‘Before I lose my nerve then,’ I laughed, and shuffled back underneath him. I didn’t want to think too much about it this time. I just wanted it done.

‘Ella, if you don’t want to . . .’

‘No I do, I do want to. Please. Come on.’

‘I haven’t got any condoms.’

‘I don’t care this time. Come on, please – quickly. Kiss me again.’

As we kissed, Max’s hands were in my hair, then at my neck, my side, around my hips and my bottom before one of them sneaked around the front. He was going ‘there’.

‘Kiss me again.’

I kept my eyes open. I wasn’t worried. This was Max and he loved me. I was safe in his arms. We both wanted this.

‘You smell so good.’

‘You do too,’ I said in breaths, even though the only thing I could smell was the intense spicy smell of the wooden shed. ‘Tell me you love me.’

His fingers were going deeper. ‘I love you so much, Ella. God, I want you.’ He un-clicked my sports bra and pulled it off. ‘I want you so badly.’

I held his head against my neck as my tears rolled down my cheeks into my ears. The necklace had slid down – the bear was resting on my sweaty shoulder, looking at me.

His tongue flicked inside my mouth. ‘I want you so much.’

I slid my hand into his hair and grabbed a tuft. Any second now, I’d want this too.

‘You’re gorgeous,’ he said. Silently, a dragon roared in my belly. Max wriggled about, positioning himself so every inch of his naked body was against some naked part of mine. ‘Kinda need you to open your legs a bit though, Ells,’ he laughed.

I was lying like a corpse. ‘Oh sorry.’

Oh God, this was it. We were actually going to do it. I wasn’t going to be scared. I grabbed on to his back. I looked up through the roof of the Wendy house, and through a crack in the wood I saw starlight. I drew up my knees. He was going to put it inside me. Any second now. The starlight grew blurry in my eyes.

I closed my eyes and found a memory. Fallon and me, dancing on rocks, laughing so hard about something. Max and Zane were pulling at branches in the woods – making a den. Corey was sitting on a pebble beach, trying to catch a fish with a stick and some string. We were best friends who danced, built dens, fished, had picnics and swam whole summers away. And we had the best big sister to look after us and tell us stories.

‘Who wants to hear my new story? I just finished it.’

‘Me! Me! Me! I do! I do!’

‘Right, get over here, then.’

There weren’t always five of us. Sometimes, it had been six.

Then I realised where we were. We were on the island – the sea had swallowed the land. I looked around. I was alone. They’d all gone. I was stuck there, forever screaming.

‘Ella?’

With a jolt of panic, I was wrenched back to now, back to the hard shed floor, Max’s heavy body on top of me, waiting for the pain I knew was coming.

‘Ella?’

I was panting. ‘Just do it, Max. Do it, please. I’m ready. I’m ready. I’m ready.’

But I wasn’t ready. I was crying. The only thing I was ready to do at that moment was vomit. And just as he pulled away from me, a thick surge raced up my throat.

‘Oh God,’ I managed to squeak, lunging for the open shed door as everything I’d eaten that day erupted from my mouth before I’d reached the nearest bush.

How to Kill a Moment, by Estella Grace Newhall.

For the next minute, the only sound was me yacking into a yucca. When I was done, I looked behind me. Max was sitting on an upturned flowerpot. Naked and embarrassed, just like Adam. And there was I. Naked and embarrassed, just like Eve. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’ll get our clothes.’ He stood up, snatched up his sodden boxers from the path and walked back towards the pool.

I followed him. ‘I feel better now.’

He turned around, his eyes as sad as I’d ever seen them, and grabbed his trousers from a bronze giraffe’s ear, scrabbling them on. A plastic sachet fell out of his back pocket. I picked it up, but before I could look at it, he snatched it away.

‘What was that?’

He stashed the packet back in his jeans. ‘Condoms.’

‘I thought you said you didn’t have any?’

He didn’t answer.

‘I hate that I keep doing this to you.’

‘All you had to say was no!’ he yelled. ‘Have I ever pressured you? Why do you even lead me down the road if you can’t go there?’

‘I thought it would be OK this time.’

