The Girl Before You. Nicola Rayner

partition creaks as they push up against it, kissing. Kat shifts her legs away so that Ruth won’t be able to recognise her shoes.

      Very close to Kat’s head, George grunts. There’s the sound of a zip.

      Ruth giggles again. ‘We’re all wrong on paper, aren’t we?’ she says.

      ‘All wrong.’ George’s voice gets muffled in her hair.

      More shuffling. The ceramic clunk of the toilet seat closing, the creak of George sitting down.

      The noise of the music reverberates through the floor. There’s the sound of another zip being undone, more kissing. Kat doesn’t want to hear her friend have sex. She gets to her feet as quietly as she can. Somewhere on the landing a door slams, and the gust of air makes the bathroom door fan open and close again.

      ‘George,’ Ruth says and her meaning is unmistakable. ‘George.’

      His voice is thick. ‘Are you OK?’

      ‘Could we take it more slowly?’

      ‘More slowly …’ He says the words ponderously.

      ‘Yeah.’ Ruth’s voice sounds small.

      Kat feels a stab of empathy for her friend.

      ‘I thought you were different.’ The twinkle has gone from his voice. ‘More adventurous.’

      ‘I am.’

      He sighs. ‘OK. Do you want to go back down? Because I left the party for you.’

      ‘How generous of you.’ Ruth is trying to make light of it.

      A zip coming up.

      ‘George.’

      ‘Look, Ruth, I know where this is going.’ There’s a rearrangement in the cubicle’s choreography: Ruth moving off his lap, George getting to his feet. ‘First time, you want it to be special … blah blah, candlelight and music. That’s OK, that’s fine. Go and do that with someone else and then come back to me when you want a proper fuck.’

      ‘George.’ Ruth sounds as if she has a knot in her throat. ‘Why are you being such a prick?’

      George chuckles, back to his cheeky self again. ‘That’s just who I am. You must have heard.’

      The bolt of the door slides open and George is gone. Kat hears Ruth lock the door and there is a moment, as they both sit there, breathing, when she thinks she will say, ‘Ruth, it’s me. I’m sorry.’ When she thinks she will repeat Richard’s words: ‘He is an unspeakable cunt.’ But then there are footsteps and the sound of laughter, and Ruth is up and out of the cubicle and a girl’s voice is saying, ‘All right, Ruth?’ And Ruth is saying, ‘Yes, yes, just a bit too much wine,’ and the other girl laughs and then there’s the sound of the tap, the hand-dryer, footsteps.

      Kat waits until the girl has gone into a cubicle herself before she returns to the party. She sees George before she sees Ruth. He is near the drinks table with Dan and after a couple of moments there’s a burst of laughter from their direction.

      Ruth is on her own, hiding in the far corner of the room, drinking in a determined fashion. Her glance keeps flitting back to George. He has his back to her. As Kat makes her way over to Ruth, picking her path delicately through the crowded room, she notices one of Ruth’s hairs is streaked across the shoulder of his dinner jacket.

      ‘You’ve got to stop looking at him,’ Kat says quietly when she gets to Ruth. ‘What happened?’

      ‘It went wrong.’ Ruth stares into her wine glass.

      ‘How do you mean, it went wrong?’

      ‘I lost my nerve.’ Ruth looks down at her feet. There’s a red line where her shoes have dug into her skin.

      ‘He didn’t want to wait.’

      Ruth shakes her head. ‘I don’t think he …’ she begins, then corrects herself: ‘I think it’s now or never.’

      She glances over again. George’s group has been joined by a couple of girls. One, in a particularly arse-skimming dress, has started to talk to him.

      ‘Do you want it to be special?’ Kat asks. ‘Because it probably won’t be. With him.’ She takes out her cigarettes and offers Ruth one.

      ‘I know it’s not a grand romance, but I do like his spirit.’ Ruth’s voice sounds plaintive. ‘I like making him laugh.’ She takes a gulp of wine.

      ‘For me, I just wanted to get it over with,’ Kat says. ‘I mean, it’s uncomfortable however you do it, so why not do it quickly?’

      Ruth nods. ‘I shouldn’t say this, but I can say it to you …’ She lowers her voice. ‘I feel like when I’m with George, people notice me.’

      ‘You’re daft.’ Kat shakes her head, catches Richard’s eye from the other side of the room. ‘People notice you all the time anyway.’

      Ruth takes another slug from her glass. ‘I guess I hate to lose.’

      One of the girls talking to George keeps touching her hair, gathering it up and dropping it down one shoulder, exposing her bare neck to him like a willing vampiric victim.

      ‘I want another shot at it,’ Ruth says. ‘It was just a false start.’

      ‘OK,’ Kat says.

      Richard’s hair is messy, as usual. He’s carrying a book in his hand.

      ‘I don’t want to be needy and clingy and girlish,’ says Ruth, emphasising the last word. ‘I want to be equal. I want to be powerful. I want to be free.’

      ‘OK,’ says Kat again, wondering if Ruth should ease up on the wine.

      ‘I want,’ says Ruth definitively, ‘not to be a virgin any more.’

      ‘Go and tell him.’ Kat gives her a push. ‘Not all of it – maybe just that last bit.’

      George is still talking to the other girl. Their heads are close together as Ruth approaches; his hand is on the girl’s forearm, as if to keep her attention. Ruth makes her way across the room towards them and stands for a few seconds, her face flushing while George ignores her. Kat wonders for a moment if she will give up on her mission – wonders, too, if Richard is watching as Ruth says, ‘Excuse me,’ to the girl, takes George’s hand and leads him off, as Kat will hear later, not to the bathroom but a more private store room, where things go better the second time round.

       Naomi

      In the mornings our father smelled of aftershave and soap. When we woke, he’d be up already, starting his paperwork downstairs, but his scent lingered in the corridors of the hotel behind him. Our father was tall, with silvering auburn hair. He wore bow ties with his suits so as not to be like other people. It was embarrassing. He also wore leather shoes that clicked on the pavement as he walked.

      ‘That’s the sound of a real man walking,’ our mother would say. ‘I do like a man with proper leather shoes.’

      ‘And a bow tie?’ we would ask.

      ‘Hmm,’ replied our mother.

      She always sounded less sure about that.

      Our father’s car was an Aston Martin with a personalised number plate, which was the most embarrassing thing of all. The Aston smelled of clean leather seats, as if it were still new. It purred along so close to the ground that we couldn’t see over the hedges. The world looked different through the windows of the Aston. It didn’t win our father many friends.

      ‘You win some, you lose some,’ our mum said of the car.

      She drove a battered but sturdy Volvo without