Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon by Linda Newbery Page B

good enough? Are you really settling for that?
    Standing, Anna slid her feet into her shoes. ‘Shut up, Rose,’ she said aloud. ‘Leave me alone.’

    September 1988
    Anna was trudging along Ashurst Avenue, her school bag heavy on her shoulder. Usually, when she walked with Melanie until they parted at the corner, it didn’t seem so far, but Mel had gone to the dentist this afternoon and Anna was on her own. She was conscious of every step, the road stretching ahead and the sun beating down so hard that it must surely be scorching her scalp where her hair parted. The new school uniform she was so proud of, navy skirt and blazer and a white shirt, was hot and itchy. Her tie was in her rucksack, but she kept her blazer on because carrying it over her arm would be more of a nuisance than wearing it.
    Ashurst Avenue had a row of identical brick houses on one side, and a wide expanse of recreation ground on the other. At the nearest corner as Anna approached, a play area was fenced off for children: a climbing frame, seesaw and swings. From the pavement, mud paths, trodden hard and grooved by cycle tyres, swooped into a dip and up again to the grass. At the edges of the park there were hidden places behind the trees where the grass was left uncut. People picked blackberries there at this time of year, and conker shells scattered the path, showing their pale insides. Anna scanned the ground for conkers, and picked up a big glossy one to hold and turn in her hand before slipping it into her pocket.
    In her bag was a bottle with orange juice left from her lunch, and a Milky Way. And there was a magazine Melanie had lent her, with things in it Anna would look at later, out of Mum’s sight, upstairs in her room. ‘Look at this,’ Mel said in the form room at break, opening it at a double-page spread, with a delighted giggle in her voice. There was a photograph of a naked couple, soft-focus, wrapped round each other. They were standing, and you could see the whole of the woman’s back and her bottom, round and soft like a peach, but all you could see of the man was his arms and hands and part of one leg, and his sideways face as he kissed her neck. His eyes were closed, his arms dark and hairy against the paleness of the woman’s skin.
    Anna felt hot and clumsy, looking at it. Her hands were too big.
    ‘Where did you get it?’ she asked Melanie.
    ‘It’s Jamie’s. He doesn’t know I’ve got it. I took it from his room.’
    Mel’s brother was in the fifth form, like Rose. If only Anna didn’t feel so small and new – she felt as if she’d shrunk, since being in the top class at primary school – she’d have thought herself clever and important for being in the same school as them, wearing the same uniform, having some of the same teachers.
    She flipped back to the cover. ‘But it’s a girls’ magazine!’
    ‘A lot of boys read girls’ magazines,’ Mel said knowledgeably. ‘They do it to find things out. Go on, read what it says!’ she urged. ‘It tells you all about – you know – how to do it. How to be good at it.’
    Anna had only recently realized that It was something you had to be good at; Mum’s version, when she had explained it to Anna, was that you did It to get a baby. She looked up at the commotion of two boys barging into the classroom, Jason Wiles and Andrew Morrison, shoving each other, knocking a chair aside in a play-fight. Melanie and Anna exchanged glances; Melanie scrolled the magazine quickly and stuffed it into Anna’s bag, under the desk. ‘You can take it home,’ she whispered. ‘Make sure you bring it back tomorrow.’
    If Anna read the magazine in secret, in her bedroom, Mum would know. Her X-ray eyes would see through the wall, and she’d be cross and frosty; Anna could tell Mum didn’t like what she called that sort of thing , from the way she went all tight and sniffy when it happened on television. Anna could never imagine her doing it with Dad, but maybe they’d only