‘You thought that last time. And the time before that. And every time, we end up like this – having a massive barney.’ He trailed off and scratched his head on both sides, like he was trying to scratch his brain out. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

He was so angry. He’d never been this angry before. I saw what I was doing to him, his strange fury, and I hated myself even more. I started gathering up my clothes. It wasn’t until I’d laced my trainers and he was sitting on the edge of the pool with a roll-up that he spoke again.

‘I Googled it,’ he said, reaching for my hand. ‘Genophobia. It’s a proper thing.’

I sat down next to him on the edge of the pool. ‘Is there a cure?’

He rubbed his mouth and reached for my hand. ‘Don’t think so.’

‘We’ll be OK though, won’t we?’

He surrounded me in a hug. ‘Yeah. ’Course we will.’

‘Did you talk to anyone about it?’

Thumping Good Fun

I didn’t want to talk about it, but I was finding it more difficult to keep it to myself. The relationship was becoming so one-sided. He started sexting me just before Christmas last year – this picture of him naked except for a bath towel, and a text saying Wanna see beneath, my beautiful? Wink wink.

I didn’t know how to reply. I’d seen his you-know-what a few times before but it was never something I wanted to see, and certainly not in an excited state. So I kept sending back jokey answers, like No you’re all right, I’ve just eaten. Wink wink.

Then he sent back I’m in bed, just thinkin bout my baby.

So I sent back I’m in bed trying to remember if I put the bins out.

So he stopped, just like that. I liked the kissing and the hugging. I loved tiny, insignificant things we did like playing Round and Round the Garden on each other’s palms. I loved us playing with each other’s hair and I loved how he always sent me text kisses first thing in the morning and last thing at night – but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t want dicktures, I didn’t want sex aids he said he’d order me off the internet or him nibbling my neck or pressing against me. For me that was love with a grenade attached – it said I love you so much, I want to hurt you.

If things had been different, maybe it would have turned me on. Maybe we’d have booty-called each other from our beds, like he said his mates did with random women on Snapchat and Skype. But things weren’t different. Things were the way they were.

I had a bit of a meltdown about it at training the next morning.

‘Come on, don’t let me down, keep going, work through it, work through it…’

The sweltering sun attacked us like a baying crowd as we climbed the east-facing slope of Brynstan Hill. My body did as Pete was yelling at it to do, but my head was everywhere – on the white butterflies shimmering through the long grass, the sheep lying in the shade, the tractor ambling along in a faraway meadow. The distant cars. Hay bales wrapped in shiny black plastic, like large body bags.

‘Come on. Push it, Ella, push it! All the way now, all the way…’

Sweat streamed down my face, and the taste of tiny flies and hot hay clogged my nose and my throat. Pete pushed me harder and harder up the hill, until all my willpower left me and I stopped and bent over to grab my ankles and catch my breath.

‘What are you doing? We’re nowhere near the top yet,’ he panted.

‘I’ve had enough,’ I gasped, reaching behind me for the Evian in my rucksack.

‘Come on, just a bit further. You’ve got to punch through it.’

I shook my head, chugging down the cool water like I’d crossed a desert. ‘I don’t want to do any more today.’ I swigged again and bent over, every muscle torn up and my lungs aching when I breathed in or out. ‘I hate this damn hill.’

‘You have been keeping up with your diet, haven’t you?’

I said nothing, wiping my face on my T-shirt hem.

‘You’re sluggish today. Perhaps we should look at reeling back on the carbs.’

‘OK, I had a day off yesterday. My dad made me a bacon sandwich. It’s not a crime.’

Pete Hamlin had been our school’s Teacher You Most Want to Bang – they called him the Pied Piper, cos wherever he went there was always a line of girls following him. I wasn’t interested in him that way, but I could see that he was good-looking. He was twenty-five, with a big, happy smile, and he spoke with a posh accent, like he’d done ten years’ training with the Royal Shakespeare Company. We talked a lot. I knew he wanted to move back to London, that he liked going to see plays but hated the cinema, even that he still carried a picture of his ex-girlfriend in his wallet. We’d run up Brynstan Hill like coach and student, but we’d come back down as friends, chatting about music and books.

‘Come on then. Back at it.’

I shook my head. ‘This is as far as I want to go today.’

‘That’s not an athlete talking, Estella.’

