That’s what really annoyed me. She had all the time in the world. She didn’t have problems, not real ones. Tar had lived in that horrible family for so long, he was so open, he was trying so hard. Now that he was out of it he needed a bit of space. But you didn’t get any space when Gemma was around. She filled it all up.

But I did like her. I just wished I’d known her ten years further on, that’s all.

I was furious with her when she came back from that bop dressed in leather and all the rest. We’d been feeding her, paying her bills, we’d even been supplying her with fags.

She said, ‘It’s my party clothes,’ and went into this model-girl pose. I was obviously supposed to be charmed but I wasn’t. I was on the dole. I was paying out of my miserable thirty quid a week so she could eat, drink and smoke and all the time…

‘This isn’t a party,’ I told her. ‘And I’m not your mother.’

She pulled a face.

The trouble was, she obviously needed one. A mother, I mean.

Richard knew she wasn’t doing anyone any good, certainly not poor Tar. The trouble with Richard is, he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. He was responsible, you know, but he thought somehow it all ought to be fun. As soon as the hard decisions had to be made he’d pull a face and go, ‘Politics.’

Tar was important. He was in trouble. People had one of two reactions when they met Tar: you either wanted to mother him or fleece him, usually both – just like his real mother had. Gemma did it too. She wasn’t exactly manipulating him, she wasn’t that sort of person. But she was just so full of herself, she might as well have been.

After she got herself punkified she thought she’d found The Only Way To Be. Of course, being Gemma, she got right in it up to her eyeballs. She came home that night with a ring in each ear and two in her nose. She had three more two days later. She’d got Tar to do it with a sterilised needle. She borrowed the needle off me.

‘I can never go home now, I can never go home now,’ she kept crowing. She was going to get her tongue pierced as soon as she could afford it. Yuk. Although, come to think about it, she might have just been shocking me.

Then it was Tar’s turn. She shaved his head except for a really long Mohican stripe in the middle. Then she dyed it green and red, and used loads and loads of gel to make it stick up. It was hilarious! We were all laughing, but it was cruel, because it didn’t suit him at all. He was prepared to try anything once, or even twice. Come to think about it, Tar was willing to try anything as long as it kept coming, but this really didn’t suit him. He’s this long gawky-looking kid, and there was this long skinny neck and then this creased, worried looking, spotty head poking out of the top, and the mouth full of ivories and that blinding red and green crest on his head. He looked like some sort of parrot.

‘You’re not going to leave him like that, are you?’ I begged, wiping my eyes.

‘I think he looks great,’ said Gemma. I could see Tar tensing up and clenching his teeth and trying to convince himself he wanted to look like that. He was like one of the things you see on a postcard for tourists. Of course Gemma was just teasing. She clipped him down and toned down the dye. He still looked ridiculous though.

Meanwhile I was working on Richard. He was reluctant to do anything but – it was just so obvious. I mean, Tar was one thing. Even he should have been at home with his family, except that his family was so awful it was impossible. But Gemma… I didn’t want the responsibility and I didn’t want to have to watch what she was doing to Tar. And let’s face it – I didn’t particularly want to have her around in the first place.

We had it out with her the night before the party. I more or less had to do it all on my own. I was barely speaking to Jerry by this point. And Richard pissed me off. He’s quick enough to take the lead if it’s anti-authority, but when it comes down to being responsible, he just sits in the corner looking miserable.

She knew exactly what was coming.

It was fair. A week’s notice, if you like – give her time to get used to the idea. She’d had her fun, she could stay for the party. But after that…

It wasn’t fair on us. She was only fourteen and it wasn’t as though she was being knocked around like Tar was. All right, her parents were obviously making life unnecessarily hard for her.

‘Unnecessarily hard? I can’t do anything…’ she whined.

But running away from her problems wasn’t going to solve them. Basically, it was time for her to start arranging to go home after the housewarming party.

I expected a scene, of course. And we got one. Tar sat there looking miserable. Gemma was furious. It really made me sympathise with her parents. If it wasn’t what she wanted, here, now, then and tomorrow, it was unbearable. We were doing it as nicely as we could. She’d stayed two weeks already. I even offered to speak to her parents myself but she refused to give me their telephone number.

‘I wouldn’t trust you with a roll of toilet paper,’ she sneered. Which was really unfair. We’d done everything we could for her, but for Christ’s sake! It was highly illegal. We’d fed her, hidden her, everything. But that didn’t give us any right to suggest anything. Not to Gemma.

I tried approaching Tar afterwards, to try and get him to talk some sense into her. He could see the point. He was uncomfortable with the fact that he’d encouraged her to come but he really didn’t want her to go. I tried to get her number out of him, but he was too loyal.

‘Don’t ask me that,’ he said. I didn’t press it.

Well. What more could we do?

I think Richard was feeling guilty about giving her her marching orders. He went around afterwards arranging for her to have a good time at the party but he made a big mistake in my opinion. He came in one teatime beaming all over his face and announced that he’d invited a few people their own age round.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Oh, you know,’ he said, grinning like a cat at the air. ‘That bunch on City Road…’

A vivid picture of a girl in a net and a boy with no front teeth came flashing into my mind.

‘The ones you introduced me to…?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Richard!’

‘What?’

I just glared. I couldn’t believe it. That bloke had no alarm bells.

‘Have you ever looked into their eyes?’

‘Why?’

Of course, Richard never looked anyone in the face.

I didn’t know what those kids were on, but they were on something. I certainly didn’t think it was a good idea to put them and Gemma in the same room together.