Well, it all started the autumn before Labour won the election -- I remember
Daddy was still at the Ministry.

I mean everyone liked me at school before then, though they were kind of rude --
they’d say sarky stuff like ‘lights on, nobody home’ and that sort of thing. But
I always used to say Princess Di only had one GCSE and that was in hamsters or
something -- and *she* married a Royal (not that it did her much good, poor
darling.)

At least it proved you didn't have to be brainy to be world-famous and be loved
by everyone. So I muddled along OK.

But even my worst enemy couldn’t say I’m not pretty now, though I wasn’t always.
So what if I’m not terribly academic? "Not terribly academic." That’s how Mummy
puts it. The girls at school weren’t so tactful. They used to call me ‘Toosh’
which was short for (well, you can guess) thick as two short planks, but I *am*
pretty. Tall and thin and pretty. At least I was thin. Now I’m...

But I’m telling you this all in the wrong order.

That April I got glandular fever really badly. Well, that was a sort of blessing
in disguise, because I couldn’t do my exams that June so they had to give me a
sort of mish-mash mark for the two years work instead and I’m terrible at exams,
so I probably did better. At least I didn’t have to bribe Jilly to break my wrist
with a hockey stick (which is what I’d decided was the only thing to do if I
actually had to sit those wretched exams). So she was relieved as well. I mean
she may be a dyke but she isn't a sadist.

Anyway I was officially ill, and I really did feel grim -- so I flopped about the
garden on a sun-lounger for six weeks and the weight just fell off me. Even
though I’m 18 now I never had any tits to speak of before -- just a sort of
straight up and down, and podgy with it. Mummy called it puppy fat but it looked
more like lard to me. Not only no tits but no proper hips either -- just a sort
of lumpy straightness.

Well, by the end of July about 30 pounds had gone and all of a sudden I had
cheekbones emerging out of the fat and my eyes got bigger and as for the rest of
me -- well, it was heaven! I was so skinny -- and once all the bulges had
disappeared it turned out I had amazing legs -- all slim and curvy, and so long
too -- the length of your legs isn't the sort of thing you notice when the rest
of you looks like a teenage turnip. Legs right up to her arse, Daddy calls it
(but not about me, about other girls when he doesn’t think I’ve heard him.)

I’d call him a chauvinist if I knew how to pronounce it. I always wonder about
that -- these words that keep coming up -- there’s a perfume my dressage teacher
likes, Anais Anais (I saw some in her handbag) and I kept wishing they’d put on a
TV advert for it because I wanted to buy her some for a Chrissy present but I
didn’t dare because I didn’t know how to say it. I thought those frightfully
upstage cosmetics department ladies would laugh like drains if I couldn’t say it
properly, so I got her Belgian chocolates instead. Because of course if they'd
had an advert with people actually saying the name I would have known, wouldn’t
I?

It makes me quiet in company, that sort of thing. I’m always so busy listening
hard so as not to miss how people say things. I’ll never forget the shame of
calling INXS the Inks -- and they weren’t even in at the time. All my heroes seem
to dying these days... I was fond of Mother Theresa too.  It's all terribly,
terribly sad.... Only last night Daddy asked if I couldn't get a crush on that
nice Tony Blair.

Anyway, so I was all thin and wobbling round the house because I still felt
pretty weak. I felt like Jilly’s pony Toffee’s foal -- all legs and jellified. I
had a lovely tan because of all that lying in the garden and my hair was quite a
lot lighter. My hair was a sort of mousey brown all the time before, but it was a
scorcher of a summer and what with sitting in the sun all that time I still had
brownish hair underneath but loads of almost white streaks on the top and round
my face. And once she saw how much they suited me, Mummy sent me to her
hairdresser to have more put in.

I looked pretty amazing, I have to say. All sun tan and blonde streaks, wonderful
cheekbones and ribs and hipbones. Mummy looked at me one morning over breakfast
and suggested modelling school. Seriously, she did. I kept looking in the mirror
to make sure I was still there.

