“Debra – fuck off and leave her alone! She’s a first year you fucking bully. I’ve just spoken to Dale, she blew him out, he asked her to the party, she said no and didn’t flirt with him at all, and you can tell him from me, if he comes near her again, me or Len will knock him the fuck out! Tell the rest of the fifth years the same fucking thing, she’s eleven, they are all a bunch of fucking pervs.”

She folds her arms across her chest and looks him up and down and then turns and looks me up and down. “She’s your sister Marl?”

“Yeah, my baby sister.”

Sean is with him and comes around and stands next to me. Taking me completely by surprise when he pulls me into his side by my waist and kisses my temple, asking into my hair if I’m okay? I nod, this time it’s not so much to do with the affect he has on me, it’s more to do with the fact that I’m shitting myself that I’m going to get beat up after school by a grown woman. For doing absolutely nothing wrong.

“What’s your name?” The girl, woman, Debra asks me.

“Georgia,” I reply.

“You’re a pretty girl Georgia, you and your mate there are both very pretty, your ruffling feathers round here, you need to keep your head down and stay away from the older boys and make sure everyone around here knows you’re a Layton and that Marley and Lennon are your brothers.”

She looks Sean up and down, he’s tall and looks older than a third year, which he has joined Marley in. Sean is new too; he’s just moved into the area and transferred from a different school.

“And who are you? Not another gorgeous Layton that I didn’t know about?”

Sean returns the look up and down, but instead of looking at her lustfully as she had done him, he looks at her with complete contempt and I beam. Shit I almost ignite, inwardly of course, because the last I want to do is piss this bitch off again.

“No love, I’m not a Layton, I’m Sean, Sean McCarthy. I’m Marley’s mate and Georgia’s boyfriend. So make sure all your pervi fifth year mates know to stay the fuck away from her.”

What?

He’s my boyfriend?

Well shit!

My mouth hits the floor; well that’s how it felt anyway. Sean squeezed my hand as he spoke and as I looked around the dining hall I couldn’t help but notice that we had attracted quite a crowd. Events from that lunch time soon spread, everyone assumed I was Sean’s girlfriend and in turn thought that Jimmie was with Marley, the fact that they walked with us to and from school most days helped to solidify the story and I was over the moon. All of this quickly instilled us as the most popular girls in the first year and made our journey into secondary school life so much easier.

I spent a lot of time with Sean that year, just hanging out as friends, there was lots of flirting, or what I considered flirting but nothing else. I was still too young for anything else and Sean seemed to respect that, he wasn’t a saint, I would often catch him looking at my ever growing boobs and I heard Marls tell him on more than one occasion to stop looking at my arse. We never discussed what he’d told Debra Smith in the dining hall that day, he never asked me to be his girlfriend and I was for the most part completely confused as to what I was to him, he kissed my cheek a couple of times, he held my hand when he thought no one was looking and when we looked at each other we knew Sean and I, that there was something going on between us. He was at our house all the time; after school, weekends, and school holidays, he even started coming with us on our overseas holidays. And because of the amount of time the boys spent practicing with the band or doing homework at our house, they very rarely went elsewhere, meaning, there was little chance of him meeting any other girls. Apart from at school, but of course there, everyone already thought he was my boyfriend and I couldn’t be happier about that fact.

In the summer of 1982 everything changed, Jimmie and Sean came with us to Portugal; my body had changed so much lately, although my boobs had now grown to a generous D cup, I’d recently acquired a pair of hips that balanced them out and stopped me from looking so top heavy and combined with the extra two inches in height I had grown, I was feeling a little more confident in myself. The first day around the pool, all Jimmie and I wanted to do was get our bodies out in the sun, the boys didn’t make an appearance until after lunch. They had stayed up drinking beer with my Dad and Lennon until late and were probably suffering for it a little, my Dad and Len had been up and out very early that morning to play golf, my Mum had gone shopping with a girlfriend who lived over here permanently and was meeting Dad later for dinner.

Jim and I had drunk a bottle of wine before the boys got up and I was feeling very brave as I lay on the lilo in the pool and watched Sean walking across the patio toward a sun lounger. I had already decided this holiday was going to be it, I was sick of playing games. I was hearing rumours that Sean had kissed girls at parties and him and Marley were always talking about girls that they fancied, even in front of Jimmie and me and it left me hurt, angry and confused; boys could be such arseholes sometimes. All of this had led me to the decision to take matters into my own hands this summer. I was going to be fourteen in September, and about to go in to the third year of secondary school, the boys were going into their fifth. The band was doing well and was being booked to play at the birthday parties of a lot of the kids from school, bringing them a lot of female attention. Some of the parties Jim and I went along to, some, like the eighteenths and twenty-firsts, we weren’t allowed to and it was killing me. I was over it and wanted him to either be my boyfriend or for me to be allowed to tell everyone at school that we were over so that I could have a chance at finding a different boyfriend. I actually didn’t want that at all, I wanted him and nobody else would do. I decided to climb out of the pool and attempt a Bond girl moment. I push myself up from the side and stand and tilt my head to the sky as I shake my hair, then squeeze the excess water out of it; as I look down, Sean is sitting on the end of a sun lounger watching me. Marley has jumped straight in the water and is now terrorising Jimmie, I put my hands on my hips and stand and stare into Sean’s beautiful chocolate eyes.

“Come here.” He beckons me with his finger, I walk toward him wearing my favourite teeny tiny red bikini, as sexily as you can when you’re not yet fourteen and don’t really know what walking sexily entails. I stop and stand between his legs while he looks up at me with the cheekiest of smiles on his lips.

“You do know we’re in Europe Gia, everyone here goes topless, and I’m a bit disappointed to see you’re not up with the times.”

“Well that’s what happens when you lay in bed for half the day. You miss the best parts, we were topless all morning, and I didn’t want my nipples to burn so I just put my top back on.”

I didn’t.

I wasn’t topless at any time but he doesn’t know that.

He smiled up at me.

“Well I will be sure to set my alarm and be up early tomorrow morning so that I don’t miss anything.”

“Well then you will be shit out of luck, my Dad will be here tomorrow and there is no way that I’ll be going topless in front of him.”

He lets out a long breath and looks beyond me, out across the pool, I can hear Jimmie and my brother giggling and splashing.

“You Gia are a flirt, but one day, one day it will be our turn. Our time.”

My heart drops like a stone into my stomach. What?

“Why… why do we have to wait for it to be our time? I’m fourteen in September; everyone thinks you’re my boyfriend anyway?”

I sound needy and whiney like a child and I don’t want to be a child, I want to be a woman.

“Gia… you have no idea do you? Your Dad and your brothers would kill me, they’d fucking kill me and I respect them all too much to start something with you before you’re ready but don’t think for a minute that I don’t want you. I know it sounds wrong but right from that very first day when I saw your pink knickers, there’s been something.”