Virgin. Radhika Sanghani

       CHAPTER THIRTY

       CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

       CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

       CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

       Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

      Ellie Kolstakis

      21 years old

      Non-smoker

      VIRGIN

      I STARED IN HORROR at the words on Dr E Bowers’ computer. The status of my hymen was plastered across her screen in capital letters.

      V-I-R-G-I-N

      The letters glowed luridly on the green computer screen, the kind used before Steve Jobs figured out Apple. They imprinted themselves into my mind in an eighties blur. A lump of anxiety lodged itself into my throat and my cheeks started burning. I felt sick.

      My humiliating secret was all over my medical records and Dr E Bowers was going to see it. I didn’t even know what the E in her name stood for but she was about to find out that in the two and a half years I had spent at uni, not a single boy had wanted to deflower me. Not one. I was twenty-one years old, and I still had my V-card.

      ‘Ms Kolstakis,’ she asked, pushing her rimless glasses up her nose, ‘you’re a final-year student at University College London, and you’re here to register, is that correct?’

      I forced my paralysed face into a smile and tried to laugh politely. ‘Yep, I don’t know why I didn’t join earlier. I, uh, I think it’s because I just didn’t ever get fresher’s flu, you know?’

      She stared blankly at me.

      ‘Um, also, you can call me Miss Kolstakis, or just Ellie, if you want,’ I added.

      She turned her head back down towards the forms, creasing her brow as she struggled to read my messy attempt at writing in block capitals.

      I wiped the sweat from my palms onto my jeans and told myself to be calm. She was a doctor. She wasn’t going to be shocked by meeting a twenty-one-year-old virgin. Besides, she was probably just going to ask me about the Kolstakis family history and the worst thing I would have to tell her would be about Great Granddad Stavros smoking a pack of cigarettes every day from the time he was nine. He didn’t even die from lung cancer in the end; he choked on an almond at the age of eighty-nine.

      She breathed in sharply. ‘Mmm, oh dear—this isn’t very good at all. You drink more than twenty units of alcohol a week?’

      Oh, God. If she figured out I had deliberately rounded down by five units I would probably be on the first bus out of here to rehab.

      Dr E Bowers cleared her raspy throat.

      ‘Oh, sorry.’ I giggled nervously in a way I hadn’t since Girl Guides. ‘I don’t always drink twenty units a week. Obviously it’s just during term time. We normally go out on Thursdays. Oh, and Mondays. Sometimes Wednesdays, but that club night is kind of full of freshers these days so we don’t go as much.’

      Dr E Bowers furrowed her forehead and pursed her lips together. She started tapping away at her keyboard and I held on to the edges of the chair with anxiety. I focused my gaze on her computer. The six letters were no longer there. She had scrolled down the page without commenting on them. I breathed out an audible sigh of relief.

      A sentence appeared at the bottom of the screen. Over twenty units a week, heavy drinker, binge drinks.

      ‘Wait, I’m not a binge drinker!’ I cried. ‘In fact, I’m not even a heavy drinker. I’m a normal drinker—I barely drink anything compared to my friends.’

      ‘Ms Kolstakis, twenty units a week is still rather a lot. You should think about cutting down, or you’ll be back here asking for a new liver in ten years,’ she said severely.

      She tucked her Princess Diana-circa-1995 hair behind her ears and continued, ‘I see you’ve left this section about sexual health blank on your forms. Are you sexually active?’

      I died.

       Am I sexually active?

      I couldn’t even talk to my friends about just how unsexually active I was, let alone Dr E Bowers. Someone who wore glasses with no frames was never going to understand how traumatic it was to be a final-year student who had never had sex. I bet she lost hers through a hole in a bed sheet as they did in the Middle Ages. She stared into my eyes as though she could read my mind. I felt my body perspiring. I wished I’d worn a black top.

      I fidgeted in my seat. ‘Oh, right, well, I’m actually not really very sexually active so … I didn’t bother filling in that section. I’m not pregnant, never have been and never will be at this rate!’

      Her lips stayed in a thin line and she blinked her anaemic-looking eyes at me.

      I made a mental note to stop trying to distract her with failed attempts at humour and quickly added, ‘Honestly, I definitely don’t have any STIs or anything. It’s completely impossible.’

      ‘Ah, so you’ve been tested recently for chlamydia and so on?’ she asked.

      ‘Well … no. I just can’t have chlamydia. I’m … well, I’m a … I mean.’ My voice broke and my words trailed into silence. I couldn’t bring myself to say the word out loud. My best friends grew up just knowing this stuff and I’d spent the past three years hiding it from everyone I’d met at uni. I opened my mouth to try again but no words came out.

      ‘Yes?’ Dr E Bowers blinked and looked directly at me. ‘You’re a …?’

      ‘I’m a v … a vi …’ Great. On top of everything, I’d managed to develop a stutter.

      I took a big breath and tried again. This time the words tumbled straight out of me. ‘I’ve never had sex before so I can’t have any STIs. Or STDs. Well, neither.’

      She blinked again. ‘But you are sexually active?’

       Um. Does one failed attempt at a blow job and a few fingers jabbing into my vagina count as being sexually active?

      ‘I don’t know,’ I replied miserably. ‘I mean, I’ve never had sex but I’ve kind of been to third base.’

      She sighed. ‘Ms Kolstakis, are you sexually active or not? This is a confidential space. I just need to know whether or not to give you a chlamydia test.’

      My stomach plummeted straight down into my five-quid plimsolls, taking my jaw with it. My own doctor didn’t believe I was a virgin. ‘No! I’m telling the truth, honestly. I’ve never had sex. I don’t need a chlamydia test.’

      She squinted at me as though she was looking for any traces of a post-coital glow on my face. ‘Do you have a boyfriend at the moment?’ she finally asked.

      I lowered my eyes in shame. What kind of student was I, who had never had a boyfriend and was unable to answer a single question about sex when I was in my sexual prime?

      ‘No,’ I mumbled.

      She turned to her screen and scrolled up without warning. I started in panic as the six letters emerged on the monitor. I threw my hands up to my face, shielding my eyes from the V-word.

      She sat looking at the screen for twenty-seven seconds before she clicked it away and turned back towards me. Slowly, I lowered my hands from