“I haven’t shaved my legs.”

“You can use my dad’s electric razor. I’ll tell him it was Faye.” Faye was her little sister. I tried on all of Em’s dresses, then we hit her mum’s wardrobe. June had been a teenager in the sixties and had the miniskirts to prove it. Em was swishing this way and that in a long paisley number as her mum came up the stairs.

“You put everything back afterward.” She stopped and leaned against the doorframe. “God, I used to be thin. Looks good on you, Em. Very romantic, very Joan Baez. You found anything, Andy?”

I shook my head and she went over and rifled through the rails.

“How about this?” It was violet, very short with a little collar and buttons down the front. “Go on. Try it on. It’ll go perfect with your coloring.”

It wasn’t like anything I usually wore. When I came out the bathroom, a bittersweet look passed over her face.

“I’ll tell you what. The pair of you can borrow them, but only if you let Faye join in for an hour. Slap some makeup on her. Let her show you her dances.”

Before we left, she made us stand together for a photograph. I don’t think I ever saw it. “Such young ladies,” she said and pressed the button.

Lady. Girl. Female. Woman. Each of the words made you feel a bit different, act a bit different even, when it was applied to you. They weren’t the only words for us, of course, only at Em’s house it was possible to forget the other words existed.

The club played guitar bands, the crowd a mix of grungers, indie kids, Britpoppers, plus a few lost-looking goths and metalers, the remnants of dying species that had failed to evolve.

David wasn’t sure about going.

“I don’t think there will be any wanted posters up,” Em said.

When he was out of earshot Marcus said, “He’s going to have to face the music at some point.”

Later, I wondered whether there hadn’t been someone in the crowd who recognized him. Later, sitting out on the step, waiting for the phone in the telephone box to ring, I would wonder about all kinds of things.

But it was a good night. We did shots. When songs I liked came on, I danced with Em. She was all lit up with booze and mischief. Elbowing our way through the crowd to the toilets, I asked her if she fancied anyone.

“Maybe the one with the Bob Dylan hair.”

So when we went back, I made sure we danced right up by him till he got the message and led her off upstairs to the balcony, but she came back after twenty minutes shaking her head. With boys, it was like she was always comparing them to someone in her head who was better.