I remember Daddy came home one night from the House and Mummy and I were still up
in our nighties by the kitchen table painting our toenails and he looked me up
and down and said "Christ, wonders will never cease!" which I still think was
bloody rude, though I didn’t say so. He may be tetchy but he is generous if you
don't annoy him so I tend to keep my mouth shut. Besides which, Mummy always says
that we must make allowances for the pressures of high office which makes him
sound as if he works on the 120th floor or something instead of being a
Government minister. Mummy used to say it’s not easy being a member of such an
unpopular Government so I asked why they didn’t just do something nice and then
they’d be popular and she sighed. She does that quite a lot.

Anyway, I was still pretty wobbly, as I said, so Mummy said I must go away to
convalesce and she sent me to Aunt Dolly in Wales. Aunt Dolly’s rich -- well even
by our standards she’s quite rich, and she never married. She always said she'd
rather have a cook than a cock. Mummy says Aunt Dolly's coarse.

She has a huge tatty mansion on a cliff with a private beach and spends her time
gardening in a terrible hat mixed up with listening to the BBC World Service on a
portable radio. So she didn’t talk much to me, and I didn’t say much to her. Most
of the time she was crouched over a herbaceous border or something. But every
afternoon after another delicious lunch she’d sort of grunt and we’d both get up
from whatever we were doing and either go for amazingly long walks or get the
horses tacked up and hack off inland for a couple of hours. So I got fitter and
fitter, and as the weeks went past I realised that I was feeling brilliant.

All this stay in Wales would've been really boring, and I wouldn’t have told you
all about it if it weren’t for the tits. You see Aunt Dolly’s beach wasn’t
overlooked and I took my headphones and piles of Vogue and Jackie Collins so I
just used to go down every morning and lie there in the sun. Well, the overlooked
bit's not very important, it just explains why I was so surprised later. I mean I
really had no idea what sort of effect I had on men until I got back, because I
didn't see any men and, more importantly, they didn't see me.

Anyway, that month in Wales my tits just sort of sprouted. I went there looking
like all elegant like a greyhound -- which was marvellous -- but by the time I
was ready to go back to Surrey I was still skinny everywhere else but I had huge
great tits and a high roundy bum and everything. I couldn’t believe it. In fact
one day I just lay there on my back on the beach sneaking peeks at them under my
sunnies every five minutes to see if I could catch them at it -- I was
half-convinced that if I looked hard enough I’d actually see them growing, sort
of like those speeded-up flower-opening films. But I didn’t, of course. I think
they must’ve done it while I was asleep.

Well, I was thrilled, as you can imagine, but that was nothing to the reaction I
got when I finally went back to school in the middle of the autumn term. I mean
everyone liked me before, but now they really liked me. Jilly was a bit offish,
but everyone else was ever so nice. Sophie and Victoria, who were always so
snooty, asked me to go shopping with them. All of a sudden I was the sort of girl
everyone wanted to hang out with.

Gangs of men on building sites shrieked at me like gibbons, old men slipped off
their Zimmer frames when I went into the post office and my terrifying Chemistry
master went red all the way up his neck whenever he looked at me and then left a
really embarrassing poem in my pigeon hole.

It was nice other girls and older men thought I looked so great, but the best
thing was the boys. They didn’t know how to treat me any more. All of a sudden I
was the girl everyone fancied, and most of them seemed terrified of me.

But then, two weeks after I got back, Oliver, the best looking boy in the school 
-- if not the world -- asked me out.

Yes, Oliver, who always used to say I should hang a 'Vacancies' sign off my nose,
asked me to go round to use his pool at the weekend. I mean we’ve got a pool,
everyone has, but his is covered and heated. It’s in a sort of stained-glass
house. His father’s in the music business and he was off on tour somewhere,
Oliver said.

Oliver is utter bliss. He’s drop dead gorgeous with dark brown eyes and hair that
sort of flops. He has this truly amazing voice. And he’s got that sort of
‘rightness’ -- you know, how some people are just naturally always wearing the
perfect thing and if they turn up at a party without an invite they’re never
gatecrashers it just seems like some sort of clumsy cock-up by the people who are
giving the party who should have known to invite Oliver in the first place. Well,
you know what I mean, don’t you?

