21. Before

It was the perfect summer. Before everything fell apart, before I cut my hair, before I discovered the only people I could trust were the ones screaming into microphones on the posters on my wall.

Sure, we should have been revising, but we'd been revising. Our brains had become a mulch of Post-It notes and flashcards and highlighters. The exams were here, silent and stuffy, but between them were days and days of bright golden sun and golden sand and fat golden chips in newspaper.

It felt like we'd been friends forever – childhood birthday parties and beach trips with all our parents; we loved the same songs and shows and school dinners.

Princess, Barbra, Spanish and Whip. These were the names we used now. No one remembered who we'd been before. We were who we wanted to be.

We laughed along the cobbled streets of our beautiful town, snatching glances of ourselves in shop windows, our slim legs and long hair and glossed lips. My friends smirked as I out-music-ed the record shop owner and I glowed too bright to hide it.

Princess loved ‘practising for when we're poor', because she'd decided we'd all be turning our noses up at family handouts the moment we'd finished university, breaking free, making it on our own.

We'd choose a shop and go in, pick things up, chat with the shopkeeper, and walk out with a new purse tucked in a pocket or a bracelet slipped on a wrist.

Princess always took it too far. She once stole a posh pen worth almost a hundred pounds then gave it to me for laughing so hard at one of her jokes that Coke came out of my nose. A few days later I secretly returned it.

Princess and I were going to get straight As in our exams because she'd found a vent in the toilets where you could hide things. She told me alone, because she thought it would look more suspicious if all four of us kept going out.

It was silly, because we would've got straight As anyway. Really, we only used it to leave each other notes. But knowing our revision cards were sitting there was a thrill.

We'd always go to my house. We'd lie in the long grass and murmur about clothes and school dances, music and whatever show we'd been watching, until the conversation turned, as it always did, to boys, and one boy in particular: Don, Princess's big brother. We were besotted. Princess would pretend to be sick whenever we talked about him.

Spanish would certainly be the one to marry him because she was the prettiest, but surely, until then, we could all have a go? Take turns or maybe share him. The Mormons did it. We could be sister wives in their gorgeous old house and be forever friends.

Once, when Princess was away, we wrote him letters as a joke, signing each other's names under them.

Pretending to be Whip, I wrote:

Darling Don,

I've loved you since the moment we met. Meet me in the fox field and let me show you how.

Devoted always,

Your little Whip

Whip, pretending to be Spanish, wrote:

Dear Don,

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

You've got a pretty head,

And I'd like to FUCK you.

Spanish xxxxxxxxx

Spanish, pretending to be me, wrote:

Dear Don,

Am I not a mistress that is passing fair?

Shall I promise thou canst put it anywhere?

Love,

Barbra

We fellabout crying with laughter, blushing, imagining, half-wishing someone would deliver them and he'd just finally pick one of us.

It would be one of us, wouldn't it? None of his girlfriends lasted more than a month. All the girls in his year were so serious and frumpy. He liked hanging out with us.

That summer I had felt unbreakable. Life was going to be so bright, so happy.

And then…

And then on the hottest day: a party with the parents. In the huge grounds, we had snuck off to investigate the derelict barn and then Don and Princess had gone back to the house to find snacks.

The walls were made from nodules of flint, browns and greys with splodges of white chalk. Inside were a few rotting beams, no floor, no roof. Pigeons roosted on one of the joists, the ground below turned white.

‘They're taking for-ev-errrrrr,' whined Spanish, going back outside and scuffing about the short stubble left from a harvested crop.

‘Should we go back?' I said, following her.

‘Don said he wanted to sit on top drinking stolen champagne and I think that sounds rather nice,' said Whip, leaning against a wall.

‘There's not even anywhere to sit,' I said, kicking a rock which hit the wall with a sharp crack.

Whip started hoisting herself up the wall. ‘Not down there,' she said.

‘I'll just run back and check on them,' I said, and started jogging. It was too hot though, and once past the hedge I settled back to walking.

I had heard my parents arguing the night before and I wasn't really feeling like drinking stolen champagne and pretending to be happy, but I supposed it was better than being in the house. I wondered how my parents did it – be all smiles when last night they'd been shouting and crying and Dad's favourite mug had smashed.

I pushed through the gate, into the orchard, and that's when I found Princess, curled under a pear tree, crying.

I ran over, dropping to the ground beside her. ‘What's wrong?' I put my arms around her, but she hauled herself away, standing up. Her cheeks were red and wet like an angry baby.

‘Huh?' I said. ‘What happened?' I stood too and reached for her again.

She shoved me with both hands and I stumbled back. My mouth fell open in shock. She balled her fists and then a wave of anger passed over her face and she stepped towards me and shoved me again, hard, and I fell, knocking my head against the tree trunk as she ran away.

I knew immediately that everything had changed: this was the end.