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just sat there. Every now and again one of us said, “We’d better go, if we’re going.” But neither of us made any move to leave. It was her idea to go back to her place. And, when the time came, it was her idea to have sex. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
    I think before that night I was a bit scared of her. She was beautiful, and her mum and dad were quite posh, and I was afraid she’d decide that just because I was the only person of her age at her mum’s party, it didn’t mean we had to go out together. The party was over. She could talk to who she wanted now.
    But she wasn’t scary, not really. Not in the posh way. She wasn’t really what you’d call a brainbox. Or maybe that’s not fair, because it wasn’t like she was stupid. But seeing as her mum was a councillor and her dad taught at university, you’d think she’d be doing better at school. She spent half the evening talking about the lessons she’d been thrown out of, and the trouble she’d got into, and the number of times she’d been grounded. She’d been grounded the night of the party, which was why she was there. All that stuff about wanting to meet me was bollocks, as I’d suspected.
    She didn’t want to go to college.
    â€œYou do, then?” she said.
    â€œYeah. Of course.”
    â€œWhy ‘of course’?”
    â€œI dunno.”
    I did know. But I didn’t want to go into all that stuff about the history of my family. If she found out that none of us—my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, nobody—had ever been to college, then she might not have wanted to spend any time with me.
    â€œSo what are you going to do?” I asked her. “When you leave school?”
    â€œI don’t want to tell you.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause you’ll think it’s bigheaded.”
    â€œHow can it be bigheaded? If it’s nothing to do with being a bighead?”
    â€œThere’s more than one way of being a bighead, you know. It doesn’t have to involve passing exams and all that.”
    I was lost. I couldn’t think of a single thing she could say that would make me think she was a bighead, if it didn’t involve passing exams, or maybe sport. Suddenly I wasn’t even sure what it meant, being a bighead. It meant showing off, right? But didn’t it mean showing off about how clever you were? Did anyone ever call TH a bighead because he could do loads of difficult tricks?
    â€œI swear I won’t think you’re a bighead.”
    â€œI want to be a model.”
    Yeah, well, I could see what she meant. She was showing off. But what was I supposed to say? I can tell you, it was a tricky situation. I was going to tell you to avoid ever going out with anyone who says she wants to be a model, but let’s face it, that’s sort of what we all want, really, isn’t it? Someone who looks like a model, but without the flat chest. In other words, if you’re with someone who says she wants to be a model, you probably aren’t interested in me telling you she’s bad news. (Definitely avoid going out with ugly girls who say they want to be models. Not because they’re ugly, but because they’re mad.)
    I didn’t know much about modelling then, and I know even less about it now. Alicia was very pretty, I could see that, but she wasn’t as thin as a rake, and she had some spots, so I didn’t know whether she stood a chance of being the next Kate Moss. Probably not, I reckoned. I also didn’t know whether she was telling me this because it really was her ambition, or because she needed to hear me tell her how much I fancied her.
    â€œThat’s not bigheaded,” I said. “You could be a model easily, if you wanted to be.”
    I knew what I was saying. I knew that I’d just increased my chances with Alicia in all sorts of ways. I didn’t know who