William said, ‘Is it OK?’

It was quite plain as cards go: pink flowers on the outside and ‘Love?’ in pink bubble-writing within. Technically it was my first ever. I got sent one a few years ago, but it turned out to be from Mother. (Note to self: never, unless you are into ritual humiliation, send a valentine card to your own daughter.)

‘Yeah,’ I said lightly.

‘I bought it just now,’ he said.

I told him I could tell because the glue on the envelope was still damp. I yanked my bike out past him and said, ‘But you didn’t have to.’

And then a goofy expression came over his face, like he was expecting something more from me.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Race you.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Girly from the block.’

‘What?’

Well, I won’t bore on. But basically it turned out he’d got a valentine card himself which – duh – he thought was from me. Would I ever call myself ‘girly from the block’? I ask you. He pulled the card in question out of his pocket – if I had sent it, I might have wanted to have words about how scrumpled it was – and one look at the handwriting and I knew which blue-eyed pink-eyeshadowed ‘girly from the block’ it was from.

‘That’s not from me. That’s from Delilah,’ I said. I held the card he’d sent me out to him and said, ‘Give it to her, then. I don’t want it.’

William had been laughing – not at all embarrassed like he should have been – but at this he flushed. He got on his bike and rode off. I cycled after him but I didn’t catch him up. Time was when I won any race, but recently he seems to be outpacing me. Still, at least I’ve still got an inch on him in height.

I met Delilah in the street later. In honour of the Valentine’s Day Pitch and Putt, she was wearing a T-shirt with lipstick kisses all over it and had painted a red heart on each cheek.

‘Big on hearts today, aren’t you?’ I said.

She smiled coyly. ‘Did Will tell you about the card, then? What did he say?’

I hesitated and then said he was chuffed.

She smiled again, her cheek-hearts bunching. ‘I sent ten,’ she said.

I said I hadn’t realized she knew ten boys.

She sniffed. ‘Don’t forget I was in the school play. We borrowed boys for that.’

One, she said, was from Mother to The Chemist, the other from Mother to Mr Baker. There was no point sending one to Uncle Bert, as Mother hadn’t met him yet.

I said, ‘I’m not sending a card to Mr Baker.’

She tried to persuade me, but I wouldn’t be budged.

‘Oh, all right, then,’ she said, running her tongue over her sumptuous lips. ‘But The Chemist? OK? You’ve got to do it because you know your mum’s handwriting.’

‘All right,’ I said.

‘And you’ve got to think of something she buys there that he might know her by.’

‘Like what?’

‘I dunno. Toothpaste? Lipstick?’

I racked my brains. Mother hadn’t been in for months. Not since Marie had that weird rash. There was only one thing she bought regularly…

‘OK. I know,’ I said.

We did it in break and I dropped it in on my way home. Luckily, the woman with the wiry hair didn’t see me. There was a new poster in the window saying AID NOT BOMBS and a small notice next to it, advertising a vacancy. I slipped the card through the letter box.

What he’s going to think when he sees it, I don’t know. The card read, ‘All my love from the satisfied purchaser of Neutrogena T/Gel Anti-Dandruff Shampoo.’

Julie, who seems to be having more fun with this than I could have thought imaginable – really, she’s wasted at school, I’ve told her that – said I had only one job when she and Uncle Bert came to pick me up, and that was not to come down after I heard the doorbell. I was to wait upstairs, pretending to get ready, for thirty minutes. She needed the time, she said, a) to give Mother and Bert a chance to get to know each other, and b) to plant her props. Her plan was to steal his phone and hide it somewhere in our house. I was to ‘find’ it the next day and then he’d have to come by to collect it.

Naturally I didn’t need the extra time to get ready. I hate looking at myself in the mirror. There are all these bulges these days that don’t seem to meld together like they should. I know I should have a proper bra – not just a support-vest – but I don’t like drawing attention to my boobs. I’d rather they were hidden away. They’re nowhere near as big as Julie’s anyway. And I already knew what I was going to wear: what I was wearing already (which happened to be the knee-length tweed skirt and purple polyester top I’d worn to school).

