In the empty staff room, Emma glared at the plate of steaming cheese and corn chips as if it was an enemy that must be defeated. 

Standing  suddenly,  she  crossed  to  Ian‘s  locker  and  plunged  her  hand  into  the  densely packed denim until she found some cigarettes. She took one, lit it, then lifted her spectacles and inspected her eyes in the cracked mirror, licking her finger to remove the tell-tale smears. Her hair was long these days, styleless in a colour that she thought of as ‗Lank Mouse‘. She pulled a strand from the scrunchie that held it in place and  ran finger and thumb along its length, knowing that when she washed it she would turn the shampoo grey. City  hair. She was  pale  from  too  many  late  shifts,  and  plump  too;  for  some  months  now  she  had  been putting skirts on over her head. She blamed all those refried beans; fried then fried again. ‗Fat girl,‘ she thought, ‗stupid fat girl‘ this being one of the slogans currently playing in her head, along with ‗A Third of Your Life Gone‘ and ‗What‘s the Point of Anything?‘

Emma‘s  mid-twenties  had  brought  a  second  adolescence  even  more  self-absorbed  and doom-laden than the first one. ‗Why don‘t you come home, sweetheart?‘ her mum had said on the phone last night, using her quavering, concerned voice, as if her daughter had been abducted. ‗Your room‘s still here. There‘s jobs at Debenhams‘ and for the first time she had been tempted.

Once, she had thought she could conquer London. She had imagined a whirl of literary salons,  political  engagement,  larky  parties,  bittersweet  romances  conducted  on  Thames embankments. She had intended to form a band, make short films, write novels, but two years on the slim volume of verse was no fatter, and nothing really good had happened to her since she‘d been baton-charged at the Poll Tax Riots.

The city had defeated her, just like they said it would. Like some overcrowded party, noone had noticed her arrival, and no-one would notice if she left.

It wasn‘t that she hadn‘t tried. The idea of a career in publishing had floated itself. Her friend Stephanie Shaw had got a job on graduation, and it had transformed her. No more pints of lager and black for Stephanie Shaw. These days she drank white wine, wore neat little suits from Jigsaw and handed out Kettle Chips at dinner parties.