of the school holidays, six weeks down, two to go.

What was the sea like? she wondered. ‘All blue and grey,’

Peggy told her, ‘but the beach makes your toes messy.’

Face full on to the sun, its strokes painted her a rusty brown

until sun-drunk, she stumbled inside. ‘Look, I’ve a sun tan.’

‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ Ellen mumbled, rolling thick pastry.

Three at a time she vaulted the stairs, passing Fabian.

‘Jagger-lips!’ he teased, sliding down the banister

out of her reach. ‘Watusi-head!’ she retaliated loudly,

reaching her attic bedroom and slamming the door.

She studied her lips in the mirror. They weren’t too big,

not like her father’s or that Nat King Cole man

whose boring Mona Lisa drifted up the stairs at night.

Still, she’d suck them in from now on, just in case.

TANK TOPS, Curly Wurlys, blue mascara, Top 20,

T. Rex, Jackson 5, Bowie, Slade, the Sweet, the 70s

spun Lara into the kaleidoscope of teeny bop,

at Eltham Hill Girls she torpedoed chewing gum

on entering, hitched her skirt on exiting, tissue-padded

her non-existents in the upstairs loo, and choked

over smoke at lunchtime behind the Jubilee Gardens.

Lacrosse, rounders, tennis, hockey, swimming, relay

rotated weekly with maths, physics, history, Latin et al,

ad infinitum, timetabled to inject seeds of academia

into hormonal cells. Lara (now La), and Susie (aka Soos),

blooded a pin-prick bond forged on a passion for boys,

pop, clothes and garrulous babble. Shorn playing fields

lolled from tennis courts to the slopes of Eltham Green,

stunted herbaceous borders prettified the red-brick exterior,

inside its panelled walls inhaled school dinners,

the distinctive odour of years of mush and slop.

Five hundred blue-beret’d, pre and après pubescents

descended the stern gates to the ivy-clad grammar.

Lara da Costa, hopping off the 161 from Woolwich, only

child of discernible colour, did not notice her difference,

camouflaged by her uniform and the nattering swarm

of pink-flushed, off-white, excitable girlies.

‘WANNA BITE, Soos? Wanna bite, La?’

Madeline, third member of the triumvirate, slouched in,

brandishing a decapitated Topic and two auburn plaits.

‘No, ta. You’ll get spots if you eat sweets,’ Susie tutted.

‘I don’t care if I do!’ Madeline plonked herself on a bench,

flung beefy shot-putter legs onto a desk, studied Susie

putting on Lypsil with the affectation of applying lipstick.

‘Your lips are so luscious, Soos. Mine are too thin, see?’

She pouted, accentuating her trout’s lips. ‘I know, Mad.

Mine are called cupid lips or rosebud or summing.’

Lara wondered what was so special about Susie’s lips,

same size as hers and shape, just a different colour.

‘And you’ve nice long legs, Soos. Look at my fat stumps.’

Madeline snorted. ‘Yuk. Hey, I’ve got a great idea.

You two have a Miss Lovely Legs Competition.

I read in a mag that you put your feet together, insert

a penny near your whatsit, (they giggled), and if it slots in