With a fast tracked education in music and life- all walks, I start out 21 a secret hedonist; part of a colony of young followers, attatched to nothing and no one, ‘where we going next shouts the front to the back’ -suddenly changing direction. I collect new best friends at midnight- Friday and leave them first thing Sunday, thrilled I’ll never get to know these twisted, colorful creatures in the morning, and terrified if I did, they might look like all those other straight, grey shapes that pass through Monday to Friday so ordinary and full of wool, and me still one of them.

It’s Monday. I snuggle up to my first love, for a night of icecream we ate on our holidays and our favorite comedy; spooning him- with melting loyalty. Our first anniversary balloon hovers unwelcomely in the corner of the bedroom of his mum’s house, as pink and rude as a dog’s erection. He pulls me tighter for a crushing spoon, not noticing his little bird has turned into a fork.

‘So what do you want for this Christmas baby?’ I think of friends that would fizz full of acomplishment to be asked this; three months early, and I know I should point out a necklace hanging with Cubic Zirconia he can save for. Instead, I’m appalled at his assumption of all that time he thinks we have left together. My mum hopes its forever. I stay quiet, murmuring something about the Next Catalogue, cheating my way next to him through till Friday; in a blur of Nandos dates- as a vegetarian, two sex positions I’m tired of and a part time job as a waitress at the greyhound stadium-to pay me through the uni degree I haven’t started yet, and all of it done with a fake ascent to feeling content, and content even being enough at 21.

I wear myself out being normal; frenzied by Friday for my fix of me. Friends appear, holding my hands through club doors, across dirty floors to bars paved with gold and Djs that make tunes of nothing. My boyfriend watches enviously on the sidelines of my youth-at its most precious on the weekends, drinking Stella at his local, telling his mates:  I’ve changed.

First love goes dark before Christmas, and he fucks an international student. After emotional walks on cliff tops and crisis talks on the precipice, we state irreconcilable differences: He cheated on me. My doorbell rings. His mum has returned the ballon folded into four neat corners: ‘We hoped you were going to get married’. I jump forward, a blur of confidence and Converse; never needing to lose the self righteousness of a true hedonist and tell him about my week spent rolling round with my pants barely on:  teased, educated and irrevocably altered on expensive sheets, by a beguiling older man- a custom made jewellery designer.

Life continues as it was for a bit, without him. I stand in the queue of hot food ready for plating:’ Table 2 for the Lamb’.  A roar of expletives tells me the ageing hag serving hears me, thundering towards me in her crocs and corns- angry at all   might have ahead of me. The meat’s dumped violently infront of me, a platter of congealed fatty innocence, and phoney, homemade Baxter’s gravy-now running over my hands and spoiling my cheap uniform. She appears from somewhere- for me, and I’m passsed a tea towel and a smile. The self conscious start of friendship: ‘I’m Hope’- picking up my flushed hand to clean it: ‘Hey that’s a really beautiful ring, where did you get it?’