Chapter 1: Another suitcase in another hall

My dad works for some branch of the Civil Service. I don't know what he does exactly, but it's pretty secret stuff and he's not allowed to talk about it, so if anyone asks me I just say he's a civil servant and leave it at that. I don't think he's anything exciting like a spy, but he gets treated like a VIP wherever he goes so I guess it's pretty important. All I do know is that he moves around from assignment to assignment dragging his wife and kid, me, around with him. I don't think I've ever managed to stay at a school at one place more than six months before the removal vans come again. My brother, Derek managed to get off this carousel by going to university at the UEA in Norwich, so for once we were living close to him, for a little while at least, which should mean we would see some more of him.

So starting at new schools mid-way through a year is something I'm used to. If I ever complained about this nomadic life my parents would say, "Rose, your time will come at university, it won't always be like this." My mother, too, is used to packing up her life in boxes and unpacking them at the next spot. The houses are always nice though and whatever it is my dad does it pays well.

I was now just 16, a slim, pretty, dark-haired girl who's not had a steady boyfriend yet.

How could I have? The last school I was only at 3 months, and the time before, 4 months.

I just start making friends and I'm off again. I don't think I'm a loner, not by choice anyway, but I was lonely that's for sure. Sweet sixteen and never been kissed! Well, actually I have been kissed but not much more! Certainly I was still virgo intacta. As I say my parents were never short of money, and anything I wanted I could have, the material things anyway. But how did that old Beatles' song go? Money can't buy me love? How fucking true!

So here I was, one February day in, where was it again? Oh yes, Norwich on the eastern side of England, my first day at yet another private school. A couple of the other girls, Marie and Stephanie, had taken me under their wings, letting me copy the timetable and filling me in on who were the fit boys and other people I should know or avoid. By the last lesson of the morning I was beginning to find my way around.

It was a maths lesson and the teacher made me sit up the front at her desk while she got the rest of the class started on an algebra test. Then while the other pupils were working away she spoke to me in whispers, finding out who I was and where my maths knowledge was in relation to the syllabus. The test lasted about 15 minutes and for the last 5 minutes I was left alone to look around the class. I could see Marie and Stephanie sitting together at the back. And next to them, by sheer coincidence I'm sure, were the two boys they rather fancied.

In the front I saw the girl Lisa, the one Marie said was a dyke. She had long reddish- brown hair hanging down the sides of her face like a curtain, preventing me from seeing what she looked like. She was leaning over her book, scribbling away. I hadn't ever met a gay girl before, that is if Lisa was indeed gay. Apparently she was rumoured to have tried to kiss another girl, and has been observed looking at other girls' bodies in the showers and 'drooling' as Stephanie had put it. She looked quite normal though, and from what I could see of her body she looked to have all the right curves in all the right places. I wasn't deliberately staring at her, but when she suddenly looked up at me it may have seemed like that. She was actually nice looking with very feminine features, not the butch look I was expecting, and smiled with very white teeth and mouthed 'Hi' before getting back to the test.

I guess like most girls I had wondered what it would be like to have sex with a boy, and occasionally I thought about sex with another girl too. I was still a virgin with no experience with either sex, but was getting to the stage where I was feeling attraction to boys that I saw. It took me by surprise though to feel a burst of attraction to this girl and immediately metaphorically slapped myself for having this feeling.

Then the test was over and the teacher collected in the papers for marking. She looked at me and said, "OK, Rose, find yourself a spare seat and we'll get on. There's one next to Lisa in the front. Quickly now."

I sat down next to Lisa as directed, seeing Marie and Stephanie smirking at my 'bad luck' as I did so. Lisa smiled again and said, "Hi Rose, I'm Lisa Gooding, welcome to the school."

I smiled back but didn't get a chance to say more than Hi before the teacher started with the next topic. At the end of the lesson the teacher asked us both to stop behind for a moment. While the other pupils made for the door I asked Lisa how she had got on with the test. "Oh, I usually do well; I am pretty good at maths in general and normally come out in the top 2 or 3. How are you at maths?"

"Not so good really," I admitted, "It's not my favourite subject, but I struggle through somehow." The teacher called us to the front and sorted me out a textbook and a homework book.