23.31: Of course I like her
23.32: Thats what i said!!!
00.19: Ommmggghh im a bit drunk
00.22: Yes you are.
00.36: shit mums comin and i cant find suze.
00.38: do u kno where she iss?
00.39: No
00.48: in the car goin home. found suze. SLEEPY.
00.50: Night night, talk to you tomorrow x
00.53: NIGHT x
When I woke up in the morning, I had five missed calls and three voicemails. Snuggling deeper into my pillow, I put my phone to my ear to listen.
‘Caddddyyyy! Oh my God, why is your phone on silent, you LOSER? We want to talk to youuu! WAKE UP.’
‘HI, it’s Suze. Rosie says wake up, wake up. HEY – maybe she’s waking up right now and she can’t call us back ’cause we’re on the phone. Maybe we should—’
‘It’s us again!’ Rosie’s voice. ‘We are just saying, “HELLO, SLEEPY,” and “GOOD MORNING” for when you wake up! LOVE YOU, night night night!’
I looked at my screen again after I’d finished listening. Just gone 9 a.m. I was pretty sure they’d both still be sleeping, but I rang Rosie anyway.
When it clicked through to voicemail, I put on my loudest, brightest voice. ‘Good MORNING. How is your HEAD? Hope you had fun! Call me later. And I love you too, even when you’re a drunken moron.’
At half past ten I arrived at Pathways, the assisted-living facility I’d never even heard of before I got it as my Service assignment for the term. I spent most of my morning making tea for the real members of staff and watching the news. I left at lunchtime, my Service timetable dutifully signed by the manager, who didn’t even know my name, and headed home, pulling out my phone and calling Rosie, who picked up on the second ring.
‘Hey!’ I said. ‘I’m done with Service.’
‘How did it go?’
‘Oh, fine. How was last night? Is Suzanne still with you?’
‘It was good. No, she left about an hour ago.’
‘Did you have fun?’
‘Yeah! More when we first got there and we were getting drunk and stuff. But she kind of disappeared after an hour or so. I still had fun though.’
‘What do you mean, disappeared?’ I stopped at the traffic lights, tapping the button with my fingers, watching the light change.
‘She went off with Chris, this guy from the sixth form.’
‘She left you on your own?’
‘Oh no, I was with Lev and Maya.’ Levina and Maya were, before Suzanne at least, Rosie’s closest friends from school. ‘And Ollie was hanging around a bit.’
‘Oh, was he now?’ I said, raising my eyebrows even though she couldn’t see me. ‘I hope you told him to get lost.’
There was a silence.
‘Rosie!’ I scolded.
‘I’d had a lot to drink, OK?’ she said, defensive. ‘And it was kind of nice to have him being all interested for once. Anyway, that’s not what I was going to tell you.’
‘I think you getting off with your sort-of ex is worth talking about,’ I said, stepping around an unnecessarily large pram that a harassed-looking woman had pushed directly into my path.
‘Oh please. He’s hardly an ex. When I have an ex worth talking about I hope I’ll have done more than kiss him. Anyway. When we were drinking, before she went with Chris, me and Suze talked a lot and she –’ she paused dramatically – ‘has had sex.’
‘Really?’ I tried to figure out what I should do with my voice. Should I be surprised? Impressed? Was I either of these things?
‘With more than one guy.’
‘Wow,’ I said, and then felt ridiculous. I sounded like a twelve-year-old.
‘I know!’ Rosie said, making me feel better. ‘I’m not sure she’d have told me if we hadn’t had tequila.’
‘You had tequila?’ I was surprised now. When we drank, it was usually alcopops and fruit ciders, or syrupy sweet shots that tasted mostly of sugar. Straight spirits were still too much for me.
‘Yes, and it was disgusting. I almost threw up.’ She paused. ‘I actually kind of did. Anyway! She was a lot more chatty after that; usually she’s quite guarded.’
‘Did she tell you why she lives with Sarah?’ I asked.
‘No, I didn’t ask.’
That would have been the first thing out of my mouth. ‘Why not?’
‘Because we were talking about sex, Caddy!’
‘All right, sorry. So, how many guys?’
‘Two.’
‘Oh, when you said more than one guy I thought you were going to say it was five or something.’
‘No, she’s not like that.’
I thought of all the girls I knew who’d had sex. There were the girls at my school, like Olivia, who wore their skirts as short as humanly possible and snuck cigarettes outside the school gates and did everything they could to prove they weren’t private girls’ school clichés, seemingly unaware they were ticking every clichéd box. I only knew two girls my age who weren’t virgins and didn’t fit that same mould: Allison, who’d been with her boyfriend Sammy for almost two years, and Chessy, my cousin, who was also in a long-term relationship.