So when he asked me to go swimming I nearly dropped down dead with delight. I
spent the rest of the week thinking he must’ve muddled me up with someone else,
but Saturday came and I went and he seemed really pleased to see me, so that was
all right.

So we went through to the pool house and he poured me a real martini which I
hadn’t had before and didn’t like much, and we decided to get ready to go
swimming. And I must say it was nice when I was getting changed not to be
worrying about whether I looked too awful or whether the tissues I shoved down
the front of my swimsuit would float out. Because of course I didn’t need tissues
any more. In fact what I really needed was a new swimsuit. Because there wasn’t
really enough of this one now.

Anyway, I went back out of the little room thing and there he was changed
already, standing by the pool with his back to me. I felt a bit silly so I called
over "Last one in’s a bluebottle!" and he turned round and when he saw me his
mouth opened and he sort of absent-mindedly stepped back and fell in. He made a
terrible splash and the worst thing was he was still holding his glass when he
went in and it cracked and he cut his hand.

Well, I may be as thick as two short planks but I did do a first aid course, so
when he came back up the steps with blood everywhere I knew it only looked so
awful because of the water spreading the blood out. So I got a towel and started
mopping him up. He sat down and I bent over him and the next thing I knew his
chin was sort of in my cleavage and then he was kissing me and saying over and
over again "God, Kim, you’re so gorgeous" and I kissed him back.

Soon things got quite steamy and I thought I was doing quite well since the only
other boy who’d ever kissed me was Alastair who’s in the remedial group and has
spots. And Oliver was sort of nuzzling my lovely new tits, which felt all shivery
and it was all lovely.

But then all of a sudden I felt his finger sliding inside the bottom of my
swimsuit and I thought "Babies. That’s how they happen." So I pulled away. And I
wouldn’t let him back up there whatever he said. He said he would use something
but I said that if that sort of thing worked there wouldn’t be all these single
parents Daddy grumbles on about. So I wouldn’t.

Oliver went all funny. He wouldn’t speak to me. I’m not stupid, well, not that
stupid, and I knew what I’d done to him. It was practically bursting out of his
shorts. And he was all excited and cross, and I sat there miserably thinking that
I’d ruined my first big date.

Then he took my hand, sighed, and said "I hope you'll miss me, Kim."

"Why?" I said. "Where are you going?"

"Don’t you know?" he said.

"Don't I know what?" I replied, studying his face for clues.

"I thought all girls our age knew," he said. "It’s not as if it isn’t serious."

"What?" I said anxiously. My voice was getting higher, but I could tell that I
was missing out on something major. Story of my life, but I was determined to be
one of the girls who knew her way about from now on. Streetwise, that’s what
they’d call me.

"Well, if you get a boy -- or a man -- turned on past a certain point he’s got to
have an orgasm or it kills him."

"God how awful," I breathed. "How does it happen?"

"Well, the frustration sort of clogs up the blood and once it get to the heart it
just goes Kerpow and that’s it. One dead Oliver."

What a terrible choice. No wonder people made such a song and dance about sex in
films and stuff. Either I was going to have to be an unmarried mother (which
would kill Mummy and Daddy -- especially Daddy) or Oliver would soon be lying
stiff and cold at the age of 17. And it would all be my fault.

"Oh no," I gasped. "I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can I do that won’t give me
a baby?"

So he showed me. He told me it might help to think of it as a form of first aid.

I must say his thing looked rather sweet once you’d got used to the sort of angry
red colour, and it was ever so soft -- well, the skin was. The thing itself was
incredibly hard, and a dear little teardrop was nestled in the tiny little mouth
at the top like a drop of rain on a rose. Quite poetic, in a way.

I couldn’t quite get the hang of moving my hand up and down. It was like you were
constantly rearranging the skin on this inner pole, as it were. I wanted to do it
properly, but I was frightened of hurting him. I kept having a go and then my
wrist would ache, or the position would seem a bit funny so I’d stop and change
hands. I was trying to be gentle, but he got a bit tense and said it wasn’t a
stick of celery, grip it harder -- so I did and then he told me I wasn’t
conducting an orchestra and to take care because he wanted to stay attached to
it. So I said something stupid like he could do it his bloody self, and burst
into tears.

