Phosphorescence by Raffaella Barker Page A

Nell?’
    â€˜What?’ Nell yawns. She is in bed too, but not hiding because she doesn’t need to. I was the one who called, and anyway, Nell’s mum hardly ever gets in a psych. She’s really cool.
    â€˜I think my mum is in love.’
    â€˜Is she?’ Nell’s surprise makes my toes curl up and something shrivel in my stomach.
    I’m only fourteen. I shouldn’t have to deal with my mother being in love.
    â€˜Well, she laughs a lot, she doesn’t eat much any more. She looks amazing and she isn’t at all interested in me.’
    â€˜I don’t think that’s love,’ says Nell. ‘In fact it sounds like the opposite. Most people in love look ghostly and are always hanging around the phone. Does she do that?’
    I think for a minute and realize I have hardly ever given Mum a chance to be on the phone because I am always using it.
    â€˜Er, no,’ I concede, cautiously.
    â€˜Sounds as if she’s happy,’ says Nell. ‘It would be a bit weird of her to fall in love so fast. You’ve only been in London six weeks.’
    â€˜Yes, but maybe she already knew the person and that’s why she left Dad.’
    As I speak these words I realize that this has been the shadowy thought in the back of my mind all along. Saying it is a relief, particularly when Nell laughs down the phone.
    â€˜Don’t be daft. How was she ever going to have met some swanky London person when she never went anywhere? Your mum never left Staitheley. My mum says that was the problem. She didn’t have enough to do and she got bored. Now she’s busy and she’s happy. End of story.’
    â€˜I know . . .’ There is a click as the bathroom door opens. ‘Sh for a minute,’ I whisper, holding my breath. There is a waft of scented air as Mum comes out of the bathroom. She pauses by my door and then a moment later I hear her own door creak and close. ‘Are you still there, Nell?’ I whisper.
    â€˜Yeah, I’m going to have to go in a second, but I’ve got to tell you – you’ll never guess – Josh is going out with Fay Bullock. They were snogging at the sixth-form disco. D’you remember her? She’s got huge tits and a kind of flat face.’
    Oddly, it is not the nature of the information Nell is passing on that freaks me out, it is the way she obtained it.
    My heart is thudding as I ask, ‘How do you know? You weren’t there. Year Tens aren’t allowed to go to the sixth-form disco unaccompanied.’
    Nell answers hesitantly, ‘Well, I was there actually. And I wasn’t unaccompanied. I went with Jason Dawes.’
    â€˜Oh
my God
, you—’
    The door spins open and Mum is there in theblock of light from the landing, doing her most icy, no-nonsense whisper.
    â€˜Give me the telephone.’
    Mum holds her hand out and I pass the phone like a small and unsuccessful relay baton.
    I can’t bear it. Nell had a date, she went to the dance with a sixth-former, she
must
have kissed him in the slow dance at the end, and now I am the only person left of my age who hasn’t done proper snogging. Or ever been out with someone. The evils of the geography project are nothing to this.

Chapter 8
    Assembly is a big deal at my school. It doesn’t happen every day, but when it does happen, everyone has to go, and there is a register on the way in to make sure we are all there. Sometimes we have a guest speaker, sometimes a class takes over and runs the show. It is always too hot, and the floor smells of polish and shines and squeaks beneath your shoes.
    Assembly is most boring when the usual members of staff are doing the usual thing of leading the prayers and talking, so on the day that Mrs Bailey stands on the platform with my project, everyone is glazed over with the tedium of it all when she gets up to speak. She puts on her glasses, stuffs one hand in the pocket of her sensible long