Oh my God. Oh my God. First off, we took it too far, no question. When you’re leaning over a kiddie toilet, hoovering up lines, you’ve gone over the edge. Lys looked at me like, is this bad? and then we took a bit more for the road. We were like gangsta rappers – Fuck The PTA. We kept chanting it and pissing ourselves laughing.
Something happens here – the way it all looks so pretty, and it’s so ugly underneath. It makes everything twist out of shape. Last night Max begged me to read him The Gruffalo for like, the millionth time, and I told him he didn’t need to beg, it’s my favourite story. All those scary animals coming out of the dark, dark wood. It’s always dark here, even when the sun’s shining its heart out and it’s getting darker all the time. Thank God for Lysette.
I nearly told her tonight, when we were giggling and scraping the little white flecks off the top. I can see the pain in his eyes, the wanting – I saw it tonight. That was when it hit me: it’s not that I’m not hurting anyone, it’s just that I’m choosing who to hurt. It was starting to eat away at me, wanting to be said, but then we skipped back out there, all of them with their stupid answer sheets and their special trivia faces, and I got distracted. I saw them, the two of them, their heads pushed together like no one else could know the answer. Like they were a double act. I felt this stabbing, deep inside, that sense of how much I love him. I’m addicted to him, I always have been. And then all I wanted was to win. I wanted her to know I wasn’t just a stupid little waitress who got lucky.
There was too much flying around, silent agendas filling the space while it looked like all anyone cared about was how many African countries began with S. Kimberley saw, she saw the way he looked at me, and then she couldn’t keep her eyes off me. I shouldn’t have been so stupid as to use my phone, but I had the devil in me by then.
She punished both of us that night. You could say I deserved it, but there’s no way he did. I’m not having it. I’ve got the devil in me all over again, but it’s for different reasons now. She thinks she’s in control, that she’s pulling the strings. She’s got a shock coming. With everything that’s happened, everything I’ve seen, I can cut them any time I like and she’ll be the one taking the fall. Her and all her fancy mates. They’ve got more to lose than any of us.