Colleen narrowed her eyes and gave me a hard look.
“Then what was it?” I wanted to know.
Colleen full-stopped for a second and then swallowed a fat worm. “Fighting.”
“Fighting? No jokes? You?”
“Yes, me, Naomi.”
I scoped Colleen from eyebrow to toe corner. “You’re not a hard-curb bitch,” I said. “Or you don’t look like one. What trauma licked you?”
“Let’s not use the word bitch,” Colleen said. “My dad certainly wasn’t the best in the world, nor was my mum. But they weren’t canine.”
“Sorry.”
She hot-wheeled on for about half a mile in silence. Needles of guilt pricked my brain.
“I was fourteen,” she started again. “And even shorter than I am now.”
“I wouldn’t call you a hobbit,” I said.
Colleen smiled. “I’d just started at a new school—Smeckenham Girls,” she revealed. “I was seeing this fifteen-
year-old guy who was going to the mixed Coloma School down the road. I thought he was the hottest thing ever in a basketball kit. But we all do at that age.”
“When you say seeing, you mean linking up with him, slurping tongues, and doing stuff, right?”
“Er, yeah.”
“Did he bust your rosebud?”
“Did he what?”
“Bust your rosebud,” I repeated. “Destroy your virgin status?”
“No. It was just . . . Anyway, the guy was two-timing me with this other girl that I didn’t know about. And as luck had it, she went to Smeckenham Girls too. As soon as I found out I broke up with the guy. But his other girlfriend wouldn’t leave me alone. She called me a slag, a whore, a slut. Called me every name under the sun.”
“What an uber-bitch. Did you clong the brain matter outta her? Did you make her donate a mug of blood to the curb drain?”
“Language, Naomi.”
“Sorry . . . did you . . .” I struggled to find a word that wasn’t a curse. “Did you switch on her? Do her in? Bang her up?”
Colleen took her time in answering. “I could just about cope with all the name-calling,” she said. “And I tried to ignore her.”
“Then how did it all boot off?”
Colleen took in a long breath. “One afternoon I passed her in the school corridor. I was on my way to home economics—what do they call it these days? Food technology or something? Yes, that’s it. We were going to make a Victoria sandwich cake that afternoon. My bag was heavier than usual.”
“And then?”
“She made a comment.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
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