have left except I didn’t want to ask him for a lift and besides, what good would it have done seeing as the car had been stolen? And I hadn’t enough money for a taxi.

He pulled the condom off himself, threw it in his waste-paper basket – ugh – then switched off the light and turned his back on me. I had expected nothing else.

Luke and I used to go to sleep wrapped around each other, I remembered mournfully.

The bastard.

As I lay there in the darkness, I suddenly felt hungry. I should have eaten my refried beans.

Too late now.

I slept horribly. Fitful and light. And when I woke at about six-thirty, my feelings of failure were so acute that I couldn’t bear to be there a moment longer. I grimly got dressed, picked up my bag and made for the door.

Then I hesitated as I realized that I had absolutely nothing else in my life that was good. I rummaged in my bag until I found a pen, wrote my phone number on a piece of paper and put it on his pillow. I didn’t dare do the trick I did to Luke of scrunching it up into a ball, throwing it in a bin and saying, ‘There! That’s saved you the bother.’ Because in this case it would be the truth.

‘I’ll ring you,’ Chris murmured sleepily.

*

Of course he didn’t.

I might have been drug-free, but nothing else had changed in my life.

I stood at the bus-stop and the people on early starts looked at my fancy-me clothes and sniggered.

Except for a teenage boy who thought I was fair game, followed me up the stairs and sat behind me on the bus, murmuring ‘Knickers, knickers, I saw your knickers,’ in so low an undertone that at first I thought I was imagining it. I was afraid to move seats in case people looked at me again.

When I got off the bus the driver winked and said ‘You’ll have some explaining to do to your mammy.’ I ignored him, stepped onto the foot-path and swore to myself I’m not going to look up, I’m not going to look up. But I was helpless, in the grip of an instinct too strong to resist. I lifted my head. Sure enough, the revolting, knicker-obsessed boy was leering down at me. I wrenched my eyes away from his but not before I had deduced from his hand gestures that he was planning to have a good old wank for himself in my honour.

I began the short walk home, feeling dirty.

But at least someone fancies me, I found myself thinking, before I was halfway there.

I was greeted by my mother in a manner that reminded me why I had left home in the first place.

Wild-eyed and be-nightdressed, she shrieked ‘Where in God’s name have you been? I was on the verge of ringing the guards!’

‘I stayed in Mrs Hutchinson’s.’ I thought if I said ‘Mrs Hutchinson’s’ it would sound a lot more benign than, ‘I stayed with Chris and we attempted to have sex but he couldn’t sustain an erection.’

‘I stayed in Mrs Hutchinson’s and I would have come home except their car was stolen and he had to ring the insurance and the coppers and report it…’

I talked quickly, hoping to distract her from her me-directed rage with the story of the stolen car.

‘Philomena and Ted Hutchinson are in Tenerife,’ she hissed. ‘You were there on your own with him.’

‘Actually, Mum, I was,’ I agreed cheerily. I was tired of all this. I was an adult.

And with that she went ballistic. She tried to hit me, throw a hairbrush, sit down, stand up and burst out crying, all at once.

‘You slut,’ she screeched. ‘Have you no shame, and him a married man! And what about his three children? I suppose you gave no thought to them.’

The paralysing shock must have shown on my face, because she shrieked ‘You didn’t even know, did you? Well, what kind of a bloody eejit are you? A bloody useless selfish fool who always does the wrong thing.’ Her face was puce and she was breathing hard. I’d gone cold with horror.

‘I bet you don’t even know he was forced to leave the Cloisters the first time he was there,’ she screamed. ‘Because he was caught having intercourse with a married woman in one of the bathrooms. And will I tell you what galls me?’

‘No,’ I said. But she told me anyway.

‘It was bad enough, the right show you made of me with your drugs carry-on. But now you have to go and do this. You were always a selfish brat, I haven’t forgotten the time you ate poor Margaret’s Easter egg, do you do these things deliberately to spite me…’

I ran out of the room and up the stairs, while she stood at the bottom, screeching up at me, ‘Selfish, self-centred pup. Well you can just get out and you needn’t bother coming back. Go on, pack your bags and go, it’ll be a relief to me if I never see you again. Tormenting me like this…’

I was shaking with shock. I’d always hated fights, and I was appalled at the force of my mother’s rage. Her contempt for me was horrifying. I’d long suspected I was a big disappointment to her, but it was excruciatingly painful for it to be confirmed.

Not to mention what she’d told me about Chris. I could hardly believe it. He was married. With three children. He was obviously separated, but that didn’t make it any better.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how he didn’t fancy me enough to come. His rejection of me felt terrible, but in conjunction with my mother’s rage, it was too much.

But I knew exactly what I was going to do.

First I was going to change my clothes. Then I was going to beg, steal or borrow lots of money and go out, buy a shit-load of drugs, ingest them and feel better.

I stumbled into my bedroom and slammed the door, shutting out Mum’s hysterical voice. The curtains were drawn and someone was in my bed. No, two people. Helen and Anna.

Again.

Why couldn’t anybody in this house sleep in their own bloody bed? I wondered wearily. And why were Helen and Anna there together? They were supposed to hate each other.

They were both deep in slumber, curled up like two kittens, cute and sweet, their long black hair tangled across the pillows, their spiky eyelashes throwing shadows on their smooth little faces.

I switched on the light, which caused immediate uproar. ‘For fu…!’ One of them sat up in shock. ‘I was asleep!’

‘Turn off the fecking light,’ the other one ordered.