So when Julie, Uncle Bert and Sue, his girlfriend, were drawing up outside our house, I was just sitting in the bathroom, waiting. I missed the next bit, but Julie told me about it later.

Apparently Bert didn’t switch the engine off, just told Julie to run in and get me. He’s ‘in merchandising’, you see, and needed to get back to the venue ‘sharpish’. Julie, thinking fast, put on a little girl’s voice: ‘Oh, but it’s so dark.’ Uncle Bert, impatient to get the show on the road (literally), switched off the ignition, got out and came to the door with her – leaving Sue in the car. (God, Julie was pleased with herself when she told me this.)

All I heard was Mother calling, ‘Constance! Time, time, time!’

‘Just doing my hair,’ I yelled back. ‘Give me five minutes. Sorry’

Downstairs, Uncle Bert huffed a bit, but Mother told them to come in and they stood in the kitchen while she cleared the dishes. She’d taken her eyes out because they were hurting and I knew she was wearing her big black-rimmed glasses. By now she had also stepped out of her heels and was tiptoeing around the kitchen in her tights. Julie said this wasn’t a problem, that it made her seem even more petite (in a completely unrelated aside, can I point out how uncomfortable it is being so much bigger than one’s mother?), which was lucky because Uncle Bert is quite small himself.

Unfortunately Mother’s charm was not in full flow. For one thing, she kept coming to the bottom of the stairs and calling up. Julie said Uncle Bert looked at his watch and jigged about, but some sort of conversation struggled through. Mother said it was very kind of him to take me – ‘if Constance ever, ever, ever appears!’ – and he said it was a pleasure, that it was nice to let others enjoy the perks of his job. Silence. He studied the photograph of Euston Road in the rain which we have on the wall. He said, ‘Is it New York?’ and Mother said, ‘No, it’s ’uston Road.’ He said, ‘Houston? In Texas?’ And she said, ‘No, ’uston Road in ’uston, London.’ Unlucky this: she gets annoyed when people pick up on her accent. (She thinks she doesn’t have one.)

For me, upstairs, waiting the first ten minutes wasn’t too bad. Then I began to worry. It’s my worst sort of thing, not doing what’s expected of you. I paced for a bit, and then I sat on the stool, listening to the leaking bath tap drip, drip, drip. Each time Mother called up my heart gave a leap of anxiety. Then I began to pick at the stool’s cork top. I studied the stain on the bath until I made it look like a wizard with a huge gold cloak. And then a strange thing happened. I began to think I would sit there forever. I would just sit there picking at the stool all night. My watch ticked round to seven o’clock and for a few seconds I stared at it, wondering what I was supposed to do now.

Then I heard Julie shout, ‘Constance. We’re ready for you!’ and I jumped to it.

When I came down, all I could smell was cKone. Mother looked at my hair, which I’d just pulled back, and said, ‘>Chérie!’ rather weakly. Julie snorted. (What were they expecting? A Mohican?) Uncle Bert didn’t say anything. He was already halfway out of the door. Julie gave me a thumbs up behind his back to show she’d done the deed. Mother kissed me, smudging with her thumb a little bit of what I assumed to be toothpaste away from the side of my mouth, and told us to amuse ourselves.

In the car there was ‘an atmosphere’. I don’t think Uncle Bert’s girlfriend had appreciated being kept waiting. She was squashed up in the back with me and I kept saying I was sorry, but her annoyance didn’t seem to be directed at me. There was a sports bag gaping open between us with a white T-shirt bundled in at the top, half hanging out. It smelt of Bert’s cKone and she kept twisting it with one hand and punching it further in.

Uncle Bert’s car, according to Julie, is a Spider, but it felt more like a Fly in the back: zippy, still and then fast with sudden spurts of acceleration. Something was buzzing too: I think it might have been a vibration in the window frames. All the way to Hammersmith, Julie would twist round from the front seat and say things like, ‘So how old was your mother when she had you?… So young.’ ‘A widow at twenty-three! How did your father die? Killed delivering pizzas? That’s so sad. So brave. Brave as well as beautiful.’ ‘Bernadette. That is such a romantic name.’

