And tbf nothing much happens in our lives, Holly and me, just a lot of talk. Boys have sports. All the boys we know play hurling and football. I don’t know if they talk about us but we talk about them a lot. And when we’re not talking we’re texting or WhatsApp. It’s not that we fancy them. It’s just they’re there, and they’re something else, and they don’t go to my school which is all girls so we hardly ever actually talk to them. But one thing did happen to Holly. Going home from school once she was attacked by two boys. They tried to pull her into a field. She didn’t go. But she said they tried to get their hands up her skirt and stuff. Like you see. Lucky for her a car came along and she legged it. Holly is fast. She does athletics. They could have caught her too but they were afraid they would be seen from the car. This happened when she was nearly fourteen. She was an early developer. She was the first girl in our class to start to show on top. And now she’s a bit big. She says she’ll get breast reduction when she’s working. Anyway, she says she thought they were bottlers and nothing would have happened but idk. That’s how it happens.

We were in Tesco’s café and we saw Jason and Helen, who are a couple, passing a cigarette around mouth to mouth. Maybe the café does not belong to Tesco idk but it’s next door. They didn’t even kiss or hold hands. They just stood in the cold and smoked. And when it was finished they stubbed it out in a flower pot and went indoors again. Is that supposed to be love? If so it is not for me or Holly. Holly said she would never marry because marriage is a bourgeois institution. Well, I said, I’m pretty bourgeois and I’m not going to marry either.