I started undoing the Velcro on my running gloves but left them on. ‘Yeah well, maybe I don’t want to be an athlete today, Peter.’

‘This isn’t like you. Where’s my Volcano Girl?’

‘Extinct,’ I said, and started walking back down the hill.

The local paper had started the whole Volcano Girl thing, because of the way I ‘erupted’ out of the blocks on the track. I didn’t mind it. It was pretty apt if you think about it.

‘Ella, I’m being paid a lot of money to train you.’

‘Then what do you care?’ I stopped walking. ‘Why can’t we just say we ran, just for once? Why do we always have to bloody run everywhere?’

He laughed and started back down the hill to where I was standing. ‘Uh, well, there’s this little thing called the Commonwealth Games? And the fact that you’re the best runner in the county, probably the best runner in the South-West when you set your mind to it? That enough for you to be going on with? Come on, I’ll race you to the top.’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘I’ll give you a head start.’

That was when I blew. ‘WHY DOESN’T ANYONE EVER LISTEN TO ME?’

I didn’t look at him. I marched back down the hill like a belligerent Grand Old Duke of York; my one man staying exactly where he was. For a while. Until I heard his footsteps coming up behind me.

‘Is it your dad? He’s still in remission, isn’t he?’

‘Yeah, my dad’s OK. Well, at the moment he is.’

‘Has your mum called again? Your brothers? You’re always fractious whenever they’ve been in touch.’

‘No.’ I sat down on the grass, narrowly avoiding a pat of dried sheep crap. I felt like crying so badly it was hurting my neck. I chugged back some more water to drown it.

He sat down next to me. ‘Is it leaving school? I know it’s a big step, sixth form, but you’ll be all right. You should be excited about it. I think you’ll do well.’

‘It’s not any of that.’

‘Tell me,’ he said, like he was settling in for a good movie. ‘Come on, we need to clear out your brain, otherwise you’re not going to get the most out of this. You may as well go home and eat twelve Krispy Kremes and a Nando’s for all the good it’s going to do.’

‘You can’t eat Nando’s at home,’ I said.

‘You can,’ he argued. ‘They’ve got it in Waitrose. I’ve tried their pervy sauce. Believe me, it is all the noms.’

A smile tore at my lips. ‘It’s peri-peri sauce. And don’t speak young. It sounds weird.’

He laughed. ‘Come on then, what’s the matter? Is it Max?’

Trying to form the sentence in my head was getting me nowhere. We sat in perfect silence, but for the buzzing in the grass around us. His eyes fixed on me.

‘Yeah,’ I said eventually. ‘He’s been my best friend since primary school. When we started going out together it was lovely, for a while. But he wants more now. And I don’t.’

‘Ah. I see.’

‘It’s so difficult cos he’s my best friend. If I was going to kiss any boy, be with any boy, it would be him, no question. We make perfect sense. I miss him when he’s not around. Sometimes I miss him when he goes to the toilet. I know, I know. It’s so soppy.’

‘No, it isn’t. There’s nothing soppy about it. You love him.’

I nodded. ‘But I feel like I’m losing him.’

‘If he loves you as much as you love him, then you won’t lose him. He won’t let it come between you.’

‘It is coming between us. All his mates have these stunning girlfriends, and groupies who hang around the social club after his home games. Some are younger than me. Tight tops, all swigging cider. Any one of them would do it with him, I know they would. And then there’s Shelby.’

‘Who’s Shelby?’

‘His cousin, Shelby Gilmore. Well, step-cousin. His Auntie Manda’s daughter. She’s seventeen as well. They come over for Sunday lunch every single week. She’s a walking, talking reason never to look in a mirror again.’

‘So?’ said Pete. ‘That doesn’t mean anything will happen with her, does it?’

‘Maybe it already has happened, though. I don’t know. They really get on. And she flirts with him all the time. Flicking her hair back. Smiling at him. Always talking to him about stuff they’re both interested in but I’m not, like gaming and football. She’s gorgeous. And she’s so… experienced too. She’s had more boyfriends than I’ve done time trials.’

‘Have you tried getting to know her?’ said Pete. ‘You might have things in common.’

‘I’ve hate-liked a few of her status updates on Facebook. But no, not really.’

I slowly peeled off my running gloves to show him the scabs on my knuckles. ‘And then there’s this.’

