‘OK.’ He was going to ask me out on a proper date, I just knew it. It was coming up to Valentine’s Day and I hoped I’d get a card that year; like the kisses, it would be a first. And if he wanted to go out with me, surely we could go public? In my head, I was already telling my friends the story at school the next day. I’d be one of the in-crowd, a girl with ‘experience’. A boy had come to my window at night, asked me out. My love life had begun.

I closed the curtains, put on my dressing gown and sneaked down the stairs. I could hear the TV was still on in the sitting room, so I crept past, into the kitchen, out of the back door and into the garden where Andrew was waiting.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘I think I’m ready for the real thing,’ he said.

Oh god, I thought, sex, he wants to go further and practise that as well as kissing. I wasn’t sure I was ready. ‘Real thing? I … Are you sure?’

Andrew nodded. ‘Denise.’

‘Denise?’

‘Yeah. She looks like she’s experienced which is why I wanted to get some practice in kissing before I approached her, but I think I’m ready now. Do you think she’d go out with me?’

It was a stab to the heart. As the implication hit me, I felt my hopes crumble and my dreams wither. He had been using me to practise. There would be no Valentine card, no date, no showing off to my friends. I wasn’t a girl that a boy wanted for real. I was no more than a confidante, a mate, someone to practise on until ready to approach the real object of desire. God, it hurt, and it knocked my confidence to the floor. I felt such a fool but I knew not to give myself away. ‘Ah … I … yeah, maybe, probably.’

‘Can you find out if she likes me? If she does, I thought I’d take her to the Saturday matinée at the cinema.’

‘I’ll see what I can find out,’ I said. I had to get away, get back inside, to my bedroom, to nurse my wounded heart and shattered ego. ‘Got to go, my parents are still up.’ I retreated back inside and ran upstairs. I was devastated but not surprised. Denise was a ‘girlie girl’, an early developer. She had breasts and glossy hair that fell in soft, brown waves to her shoulders and she smelt of strawberries. Boys were always looking at her. I was still flat-chested, despite my and Denise’s regular arm-pumping exercises and chants of ‘I must, I must improve my bust’ and my hair, cut too short by my mother, was more hacked than styled.