I couldn’t help laughing out loud at that one, but most of the time I was more worried about Sue. It may just have been the position she was in – her knees bent round to one side, her blonde head slightly ducked – but she seemed to have lost some of her karmic poise. She’s very pretty, despite the length of her hair.

In the noisy, buzzy bits of the journey, when Julie wasn’t talking, Sue told me she did corporate entertaining – that’s how she met Bert. ‘I meet a lot of men in my line of work,’ she said. She lives in Stockwell and grew up in south Wales. She doesn’t normally go to this sort of gig with Bert but, because it was Valentine’s Day, she had made an exception. Also she was going to Australia for three weeks for her sister’s wedding, so she wasn’t going to see him for a bit. She said I asked a lot of questions and could she ask me one herself? ‘How come you and Julie are friends?’ she said, scrutinizing me. ‘You seem so…’

‘Grown-up,’ I finished for her. ‘Yes, a lot of people say that.’

When we got to the venue, Bert had to go off and do something, and he told us a good place to wait for him, which was to one side of the stage. It was dark, and smelt of stale spilt beer and sweat. When Sue went to get us some Cokes, Julie filled me in on everything that had happened when I was in the bathroom, including the whole ‘’uston’ photograph thing. When Sue came back, I noticed they were both in combats. Julie’s were army and baggy, down by her naval, while Sue’s were satiny and tight. Julie lit up a cigarette then, which was interesting. She wouldn’t do it in front of her uncle, but she did in front of Sue as if to let her know it didn’t count. Oh, and then it got busier and busier and Bert appeared, also, I now realized, in combats (the whole place was in combats), and steered us to the middle, and the noise level began to rise and everyone was shouting and the Electric B’stards started playing and I felt squeezed on every side.

I wish I could say I loved the Electric B’stards. It would be nice to shepherd in the rebellious teenage years of Connie Pickles. Julie’s face was raised and her eyes were sparkling with excitement – it got so hot, her hair was sticking to her face – but I… I just kept feeling these irresistible yawns beginning at my jaw. Isn’t that awful? And, after a while, I slipped to the back where it was cooler and where the crowd was much looser and found a seat that no one was sitting on and took out the book that I’d smuggled into the pocket of my cagoule. I’m still reading The Blessing. I’ve got to the part where Sigi, the only child of Grace and Charles-Edouard, has managed to split up his parents. I’ve just realized he does the opposite to me – he’s an anti-matchmaker, I’m a matchmaker.

Afterwards we went for fish and chips on the Fulham Palace Road. Uncle Bert seemed more relaxed once the gig was over. He has a handsome face and longish blond hair which he tosses a lot, but a rather scraggy neck. He gave us T-shirts with ‘Electric B’stards’ written across the back, and we put them on over what we were wearing. Sue seemed jolly too, though I did feel sorry for her sitting in a fish and chip shop with two teenage girls on Valentine’s Night. Uncle Bert didn’t do the thing with her waistband. No candlelight either. In fact, the glaring neon bouncing off the Formica table made her look tired. She was next to me and there was a yellowy dried powder over her face and spots of mascara like tiny, trapped flies in the corner of her eyes. She didn’t look so pretty after all, which made me feel guiltier about what we were doing to her. Particularly as Julie was ignoring her. I kept having to remind myself of Mother, who didn’t meet a lot of men in her line of work.

I wasn’t eating because when Bert asked if I was hungry, I’d been too polite to say yes and then it would have been too embarrassing to change my mind. I watched Julie’s mouth crunching on delicious crispy batter. She asked me several more pointed questions about Mother and I tried to answer truthfully, but without slipping from The Plan. We had already discussed how important it was to bring out Uncle Bert’s protective instinct to make up for the fact that Mother was saddled with three children. I told them about the leaking tap in the bathroom and the water that comes in through the flat roof on wet nights and Mother’s long hours at work. Julie had been insistent that Uncle Bert discover the nature of Mother’s employment. She said she thought all men were tickled by the idea of fancy underwear. And actually it did seem to stir his interest. He’d just been jogging his knees and doing pretend-drum rolls on the table before then. ‘Belgravia?’ he said. ‘Very exclusive. And does she model what she sells?’ Sue said, ‘Oh, I should pop in one day. I’ve always wanted to be measured,’ and Julie gave her a withering look. It’s true that Sue (like me) is quite flat up top. Then Julie froze her face into a small, bored smile and looked away. I know she was dissing her for Mother’s sake, but I wonder whether she wasn’t also doing it a bit for her own sake too.

