Matty got up from the table and stood in front of Brigid, very close. Close enough to smell the trace of sweat under her arms and that musky perfume of hers. Brigid was still looking with fierce concentration at the bright-coloured spines of her cookery books, but she had gone very still. You could practically sense her melting between her inner thighs, and it brought a simple flush of desire in return. Desire, and the desire to give back. To forget everything. Matty tilted up and kissed her jaw.

A slight melting. A kiss to her cheek. Her knee shifted. A kiss on her bottom lip.

Brigid’s eyes were on Matty now. Thunderstorms, flashes, very far off. ‘You don’t have to – don’t just do this because you feel guilty.’

‘Come on,’ Matty said, and led Brigid to the sofa.

*

Matty’s first girl. Tara, also sixteen, walking three dogs on Wanstead Flats. Saying ‘good morning’, a glittering smile full of braces, startling Matty into muttering ‘all right,’ and turning round to look. A compact body, glowing. Buttocks filling high shorts and dark-blond, frizzy hair down her back like a fountain. She’d turned round again, too.

They had passed each other again going the other way, and Tara had cadged a cigarette. The dogs were a part-time job for a family at the posh end of the flats, and were all named after ballet dancers. She had a proper Essex accent, her voice melodic and airy, and a bright, assessing look.

‘I totally had you down as a boy,’ she’d said, but didn’t get up to go.

They’d gone back to the big house, no one home. Tara had locked the dogs in the conservatory.

‘Have you ever kissed anyone?’ she had said.

‘No.’ Kissing made people disappear. Nicks had never come back.

Except that she had stayed right there. Tasted of raspberry lip gloss. ‘You can kiss me somewhere else if you like,’ she’d said.

From kissing to everything, in about five minutes. She’d been like Bird’s Eye custard, and Matty had listened to the sweet, sleepy noises she’d made, while the dogs bumped themselves against the glass.

It hadn’t lasted. Tara had said she couldn’t introduce Matty to her parents, even though the two of them had held hands in the street. But the sighs she’d made on the three times Matty had gone down on her were kept. Imprinted. Aimed for again.

Brigid’s noises were different. Everyone was different, after all. Brigid was like a storm wind battering a window.

Most of Matty’s clothes stayed on. Brigid’s body was pliant, a walnut tinge to her skin. One breast bigger than the other. She’d moved about as if having a bad dream, but Matty knew how to play it. Not thinking of him. Not thinking. Fingers, thumbs, tongue. In the end, all of Brigid had curled, toes to throat.