“Nothing. Nothing at all. We went up to the flat. They played music—our kind of music, you know, not that Middle Eastern shit—and we had lots to eat—Hassan runs the Balti restaurant down the Strip, so he’d brought a whole bunch of food, too, so we had curries and stuff as well as pizza and kebabs and burgers, and lots to drink. Vodka, gin, whisky, cider. We danced. We talked. We laughed. We got kaylied. We got silly. Mel puked. That’s all. And nobody told us to shut up or fuck off or hit us or told us we were too fat or stupid. Faisal and me had already got together, like Mimsy and Sunny. Ismail hooked up with Becca that night. The girls enjoyed themselves so much they started hanging out with us, mostly at Sunny’s. He’s got the nicest flat. The biggest TV and the best music. The guys weren’t like creepy or anything, not like the lads at school. I mean, have you seen the lads around here? Most you could hope for from them was lager from a can down by the canal before they put their hand up your skirt. Sunny and his friends are older. Dead mature.”

“And generous?”

“Yeah, I suppose so. At first.”

“But now you’re scared of them?”

“Things change.”

“Didn’t you think they were a bit old for you?”

“Did you go out with kids your own age when you were young?”

It was the first time anyone had indicated that they felt that Gerry wasn’t young, and it was a strange feeling. Of course she would seem old to Jade. “No,” she said. “I suppose not.” She could have added that there wasn’t much choice at her boarding school, and that the choice wasn’t only limited in age but also in gender, unless you were foolhardy enough to go for a teacher. But she didn’t. Her first real boyfriend, when she was eighteen and at university, had been in his thirties. He had also been a junior lecturer, though at no time was he ever her teacher.

“So how did things progress?”

“They treated us good at first, like real ladies. They weren’t always groping and fumbling and grabbing your tits.”

“But you did have sex?”

“Oh, yeah. But it wasn’t, like, all the time.”

“You enjoyed it?”

“It was OK.”

Gerry thought she heard a sound from the next room and stiffened.

“Rats,” said Jade.

Gerry didn’t think she had ever seen a rat, not in the wild, so to speak. She certainly didn’t want to start now. “Was there any conflict between the men you were with and the local boys?” she asked. “Albert Moffat, Paul Warner and the others? Weren’t they jealous?”