rainham_romeo1991: rolling stones, hendrix, pink floyd, fleetwood mac, the doors, the ramones

rainham_romeo1991: that sort of thing

He was so cool.

rainham_romeo1991: i feel like the 70s is the decade i would most like to have lived in

miss_BehaviourX91: yeah

Ellen did not know much about the seventies. Mainly, the decade she wanted to live in was the next one, when she would be an adult and didn’t live at home with her parents and younger brother. Think of something funny, she thought, desperately.

miss_BehaviourX91: i’m wearing my flares right now

Oh God, where had that come from? Was it too flip? Maybe he would think she was taking the piss? He was typing.

rainham_romeo1991: ha. yes

rainham_romeo1991: you are talking my language

Fine. She swallowed. She seemed to have got away with it.

rainham_romeo1991: so do you go into london a lot?

Real answer: no.

miss_BehaviourX91: yeah all the time

miss_BehaviourX91: i go to victoria mainly

The cheap train went into Victoria. On the few school trips Rainham Girls had been on, they’d gone via Victoria.

rainham_romeo1991: cool

rainham_romeo1991: yeah i go to victoria and i love going into oxford circus

rainham_romeo1991: i love the buzz of the city

rainham_romeo1991: feel like real life doesn’t really happen in the suburbs

Ellen’s heart fluttered. They were kindred spirits.

14. Ellen

‘We soon settled into a routine, where we’d talk every night for hours.’ Her throat was dry and it was giving her voice a slightly strangled quality. ‘All pathetic teenage things, really, about which bands we liked, and how we wanted to move to New York, and how no one understood us. But with most of the boys I was talking to on MSN, it was all stupid stuff about how many beers they’d drunk that weekend, or how many goals they’d set up at football, so this definitely felt more meaningful.’

She stole a glance at Ben, hoping for a squirming flicker of recognition, but his face was set in affected concentration. Still, he and Alexa now sat a chilly few centimetres apart. Jack, who sat cross-legged beside her, still had his mouth open a touch.

She continued. ‘It’s worth pointing out at this time that I’d never had a boyfriend before. Or anything close to one. Not that …’ a pause, ‘Benjamin was my boyfriend, exactly – we hadn’t said all that to each other. But with the others it always petered out after a few weeks, so to have someone who wanted to talk to me every single evening was a novelty.’

She was surprised at how much colour and detail was returning from the dim recesses of her mind. She could see herself at that desk chair, hoodie pulled on over her school uniform, face uplit by the blue light of the screen, heart fluttering and stomach swooping.