was amazed that the neighbours hadn’t called the police. No one came to the door. I turned the handle and walked into a hallway of bodies in various stages of undress. I stepped over some legs and squeezed past a hand clamped over the buttock of Phoebe’s form teacher’s daughter. I bet half the parents had no idea what their kids were up to.
In the kitchen, the air was soupy with smoke, alcohol and that unmistakable smell of hormones, pouring out into the atmosphere. And some other smell that made me think of a seedy nightclub. A boy I recognised as a prefect was lying on his back on the table with a girl sitting astride him pouring a bottle of wine into his mouth.
My arrival had a dual effect: some kids scattered like the deer on our lawn when we switched our headlights on, some broke off from their snogging momentarily, then plunged in again, plugging back into their socket of teenage desire. I wondered if lust would ever have overcome my fear of parental disapproval at that age.
I slunk out of the kitchen, filled with self-loathing that I felt more judged by them than vice versa. There was something so hedonistic, so abandoned about them that, instead of outrage, I felt fat, sexless and shrivelled up. I peered up the stairs, wondering what I would never unsee if I ventured up there given that some spotty boy was snuffling for truffles down a girl’s top about four inches from my face. At that moment, Victor emerged from the sitting room.
‘Any luck?’ I asked.
‘Not yet, but I think I know where she might be.’ His gaze flickered to the stairs. ‘Give me a sec. You can go back to the car. I’ll bring her out.’
I wished, wished so much in that moment, that I could ring Ginny and tell her that I flat out loved her son, that although she’d beaten herself up for him not having a father figure all these years, she’d done a brilliant job, produced a boy who was saving me from more conflict with Phoebe. ‘Thank you.’
I didn’t hang around and fled out of the front door to where Patrick was standing at a safe distance from Georgia. She was muttering about wanting to go to sleep.
Another car drew up next to us. I just managed to resist saying Georgia’s name very loudly so the driver wouldn’t think it was Phoebe and chalk another one up on the bad behaviour chart.
Jasmine got out as Georgia dry-retched and coughed.
‘Ooh bless you, sweetheart. Eaten something that didn’t agree with you, have you?’ She winked at me. ‘Staying with you, is she?’
I nodded.
‘You’ve got a long night ahead. I can’t tell you how many times my oldest boy came home in a state and threw up not just in his own bed but mine too. More than once I’ve ended up sleeping on the sofa and chucking out the mattresses.’
Even though on this occasion it wasn’t my daughter, I bloody loved Jasmine for just being a bit normal, for admitting that kids did stupid things while they were experimenting on the path to doing sensible things. It was so refreshing to have someone say, so the whole world could hear, that their kids made mistakes and she wasn’t going to turn her face to the wall in shame.
I giggled. ‘I’ll remember that at three o’clock.’
She gestured at Georgia. ‘Faye’s going to owe you one.’
I waved her off with a ‘Have a good night yourself’ as Victor appeared with Phoebe, who looked sweaty and smudged but didn’t sound too plastered.
‘Do you know what Georgia’s been drinking?’ I asked.
‘Dunno. Vodka? Cider? Maybe she’d been doing Jägerbombs. She was worried about looking bloated in her dress so she didn’t eat any pizza before we went out.’
As my dad used to say, ‘I’ve seen more fat on a butcher’s pencil.’ Goodness knows what these girls saw when they looked in the mirror.
Phoebe was standing with her arms crossed, scowling as though Georgia heaving up was just one big inconvenience to her. The fact she was holding her head at a funny angle, tucked into her shoulder, registered in a distant part of my brain but failed to claim pole position in my immediate concerns.
‘Right. Let’s try and get her home.’
‘I’m not coming now,’ Phoebe said. ‘Me and Victor are fine.’
‘It’s eleven-fifteen. By the time I get Georgia home, I’ll be too late to come and get you at midnight. Let’s go,