Uncle Bert wanted to give Julie’s mum a call to say we were leaving, but when he felt in his jacket, he couldn’t find his phone! ‘Oh my God, I must have dropped it!’ he said.

Julie, her eyes as wide as saucers, said she was sure she’d felt it jabbing into her when they were squashed up at the gig.

‘It must have fallen out of my pocket, or been nicked,’ he said. He looked at his watch (one of those enormous diving watches). ‘The Palais’ll be closed now. I’ll have to go back tomorrow. Bugger it.’ He frowned, his good mood wiped away.

When we got in the car Julie squeezed my leg. ‘“Find” it tomorrow,’ she whispered.

He came. He saw. He took his mobile phone. He left.

I’ve just rung Julie on her mobile phone. She was shopping in New Look.

‘’uston,’ I said. ‘We’ave a problem.’

‘Hang on. Let me get out to the pavement. What do you mean?’

‘He didn’t stay,’ I told her.

‘What do you mean, he didn’t stay?’

‘He left the engine running.’

‘Where was Bernadette?’

‘In the garden.’

‘Couldn’t you have called her?’

‘Julie. He was blocking the road. He left the car door open.’

She sighed very heavily. Julie takes disappointment hard. ‘After all that,’ she said.

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

She sighed again. ‘Well, listen. Uncle Bert’s coming round later. Sue’s left for Australia, so he’s on his own. He always comes round to our house for his meals when he’s on his own. He’s probably on his way now. Leave it with me. I’ll think of something. I’m bored stiff today. I’ll ring you later. OK? Don’t do anything. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t move.’

‘There’s still The Chemist,’ I said weakly. But she’d hung up.

So much for all that sin. Turns out we didn’t achieve anything to be ashamed of at all. How shaming is that?

I think I’ll take Marie and Cyril to the park to absolve intention to sin, and rudeness to William, and all the other things that are weighing on my soul. I might even, as we’re passing, see if there’s anything new in Cancer Research.

John Leakey was at the till. The shop was empty. I didn’t really know I was going to say it until I did.

I said, ‘Some Neutrogena T/Gel Anti-Dandruff Shampoo for my mother, please. And, um… are you looking for someone for Saturdays?’

He looked up from his paper. ‘Hello. You’re the worm girl.’

‘I saw the ad. I just wondered.’

Marie was spinning round the display of hairgrips. Cyril was standing by my side.

‘Hmmm,’ The Chemist said. ‘We are actually. Are you interested?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’re sixteen?’

I hesitated. ‘Yes.’

‘And do you have any retail experience?’

‘No. But I’m eager to learn.’

He considered me for a moment. ‘And will you be willing to share with the customers your experience of night itching?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘If that’s what’s needed.’

He gave a shout of a laugh. And when we walked out five minutes later, he’d given me a try-out for next week. I made us all run down the street. He is offering five pounds an hour. Eight hours a day. Eight times five equals forty. Forty pounds a week! What we could all do with that! I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Mother. And ring Julie.

I forgot all about it when I reached the house. Jack’s van was parked outside, and inside I could hear banging in the bathroom. He must be trying to mend the leaking tap. Delilah had dropped in to tell me all about the youth club’s Valentine’s Night and hadn’t yet found her way home, and… next to each other on the sofa, facing Mother and Delilah, were Julie and Uncle Bert.

I stood there in the doorway, The Chemist forgotten. Uncle Bert was looking serious and Julie – Julie’s face bore the signs of recent tumultuous tears, which is to say streaked blue mascara and swollen lips.

Mother leapt to her feet when she saw me. ‘Constance!’ she shrieked. ‘Your poor friend… How could you be so t’oughtless?’

‘What?’ I said. ‘What?’

