‘Urgh!’ Michelle pulled a face. ‘I’ve told you before, I can’t think of anything worse – not the California bit, that sounds nice. I’d like to go somewhere sunny, but imagine having to give someone a sick bag while the plane darts all over the sky? I think I’d be sick!’

‘I won’t mind it too much.’

‘Good job. “We have clearance, Clarence.”’

Bessie giggled: ‘“Roger, Roger. What’s our vector, Victor?”’

They both howled, having seen Airplane! three times at the Odeon.

Michelle sobered first. ‘I’m happy you know what you want to do. I was worried for a minute back there, when you were thinking of becoming a nun! We wouldn’t have been able to hang out.’

Bessie felt a twinge of guilt; keeping a secret from Michelle wasn’t a nice feeling. ‘They must get some time off. Plus, think of the advantages: they always wear a scarf and so I’d never have to worry about backcombing my hair.’

‘True. You’d save a ton on hairspray,’ Michelle piped up.

‘I would. And I’d live in the convent, so no bills or decorating to worry about.’

‘But you’d never get married or have babies, Bessie – wouldn’t you miss that?’

‘Yeah, I would. It’s partly why I decided against it. I’d like to find someone who loved me, and we could just be happy, someone that I fancied forever. That’d be great.’ She smiled as Lawrence’s face came into focus in her mind.

‘Someone like Simon Le Bon,’ Michelle giggled.

‘Exactly.’

Michelle paused from her shaving. ‘Anyway, don’t you have to be really religious to be a nun? I’m sure you have to believe in God.’

‘Well, I do believe in God.’ I talk to him often enough . . . ‘Plus, I worry that if I don’t believe and I die and it turns out all to be true, I could be in real trouble, and so the fact that I’m worried about that means I must believe, doesn’t it?’

‘I guess so.’ Michelle seemed to follow her logic. ‘I haven’t a clue what I want to do after school. Mum says something will find me and I just have to keep my eyes open, ready to spot it. Or that I should marry money.’ She scoffed. ‘She says everyone who’s married is miserable, and so you might as well be miserable and rich as miserable and poor.’