Kate knew she didn’t want to work in retail marketing again, but besides that, she had little idea what she was good for. Everything she entered into the job search website returned results that were bleak and uninspiring.
‘What do you think I should do?’ Kate asked her friend, genuinely curious.
‘What did you want to be when you were little?’
‘Honestly? I never really got that figured out. But my mum always wanted me to be a teacher.’
‘Urgh, teenagers though,’ Renee said.
‘Exactly,’ Kate agreed.
‘What subject would you do? If you decided to go that way?’
‘I guess it would have to be English or History. I did a joint honours degree.’
‘Oh, you should definitely do English. You can do loads of rousing speeches about great works of literature, and then all the kids would worship you like in Dead Poets Society.’
‘I think you have to just stick to the curriculum nowadays.’
‘Well, that sucks. But still, teaching. It could work?’
‘Do you honestly think I’m a rousing speeches kind of person?’ Kate looked at Renee.
‘You could learn to be?’ Renee grimaced and shrugged.
The sound of Renee’s pencil gently scraping on paper was soothing, and for a moment Kate pined that her pay wasn’t better so that she could just keep doing this job for ever. She idly tapped her way to the gallery website and clicked through to the Jobs pages.
‘There’s something going in the Learning and Development department here,’ Kate announced. ‘It’s a temporary placement. Do you think they’d let me do it but keep my current job for when the contract ends?’
‘Are you kidding me? Of course they would! This place is always looking for people, and the fact that you know where all the emergency exits are is seriously in your favour.’
‘I should probably ask our manager first though. Do you think she’d be happy with me going for it?’
Renee shuffled over so that she could look at Kate’s phone screen with her.
‘Definitely ask her first, but apply regardless of what she says,’ she advised.
The galleries were quiet. Nowhere near empty – they never were – but quiet enough to allow Kate to drift a little, absorb the atmosphere of the paintings, and watch the people as they did the same. She was feeling optimistic. The group had helped with this, she knew that. And the support of her parents. After months and months of feeling like the world was against her, discovering that she had the power to make choices was like having a pressure valve released. Granted, the choices weren’t ideal (however wonderful her parents were being, Kate would still have preferred to not have to move back in with them), but they were choices nonetheless. Small but positive steps.
There was still one step she thought would make all the difference, though. Despite what they had been talking about in the group sessions, and knowing that her virginity didn’t make or break her as a person, it was still something she couldn’t stop thinking about. She didn’t want it to be so important. She wanted to be like Hattie, confident and vibrant and completely self-assured. But she also wanted to be able to gossip with Renee, and not feel like she was lying somehow. She didn’t want to be left out. She still wanted to have sex – badly – and to know for herself.
If life had worked out a different way, Kate suspected that she would have had at least three sexual partners by now. They wouldn’t necessarily have all been boyfriends, but they might have been. And those were just the ones she knew about. She hoped there might have been others too, and that she had just been oblivious, too caught up in her own insecurities to notice. Plus, it wasn’t as if she made a habit of putting herself out there. She cringed when she thought about the one time she did: that drunken last-ditch effort at the university Leavers’ Ball that had left her stupefied with embarrassment when she had recalled it the following morning.
There had been sweet, immature crushes before, but Nathan was the first boy she had really, genuinely liked. He had approached her at a party she had gone to with Elise and the other girls one weekend, after they had done their schoolgirlish job of not-so-subtly revealing to his friend that Kate liked him. Kate had watched as Nathan was cornered by his friend (a few moments after said friend had been cornered by Elise and Georgie), and their heads had bobbed in her direction. They were talking about her. Nathan was new to the sixth form – it was attached to their high school, but there were some students who’d joined having done their GCSEs elsewhere. When Nathan had first walked through the swinging doors of the common room, hair spiked with too much gel and collar of his polo shirt popped, Kate had been instantly smitten. Her crushes, and other weird teenage fascinations, had never been like this. Nathan was different. He was Orlando Bloom, Jesse Bradford and Shane West all rolled into one.
Kate had expected him to run a mile the moment that he found out about her crush. She was deathly embarrassed by it. She hated that she somehow knew his timetable, knew where he’d be when their free periods matched up. She hated that she paid attention to Match of the Day now, so that she could know what was going on with his favourite football team. She would sign in and out of MSN Messenger, hoping that he’d notice her name ping on his contact list, know who she was, and maybe say hello. It was excruciating. And Elise hadn’t made it easier for her either.
‘I’m going to tell him,’ she had said, giggling one lunch break.
‘Please don’t. He’ll hate me,’ Kate had replied.
‘He won’t hate you. He’s cool. My cousin’s friend knows him from before. He’s a nice one. I promise you.’
‘But what if he doesn’t like me back?’
‘What if he does?’
It finally went down at a house party, where Kate was too scared to drink anything alcoholic, and India teased her mercilessly for it.
‘It’s not going to kill you!’ she’d said, more annoyed than she should have been, Kate had always thought.
‘I don’t want to drink, leave it out,’ she’d replied.
‘Honestly, you’re so frigid sometimes,’ India said, looking over her shoulder at Elise and Georgie to spread the gossip. ‘You honestly think you’re ready for a guy like that?’ she’d asked Kate.
Nathan hadn’t balked when he’d heard the news. But he didn’t come over to Kate straight away either. He took his time, working the room until he got around to her.
‘Hi,’ he said. He was drinking a Corona, which seemed oddly sophisticated to Kate, compared to all the people frantically downing shots or chugging back bright blue WKDs and Bacardi Breezers.
‘Hi,’ Kate replied, her voice a feeble squeak. She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t bear to. He knew she liked him. He knew.
They had chatted. It hadn’t been for long, and it was awful, mostly because of the pumping garage music and the fact that someone threw up in the kitchen sink and all the girls had started screaming. But they had chatted. And Kate hadn’t died from it.
‘So, what are you doing tomorrow?’ Nathan had asked.
‘Oh, I have this huge thing to do for Art. It’s project work for a piece that counts towards my final mark. Art takes up so much time, you know? It’s basically like doing two A levels, not one.’