Something Beginning With. Sarah Salway
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And then I realised.
I was running down the street, my face red, when Peter caught up with me. He grabbed my arm. I was shouting no, no, but weakly, so he turned me towards him and we kissed then. You know how sometimes when you kiss someone your tongues intertwine and you feel what’s like an electric shock racing through your body. As if your kiss has connected two wires between you but all the resulting fizzles, crackles and sparks are going on between your legs, not in your mouth. That’s what happened then. That’s why I agreed to go back to his hotel with him.
He touched my breasts a lot.
It is something I am sensitive about. You see, my breasts are very big. People can sometimes be cruel and shout out things about them in the street. I hated them when I was growing up. I used to wear a too-tight swimming costume under my clothes to hold them down so no one would notice them. It used to make going to the toilet exhausting because I’d have to take everything off. Plus at school we used to have these very short doors in the ladies so I had to hold up all my clothes at waist height with one hand so no one could see.
Of course, I wasn’t a virgin when I made love to Peter, but it was the first time anyone had touched my breasts like that. As if they weren’t dirty, weren’t something to be ashamed about. It seemed to mean something.
We had breakfast together in the morning and he kissed me goodbye. There in the restaurant, like we were a proper married couple or something.
When I got into work, I didn’t tell anyone. People kept saying how quiet I was. I went to the loo after a bit, and when I pulled down my knickers I could smell Peter. That’s when I started to cry.
I haven’t heard from him since. It was my first time with a stranger like that. I hope it will be my last. I thought Colin was going to be a one-night-stand for Sally at first. I get angry with Sally sometimes that she doesn’t seem to feel the same guilt I feel about Peter.
See Colin, True Romance
Captains
This is how Sally and I first became friends.
Like the singing, in my head I am completely coordinated as far as sports are concerned. Now I am an adult I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, but I still like to lie in bed imagining how I can catch ball after ball in hands that open and caress rather than sting painfully. My legs find such a sweet rhythm as I run the 800 metres that I almost levitate off the ground, able to go on and on and on as I race past all the other runners.
In reality, I became the school expert at the rain-dance I created in the hope that games would be cancelled. It wasn’t just the humiliation. It was the way your legs would get so cold on the hockey pitch, the skin red and blue and sharp with pain.
Sally walked in once just as I was jumping up and down in the deserted shower rooms, hands on top of my head, elbows flapping. I was chanting ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, rain, rain, rain.’
She took one look and left. I thought she might have been smiling but I’d been too embarrassed to look closely. Neither of us said anything.
One hour later we were standing at the edge of the sports field in the perfect sunshine. Sally was at the front by the games teacher as she was always one of the team captains. I was standing at the back so I wouldn’t have to keep getting out of the way when the other, more popular, girls were picked for the teams.
I thought it was a joke when Sally chose me before anyone else. I didn’t want to go up at first but everyone kept prodding me. Sally always picked me first after that.
I never asked her why, even afterwards when we took a vow to tell each other everything. I always hoped it was because Sally was the one person who could look into my head and see those sweet catches I made in my dreams. How perfect everything was there.
See Blackbirds, Robins and Nightingales, Kindness, Vendetta, X-ray Vision
Codes
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See Friends, Indecent Exposure, Woolworths, Yields, Zzzz
Colin
I am starting to get suspicious about Colin. Maybe it’s a hangover after my escapade with Peter, but I worry about the way he seems to treat Sally so casually.
Sally says that as long as he pays the bills and keeps her happy, she doesn’t mind if he is the mad axe-man. She says his attitude is a relief.
‘I’m blossoming,’ she says, and so she is. I try to be happy for her but when I walk up and down the road where Sally says Colin lives with his wife and family, I see no sign of him. I can’t smell Colin in the air. Also, he is spending more and more time with Sally in what she calls their ‘love nest’. ‘Isn’t his wife jealous?’ I ask.
‘If Colin doesn’t mind, who cares?’ Sally says, and I must admit it seems a little bit odd that it’s me who does.
See Best Friends, Foreheads, Love Calculators, Stalking, Youth
Crème Caramel
Sally has a friend who can suck up a whole crème caramel from a plate in one go. I have seen her do it. She stands over the table, with her hands behind her back, and then she hoovers it up in one go without leaving a drop either on the plate or round her lips.
Sally herself can fit thirty-eight Maltesers into her mouth at once. She has to stuff them round her lips and in the spaces at the back of her jaw. It is not a very attractive trick, especially when she has to spit them all out again. But then neither is the crème caramel suckingup, but at parties, people always ask to see them. It makes Sally and her friend the centre of attention, and the rest of us feel jealous.
Unfortunately I don’t like either Maltesers or crème caramel and the one trick I do know is very complicated, involving three packs of cards. Could this be where I am going wrong?
See Captains, Underwear, Wobbling
Daisies
My mother told me once that I was not sweet enough to be called after a flower. Something useful, yes, but not a flower. Her name was Rose and I thought if I also had a pretty name then I’d look more like her.
I called myself Daisy in secret and would talk about myself in the third person. ‘Daisy’s nearly ready for bed now,’ or ‘Look how pretty Daisy looks in the mirror.’ It made me feel like I belonged. But then one day I blurted out something about wanting to be called Daisy and everyone laughed.
‘It sounds more like a cow,’ said my father, smiling fondly at my mother.
See Ants, Names, True Romance, Zest
Danger
Sally will always be my only real friend although I hope she never finds that out. She is so popular, she would probably think it was funny.
When we were growing up, our families were very different. Her parents used to go to the pub and drink sweet liqueurs