Precocious by Joanna Barnard

me
Lolita
. It had old, yellowed pages and a picture on the cover of a child wearing heart-shaped sunglasses, sucking a lollipop.
    ‘Oh alright, it’s a pretty good book,’ I admitted now. ‘Anyway, I’m almost too old to be a nymphet, so you’d better get a move on!’
    ‘I’m no Humbert,’ you protested, leaning forward.
    ‘Humbug,’ I laughed, and picked up the script.
    Over lunch I invented a serious love interest for Scrooge.
    ‘You have to bring sex into everything,’ you complained, almost whispering the s-word, which made me smile.
    ‘I just don’t think it’s realistic to have this man who’s so completely cold and unfeeling.’
    ‘Why not?’ you said, draining the last of your wine. I wondered if you were planning to drive me home. ‘Look at me!’
    ‘Don’t try to pretend it isn’t important, because it is,’ I said in a low voice.
    ‘No it isn’t. You just ignore it, and it goes away. Not a problem at all.’ But you were watching my fingers on the stem of my wineglass.
    ‘The iceman cometh,’ I laughed.
    I wished there was someone I could tell, later: ‘He gave me
wine
!’ It seemed like a big thing, not only because the only wine we ever had at home was Mateus Rosé, at Christmas. I was always allowed a drop with lemonade. This was real wine, and I wasn’t sure if I liked the taste or not, but I liked the fact that you were giving it to me. It told me you saw me as an equal.
    You insisted on doing the dishes and told me there was more wine in the car. I took the keys, spotted the carrier bag on the back seat and as I clambered, from habit really, into the passenger seat, the glove box sprang open.
    You’re so tidy, there was disappointingly little in there: the Honda’s manual and service history; a box of tissues; a couple of cassettes; a pen; a photograph. A photograph, face down. I pulled it out and turned it over.
    A girl smiled up at me. She was wearing jeans and her knees were drawn up towards her chest. I recognised the diamond patterned rug she was sitting on. And I recognised the girl.
    It wasn’t the former Mrs Morgan. It was Helen Platt. She was three years above me at school; she was at college or uni now. Some people said Oxford. I didn’t really like her; I suppose a lot of it was envy. She was pretty, in a fresh-faced sort of way. She was bright. She was talented, too; in her fourth year she had played Nancy in our school production of
Oliver!
I was a first year then, I’d been in the chorus, watching her, wishing I could sing like that, being hardly surprised by your appreciative coos and smiles and the way you squeezed her hand before she went on stage on the first night.
    I looked at Helen before putting her back. She must have been about fourteen when the photograph was taken.
    I went back into the house.
    I may have been young, but I had experience – mostly thanks to Mari’s parties.
    Mari’s mum was a nurse who worked nights. We rarely saw her, so we all sort of had the impression that it was Mari’s house and her mum just lodged there.
    Sometimes when I called round after school she would be there, bleary-eyed, in a dressing gown, having her ‘breakfast’: a cup of tea and three cigarettes. On the odd occasion, she would boil a couple of eggs in a tiny saucepan and mush them up in a cup, with butter, as though for a baby, then eat them with a teaspoon, standing by the cooker.
    Mari’s mum never seemed to inhabit any room other than the kitchen, which added to the impression of her not being a full-time resident. She always lit her cigarettes off the hob; I don’t know why she never bought a lighter, or how she never singed her eyelashes when she leaned over the flame. The whoosh of gas, the click of the ignition and the rhythmic knocking of eggs against the side of the saucepan: these were the sounds of Mari’s kitchen at tea/breakfast time.
    When Mari’s mum went off to work and dusk arrived, things changed in the house. As with the outside,