Julie sniffed. ‘It’s all right,’ she mumbled into her sleeve.

‘What’s happened?’ I said.

Uncle Bert stood up, rearranging his jeans. ‘It’s cool,’ he said. ‘No worries. You’re here now. Safe and sound. All right, chickacheet?’ he said to Julie.

She nodded, looking down at the floor.

‘What’s happened?’ I said again. But I knew it was a scam now. Julie never looks at the floor in case she misses anything.

Everyone glared at me as if I were the Devil Incarnate. Typical. When I had begun to think my sins were absolved. I even heard Delilah tut. (But then she doesn’t like Julie, so that could have meant anything.)

‘Go on,’ I said.

This is her story She said she’d been due to meet me in the King’s Road at 2 p.m. When I didn’t show up she was stuck because the night before she’d given me her purse to look after and I hadn’t given it back. She only had enough money to get there, not enough to go home. She kept ringing me, but our phone was engaged, so finally she’d rung her mum, and Uncle Bert, who was in her kitchen having lunch, agreed to come and pick her up. She’d been so worried about her purse and her dear missing friend Constance that he said he’d bring her round to my house to see me for herself. And then I wasn’t in (Julie took her eyes off the floor to glare at me), but my kind, kind, beautiful mother had made them some tea.

My kind, kind, beautiful mother said, ‘Constance. I am appalled at you.’

‘I forgot,’ I said.

It was a shame Delilah was there because when Julie came upstairs ‘to get her purse’, she trotted up too and we couldn’t really talk. I made a ridiculous kerfuffle about stuffing nothing in Julie’s back pocket and promising never to be so t’oughtless again. I told them both about the try-out at the chemist’s – Julie said ‘good girl’ – and then the two of them exchanged spiky sort of competitive words about who had had the nicest Friday night. I don’t know why they don’t like each other; I suppose they’re so different. Julie said the Electric B’stards were mind-blowing. Delilah said pitch and putt had been ‘like, a total riot’, that she had been ‘like, totally wasted’.

I asked if William had gone. She said, laughing privately to herself, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. The boys were all just, like, totally mad and put the girls’ balls down their trousers.’

‘Très amusant,’ said I.

Delilah went to the loo and Julie and I managed to have a quick confab. I felt a bit cross about being in trouble with everyone, but I had to admire her ingenuity. In the car over, she’d told Bert that Mother was very fussy about men.

‘Fussy?’ I said.

‘You know, thrill of the chase and all that,’ she replied.

When we got downstairs again Mother and Uncle Bert were sitting quite close to each other, but they were only talking about the congestion charge. Jack, who’s a big man with a lot of hair, was standing in the doorway, looking fat, proprietorial and fishy – literally and metaphorically. Marie and Cyril were bouncing around trying to get Jack’s attention, but it was the other conversation Jack was trying to get in on. ‘Yep,’ he kept saying, on a sniff ‘Yep. It’s small businesses like mine you have to worry about.’

Something about the presence of Jack seemed to make Uncle Bert particularly charming. He was looking at Mother in a funny way His eyes seemed to be focused on her hair. They got on to the French language. He’d always meant to learn. He’d love to live in Paris one day (sharp intake of breath from me). That lovely French food. He asked if she’d tried Chez Pierre in the high street. ‘Once,’ she said. ‘But it would be so, so, so nice to go again.’

Beyond them in the garden, I could see that the fork she had dug into the earth when she’d been gardening earlier had fallen backwards. Prongs up, it looked lethal, like a trap.

Julie and Uncle Bert had to get back. I did lots of apologizing at the door – to Julie and to Uncle Bert for putting him out – so we were still standing there when Mr Spence jogged up. God, that man gets everywhere. Mother smiled vaguely at him, her hand half raised as if to say ‘just a minute’. She seemed to beam all the more shinily at Uncle Bert, telling him he was ‘a ver’, ver’, ver’ kind man’. Uncle Bert got all brisk and just said, ‘Any time.’

As they drove off, Julie put her face to the passenger window and waved. There was some new ingredient in the smile she gave me. Oh, I know, pure wickedness.