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been in demand to write for every newspaper and magazine whenever there was a teenage crisis in the news. She’d written pieces on pregnant twelve-year-olds, shoplifting crazes, fat camps, body piercing and the pointless rip-off of work-experience placements. On radio she’d commented on sad suicides who’d hung themselves for being a grade short of Oxbridge, on the expulsion-for-drugs question and whether girls should still, in this new century, be banned from school for wearing trousers. All the while her Gazette column, light, frothy and snug-family based, came out every week and, over a year, just about covered Natasha’s and Zoe’s school fees.
    ‘… so it’s a matter of finding something different,satisfying, inspiring, all that,’ Matthew was saying.
    ‘And that pays as well as your old job? You’ll be lucky.’ Jess laughed.
    He shrugged. ‘Or that doesn’t.’
    ‘Yo Matthew! What’re you doing out here on a Wednesday? Taking a sickie?’ Eddy-up-the-road, brandishing a bottle of Heineken, pulled up a chair and, uninvited, joined their table.
    ‘You’re on enemy territory, man. Weekdays this is self-employed skivers, old rockers like me and women only.’
    Matt laughed. ‘You got a category for unemployed?’
    ‘Really? You out of work? Fired?’ Matt nodded.
    ‘Welcome to the club!’ Eddy grinned at Jess and pointed at the wine bottle. ‘Fancy another? Celebrate Matt’s release from the daily grind?’
    ‘What’s to celebrate?’ Jess asked.
    Eddy nudged Matthew and winked at him. ‘Plenty to celebrate, plenty! He can join our gang.’
    ‘Gang?’ Jess giggled. ‘You sound like something out of Just William .’
    ‘Oh we are.’ Eddy leaned forward, his long, thinning dyed-brown hair dangling on the table. He smelled rather prettily of rose water. ‘There’s me and Micky and Ben and a couple of others, you know, we go round, have fun, make trouble. Sometimes we even get Wandering Wilf to stop his marching and sit with us for a bit. A new face is always welcome.’
    Jess called Ben over for the bill, but he brought another bottle of wine instead. Matthew and Eddy looked at each other and at the bottle. Ben pulled up another chair and sat down with them.
    There was an air of inevitability. Jess could see some kind of session looming. ‘OK, I’ll leave you to it, Matt.I’ve got to get some work done so I’ll see you later. Bye all of you. Have fun.’
    ‘Oh we will,’ Eddy called after her. As she neared the door she could hear the three of them giggling together and caught the words ‘Out on the loose’. She didn’t want to think about which one had said them.

Three
    Natasha’s school bag was too heavy and as she trudged home from the bus stop she imagined it must feel exactly like this to lug along a dead body in a sack. It was certainly almost as depressing a load. Julia Perry High School gave them far too much homework in her (and just about everyone in the school’s) opinion. She was very much in envy of Mel, a former friend from primary school, who had gone at eleven to Briar’s Lane comprehensive and now spent a lot of after-school leisure time hanging round in the square in front of the Leo, smoking and mucking about with her mates. It was the kind of aimless, can-kicking hanging about that the grown-up Grove residents disapproved of, as if the term Crime Wave was the definitive collective noun for more than three teenagers grouped together. Natasha would love to join in, just so she could sometimes feel less as if she was on a schoolwork treadmill heading towards a string of A-grade GCSEs. It wasn’t as if Mel’s school did exams that were any different fromhers either, and Mel had been clever enough, but Briar’s Lane wasn’t frantically keeping up a league-table position. She and Mel didn’t really talk any more though, just nodded a shy hello like a pair of old lags acknowledging long-past shared crimes.
    People from different schools didn’t mix much, except