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you need a clean uniform. There might be one in lost property. Let’s clean up before your parents arrive.”
    “I want to go back to class,” I lisped.
    “First you need to get those teeth fixed, dear.”
    Finding an emergency dentist on the NHS normal y meant promising your firstborn to the church but I had family connections. My uncle Sandhu has a dental practice in Ealing. (He’s not real y my uncle, but every older Asian who knew my family was referred to as uncle or aunt.) Uncle Sandhu had fitted my braces “at cost.” Bada was so pleased that he would make me smile for visitors, showing off my teeth.
    Mama rang my sister-in-law Nazeem and the two of them caught a minicab to the school. Nazeem had the twins and was pregnant again. I was whisked off to Uncle Sandhu who dismantled my braces and took photographs of my teeth. I looked six years old again and had a lisp.
    The next morning was fresh and bright and possessed of an innocence so pristine it made a lie of the previous day. Cate didn’t come to school. She stayed away for two weeks until we broke for the summer holidays. Miss Flower said she had pleurisy.
    Sucking on my glued teeth, I went back to my classes. People treated me differently. Something had happened that day. The scales had fal en from my eyes; the earth had rotated the required number of times and I said goodbye to childhood.
    Donavon was expel ed from Oaklands. He joined the army, the Parachute Regiment, just in time for Bosnia. Other wars would turn up soon enough. Bradley left during the holidays and became an apprentice boilermaker. I stil see him occasional y, pushing his kids on the swings on Bethnal Green.
    Nobody ever mentioned what happened to Cate. Only I knew. I don’t think she even told her parents—certainly not her father. Digital penetration isn’t classified as rape because the law differentiates between a penis and a finger, or fist, or bottle. I don’t think it should, but that’s an argument for fancy defense lawyers.
    People were nicer to me after my fight with Donavon. They acknowledged my existence. I was no longer just “the runner” I had a name. One of my teeth took root again. The other turned yel ow and Uncle Sandhu had to replace it with a false one.
    During the holidays I had a phone cal from Cate. I don’t know how she found my number.
    “I thought maybe you might like to catch a movie.”
    “You mean, you and me?”
    “We could see Pretty Woman . Unless you’ve already seen it. I’ve been three times but I could go again.” She kept talking. I had never heard her sound nervous.
    “My mother won’t let me see Pretty Woman ,” I explained. “She says it’s about a whore.”
    I protested that Julia Roberts is a hooker with a heart, which only got me into trouble. Apparently, it was OK for her to use the term “whore” but I wasn’t al owed to say “hooker.” In the end we went to see Ghost with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore.
    Cate didn’t say anything about Donavon. She was stil beautiful, stil clear-skinned, stil wearing a short skirt. Sitting in the darkness, our shoulders touched and her fingers found mine.
    She squeezed my hand. I squeezed hers.
    And that was the start of it. Like Siamese twins, we were. Salt and pepper, Miss Flower cal ed us but I preferred “milk and cookies,” which was Mr. Nelson’s description. He was American and taught biology and protested when people said it was the easiest of the science electives.
    Through school and then university Cate and I were best friends. I loved her. Not in a sexual way, although I don’t think I understood the difference at fourteen.
    Cate claimed she could predict the future. She would map out our paths, which included careers, boyfriends, weddings, husbands and children. She could even make herself miserable by imagining that our friendship would be over one day.
    “I have never had a friend like you and I never shal again. Never ever.”
    I was embarrassed.
    The other thing