Well, it must have been the stick of celery business because he suddenly said "Of
course, you could suck it." And of course he was right. So I did. It smelt
different from everything else I’d smelt, but it was rather nice. And it was even
softer when you licked it.

"Pretend it’s an ice cream cone," he suggested, and I liked that idea. I sort of
gripped it with my hands and dived in. I licked all round under the head, and I
played about with its little mouth with the tip of my tongue and I nibbled up and
down the pole bit and I could tell I was doing it right because he was making all
sorts of breathing noises and sighing and making little "Ooo" noises. And it
struck me how nice it was to have someone sigh at me in a "Oh my God that’s
wonderful" way rather than sighing because I’m being a bit of a nuisance.

He was really enjoying it, because after only a little bit he suddenly started to
sort of flex on his chair, pushing his thing up and down the way I suppose you
would if you were actually, you know, doing it, and then he grabbed the back of
my head in an urgent sort of way and said "OHMYCHRIST!... OHMYCHRIST!..
OHMYCHRIST!.. JESUS!" (Which is odd, because he always made a big thing about
being a Buddhist) and all this stuff started spurting in my mouth.

My God, it didn’t half spurt. Loads of it. Pump, pump, pump, hitting the back of
my throat and spilling out down my chin. I was half expecting something to come
out of the end -- I knew my facts of life -- so it wasn't a shock or anything --
and I was glad it was spurting in my mouth and not down below where all the
baby-making stuff lives. But I hadn’t expected there to be quite so much of it.
It tasted lovely, a bit sort of seafoody -- but I’ve got a passion for all those
sorts of tastes, oysters and so forth, and I liked it. In fact I thought the
whole experience was lovely. It made me feel clever and it made me tingle.

When it seemed to be over I swallowed what was left (even I know sperm don’t
travel that way) and sort of mopped up his damp bits with my tongue and then
wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I looked up at Oliver who was looking at
me as though I was the most wonderful girl in the world. "God, but you’re
gorgeous, Kim Nice-but-Dim," he said. "And you suck like an angel."

"I’m going to be good at this." I thought, and I am.

After that first time with Oliver all the boys wanted to go out with me -- it
must be a form of telepathy. I must say the number of dangerous hard-ons the boys
I know suffer from is unbelievable, but it can’t be helped. I’m the most popular
girl in my lot now. Mummy’s thrilled and Daddy’s upped my dress allowance because
I’m always out somewhere nice these days.

But that’s only the boys. The girls all seem to hate me, which baffles me. Jilly
won’t speak to me, and the other girls are all a bit frosty, though I can’t get a
straight answer about why they’re all so glum. Mummy says it’s just me being so
attractive now. She must be right, because I can’t see it’s got anything to do
with the blow-jobs (you see, I even know the right words now).

I mean other girls have dates, don’t they? They have boyfriends? Well, surely
they must have the same problem?

Maybe I’m a softy, but I just couldn’t have the death of another human being on
my conscience. Why I cried buckets when a fox got my rabbit, Puffles (and that
was only last year). Besides which, what would you say at the inquest?

But from a first aid point of view blow-jobs need doing again an awful lot, it
seems to me. I mean only last week I had to go down on Hugh and Thomas in the
back of their dad’s Roller on the way to a ball because they said they couldn’t
control themselves thinking about what was going to happen on our way home after
the ball.

What worries me is how these poor boys manage when there aren’t girls about. I
mean if they did it themselves they'd go blind. That’s what must cause all the
homosexuality in boys schools, I suppose. Makes you wonder why Daddy's lot make
so much fuss about it (in prisons and so forth). I mean, looked at properly, it’s
only a sort of self-defence.

The other girls call me a slut, but they’re just jealous of how much I turn the
boys on. Enough to threaten their very lives. Saving them is my duty as an
Englishwoman and a Conservative. Daddy always used to go on about service to
others. Well, I’m doing my bit. Sophie and the others will just have to live with
themselves if one of their boyfriends suddenly drops down dead one day. Heartless
cows.