I was covering for holiday leave, but everyone’s back. So are Mark and Helen, with their Ibiza tans. I meet them for a drink in the Black Horse. ‘Aren’t you going off somewhere?’ Mark asks. ‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘It’s complicated.’ ‘Have you met someone?’ Helen asks, for I never get Mark on his own these days. After a wobble earlier in the year, they have become that obnoxious thing, the perfect, prematurely middle-aged couple. Both got their grades and are following me to Nottingham next month. Hip hip hooray. ‘Sort of,’ I say, ‘but I’m not sure he’s the Ibiza type.’ And I’m not sure that I am. In my gang, such as it is, I was always the last one to do everything, smoke weed, take e, lose my virginity, and I still haven’t been on a holiday abroad with my mates, never mind with a boyfriend. Mark and I did take a tent to the Lake District once, but I haven’t left the UK since Mum and Dad took me to France when I was thirteen.