He cringed and gently lifted my left hand to look at it. He reached for the other one and studied it. ‘How have you done this?’

‘We’ve got a stone pillar in our lounge. When I’m home alone, sometimes I punch it. I gaffer tape a cushion to it so it doesn’t hurt as much.’

Pete’s face creased. ‘How long have you been doing that?’

‘Only just recently. It just gets too much sometimes. You know what I was like when we started training. Running helped me. But just lately it hasn’t been enough.’

‘Ella, this isn’t right, what you’re doing to yourself. You don’t owe Max anything and you certainly shouldn’t blame yourself for not being ready to sleep with him.’

‘I do owe him though, don’t I?’ I said. ‘I’m his girlfriend. It’s what girlfriends do. He’s waited ages.’

Pete’s jaw dropped. ‘Where is that written? Is this some law I don’t know about?’

‘It’s just a fact.’

‘It most certainly is not,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘You don’t owe him sex for any reason whatsoever. Sex isn’t the prize you get for patience, Ella. The only reason to do it is because you want to. If he’s the kind of person who will have sex with a girl who doesn’t want to have sex with him, then ask yourself why would you want to be with a guy like that?’

‘No, he’s not, his… He’s not pressuring me,’ I said, scratching my shins. The fire was raging. Urticaria, our doctor called it – a completely random skin reaction to too much histamine in my blood. My training meant I couldn’t take my antihistamines because they made me drowsy. The wild grass was making it worse. ‘I just hate what we’ve turned into. And I don’t feel like we can go back to how we were. Just friends. I hate myself.’

‘How can you hate yourself? You’re an incredible girl. I’m so proud of you, how you’ve come through it all – your mum leaving, and your dad’s illness. You’ve stuck to your training plan, you’re nailing your PBs on a regular basis. You’re brilliant, Ella.’

‘Don’t give me compliments, Pete. You’re just throwing stones into a bottomless pit.’

‘You know, not talking about something that’s hurting you always makes it worse. It starts feeding on you, like a parasite. Once you let it out, it’s got nowhere else to go but away. Is there something else upsetting you? Other than the Max thing?’

The tractor in the far meadow had stopped baling. The sheep under the tree were looking our way. The whole world seemed to be waiting for me to say it out loud.

I shook my head. ‘No. I just need to work things out for myself, that’s all.’

‘By punching concrete?’ I didn’t answer that. ‘Will you at least recognise that it’s not good for you to keep doing this to yourself?’ I shrugged. I couldn’t promise. ‘OK, well, if you’re determined to punch for therapy, I can at least show you some proper technique.’

‘Can you?’

‘Yeah. I boxed a bit at university. It’s a great stress reliever. I still do a bit now and then. It’s great for stamina, too.’

‘Where do you do it?’

‘In my garage. Come on, let’s go back and have a cuppa and I’ll show you.’

We jogged back down the hill and walked across the churchyard into Church Lane, where Pete’s cottage was. His garage wasn’t like ours, with all Dad’s dusty boxes of rusty tools, doorknobs, foreign editions of his Jock of the Loch romance novels and Christmas trimmings. Or Neil Rittman’s immaculate garage, with the two luxury cars and giant speedboat. Pete’s was smaller, like a boutique gymnasium with a wall TV, a fridge of isotonic drinks, weight machines, a treadmill, dumb-bells, a bench and, swinging from one of the low slung beams on a chain, a large black-and-red punchbag. He reached for something on top of the fridge and unravelled it.

‘First we wrap your hands.’ He set about coiling a length of red bandage right around both my hands, like I was being mummified, then tied it off on a Velcro strip. Then he reached for a pair of boxing gloves, tied to a nail on the wall next to the first aid box. He put them on me. It felt like some grand occasion, like I was putting on a crown. ‘Right, relax your hand. Now make a fist. Keep your fingers all in there. Thumb on top but keep it in tight. OK, bounce on the balls of your feet. Keep everything relaxed but ready. Now, hit the bag.’

I did. Hard.

‘OK, again. Breathe out on the punch.’

I did it again. Harder.

