Nella

An outraged Jan Vermaak had rung me to flesh out details. Her daughter Lola had told her that, just as the Avengers film was finishing, Willow took the teenagers up onto the roof of the house (dangerous on its own!). They’d climbed up the fire escape onto the roof terrace, whereupon someone had suggested a game of the dreaded Spin the Bottle.

This information alone was enough to make me shudder.

Lola then put the March boy’s friend’s phone down her top for the second time that night; obviously, as her mother said crossly, she was just being a bit flirtatious. The boy Rocky (ridiculous name – what were his parents thinking?), having demanded it back several times, thought it was his right to fish it out again!

Jan seemed to think this was outrageous, though personally I wasn’t really sure what Lola expected, silly girl, if she was going to be so stupid.

While Lola stomped about in high dudgeon, she still had time to notice Cecilia and Zach had detached themselves; she’d seen Zach persuading the other girl to go inside again, Lola said. Like her mother Jan: always a nose for other’s business. Perhaps, though, in this case, it was lucky: Lola saw they’d drifted down into my bedroom, and she came downstairs to tell me that she was ‘worried’.

There I found them shortly afterwards, sitting on my bed, kissing. ‘Snogging’, perhaps, would be the more correct term, Zach March’s hand resting on the girl’s thigh, her funny two-tone hair vivid against my headboard.

Initially, I suppose it sort of looked like they were both enjoying it, but I must say, the moment Cecilia saw me, she seemed so desperate to get away from the boy, I felt a little – surprised. I also thought – apropos of nothing – that the girl looked really pretty for once. Too many piercings, true, but the pink roots of her dyed-black hair actually suited her; her outfit was quite fun, her eyes big and dark as she stared at me.

‘Ces.’ The boy had reached a hand out to grab her wrist in a way that – afterwards, I thought, well, could that have been – coercive? Anyway, she slipped away from him, hovering in the doorway, as if unsure what to do as I told him to get up too.

I gave them short shrift, in fact, both of them looking very sheepish, particularly the girl. She kept staring at me in a way that later I thought maybe meant she wanted to talk to me and ask for my help – and I missed it. Instead, I packed them back off to the others, who’d returned to the cinema room – though Cecilia was already thundering down the stairs anyway. Not long after, exhausted by the day, I’d checked on Beau – sleeping peacefully – donned an eye mask and my Bose earplugs, taken the strongest sleeping pill in my cabinet, and gone to bed myself, leaving Marcus in charge.