‘Yep, good, exhale each time you let the punch fly. Don’t hold it in. Make a noise if you have to. Both fists, elbows in tight, that’s it, keep bouncing. Watch me. Don’t fling it forward, push it. Good. Breathe out. OK, let’s try some jabs. Keep breathing; let your breaths out, don’t hold them back. Relax when you’re bouncing, then let the punch fly and exhale. Good. Exhale. Good. Okay, cross. Upper cut.’

We stayed in his garage for the next hour – an hour when I should have been doing sprints and shuttle runs or burpees up on Brynstan Hill. Instead, I was Muhammad Ali. Strong and powerful and so angry. All bee – no butterfly.

‘Let’s try a few straight line punches. These’ll wear you out quicker but they pack the most power. Keep those wrists loose, don’t lock them. Keep those breaths coming out on each punch. Bounce. Jab jab jab. Quicker. Good. Now smash it! Lights out! You’ve picked it up quickly, Ella.’

My knuckles and wrists ached but there was no real pain, not like there was at home. By the end, the sweat was pouring from my face and arms. Bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang. It was so fast. I was so ferocious. I loved it. I used my anger well in my running, Pete said, but I had too much of it, and had to burn some of it off.

‘Like bleeding a radiator. We’re just getting rid of your trapped wind, so you can function more efficiently.’

‘You better not be calling me windy!’ I carried on pummeling the bag.

He laughed. ‘Believe me, I’m not going to mess with you while you’re in this mood. That’s great, keep going. Find the rhythm.’

It felt like each punch had meaning. Pete was right. What I’d been doing at home was just battering myself. This felt like it was working something out of me. Every time I punched, a tiny puff of poison flew away. I felt exhausted, but electric all over.

‘OK, that’s enough for today,’ Pete laughed, holding the bag steady and starting to unlace my gloves. I was still bouncing on the balls of my feet, sweat sliding off me in rivers.

I folded up the hand wraps and put them back on the fridge. ‘Can we do this again?’

He scratched his stubble. ‘Neil Rittman’s paying me a lot of money to train you in running the four hundred metres, Ella. It’s not going to look great at Area Trials if you’re first out the starting blocks with an upper cut and a straight right left, is it?’

‘I know but just one more session doing this? Please? We don’t have to tell anyone. We can run for half the session and box for the other half or something. Can we? Please?’

‘Tell you what,’ he said, fumbling in his pocket. He pulled out a small set of keys, unhooked one attached to a Brynstan Academy fob and gave it to me. ‘How about we keep our training sessions to running, but any time you feel like punching the crap out of that pillar, you come here and use the bag and gloves. No more dry wall sessions on those fists.’

‘OK,’ I said, holding the key like it was a precious artefact. ‘Thanks.’

‘And you jog all the way here and all the way back, right?’

‘Right.’

He looked at me for a long time, then rubbed the outside of my arm. ‘And if you do want to talk, my door’s always open.’

I held up the key and smiled. ‘I won’t. But thanks.’

‘So, hang on, where does the missing cat come into it?’

The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat

Oh yeah, well it was the morning Max picked me up from training at Pete’s house, which he never ever did. He was leaning on his Audi across the road from Pete’s cottage when I emerged from the garage, fists shaking, sweat trickling down my forehead.

‘What are you doing here?’ I said, with an edge to my voice I hadn’t meant.

‘Oh that’s nice,’ he laughed. ‘I thought I’d pick you up, save you the jog back.’

‘I like the jog back.’

‘All right, I’ll go then, shall I?’

‘No,’ I said, wiping over my face again with my damp towel. ‘Sorry. Thank you.’ He was expecting a kiss, so I kissed him. Then I felt bad cos when he hugged me in to his chest, he rubbed my back like he did when we were kids and I was crying. I went round to open the passenger door.

Max got in too. ‘Sweated up a storm today,’ he commented. I didn’t answer. He didn’t switch the engine on either. He was just looking at me.

‘What are you waiting for?’

‘How was it?’ he asked. He wasn’t looking at my face, though. He was looking at my hands, red-tinged and shaking.

‘It’s just adrenaline. I only did a quick warm down today.’

He was looking at me funny, the way he did sometimes when he didn’t get something.

‘Pied Piper on form today, was he?’ He started up the engine.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know. Did he push you all the way?’

The car started off down Church Lane. ‘You don’t like Pete, do you?’

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