AUTHOR'S FOREWORD

Previously on 'Skins 24 – Valentine's Day': Mrs Moon is chatted up in the night club by a young guy who buys her a drink and persuades her to dance with him. Jenna goes round to Naomi's house to speak to Emily, is invited in by Gina and they end up discussing their daughters' relationship. Emily and Naomi are in fits of laughter watching Pandora dancing with Thomas. Mary turns up at the club and manages to get JJ away from Katie by arranging for a fit, muscular guy to ask Katie for a dance.

Time: 00.10.43

Mrs Moon followed Stuart hand in hand back to their table laughing and giggling like some silly schoolgirl. She didn't know whether it was that second glass of wine she'd drunk or just the whole giddy, charged up atmosphere of the night club but she couldn't remember when she'd last felt this excited and happy. This gorgeous looking young man who had been throwing her around the dance floor and paying her unheard of compliments for the last hour seemed to have got her completely under his spell.

Of course she was still terrified of being seen by Pandora and Thomas, or even any of their friends, which was why she was careful to stay right on the fringes of the dance floor, well away from her daughter who was strutting her stuff in the massed ranks of the party revellers on the other side of the room. As she threw herself down into her seat she eagerly gulped down another mouthful of wine to clear her throat which had been getting hoarse with all the singing along to the music she'd been doing.

'What on earth made you come over and start talking to me, Stuart?' She had been dying to ask him this question ever since their first hesitant conversation and now she felt sufficiently relaxed and comfortable with him to put it to him. 'I mean, I'm not exactly your type, am I?'

'Why do you think that?' he replied, taking a long, thirsty drink from his glass and leaning back in his seat to contemplate Mrs Moon closely.

'Oh, come on! I'm not like the other girls here, am I? I don't suppose I've fooled you for one moment.'

'Well, okay, I can see you're not a teenager. But you're hardly over the hill either, are you? Besides, I like older women. They're so much more interesting than most of the girls my age that I meet. They know so much more, if you get my drift, and they've usually got a story to tell also. A lot of the girls here can't even string two sentences together.'

Mrs Moon smiled and blushed slightly. 'Well I think you've made a bad choice with me tonight. I haven't got much experience of men and I certainly haven't got an interesting story to tell. Far from it, I'm afraid. I'm really quite dull.'

'No you aren't,' said Stuart, leaning forward and taking her hands in his, sending a ripple of unaccustomed excitement up her spine and causing her to look down at the table in a bid to conceal the thrill that his touch was increasingly giving her. 'To start with, I'd love to know what brought you here tonight. I haven't seen you here before so this must be your first time. You must have had a really good reason for coming here.'

Mrs Moon deliberated for a few seconds if she should tell him the whole story, only part of it or whether to make something up. In the end she couldn't bring herself to lie to this nice young man who had been so kind to her and fun to be with so she decided to take her life in her hands and just go for it.

'I wanted to see what my daughter and her……young man were up to.'

'You've got a daughter? I can hardly believe that. You don't look old enough!' It was a corny old line, he knew, but it often worked and in any case on this occasion it happened to be true.

'Stop it!' giggled Mrs Moon, well aware that he was flattering her but liking it enormously just the same. She continued with her explanation for her bizarre appearance in the club.

'She's been seeing this boy behind my back for some time, you see, but I gave them permission to come here tonight. Only, I wanted to…….check up on them, I suppose…….make sure she wasn't doing anything bad, you know……….'

'Like what?' said Stuart, intrigued and surprised that the shy, nervous woman sitting opposite him whom he had genuinely found delightful company that evening, could be so bold and determined as to dress up in her daughter's clothes (that gear couldn't be her own, surely, he thought) and go and spy on her in a night club which was clearly so far out of her normal comfort zone. He was impressed.

'Well, terrible things like drugs…..or alcohol……or …..' she turned bright red in the face as she visibly struggled for a while to say the word which as a rule she would never utter out loud, especially when talking about Pandora. Fortunately Stuart came to her assistance, reading her mind very easily. 'Sex?' he whispered, looking straight into her eyes and tightening ever so slightly the hold he had on her trembling hands.

'Yes, please.' The words shot out of her mouth before she could stop herself and she gave a gasp of embarrassment, almost a scream in fact, and shot her hands up to the cheeks of her face in abject horror at what she had just said. 'I didn't mean that! I can't think what came over me! I'm sorry, I'm so…………'

'Hey, relax, will you? It's fine. I know that slipped out by accident. Calm down. Let's have another drink, shall we, to settle our nerves, eh?'

Mrs Moon nodded silently, terrified to open her mouth and say another word now in case she out her foot in it and made a complete fool of herself one more time.

Time: 00.25.16

Emily and Naomi were having a fabulous time on the dance floor, throwing themselves around in complete abandon, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the massed ranks of teenage maelstrom all around them. They were pressed hard against one another, grinding away for all they were worth before suddenly releasing and doing their own little solo fling before coming back to each other for more close-up work. They only had eyes for one another when they were dancing, blotting out everyone else and focussing solely on their own little dream world which they alone inhabited.

They had long since shrugged off any nerves or reservations they may once have had about displaying their feelings for each other in public – besides, here in this club, which was a favourite haunt of theirs and the rest of the gang, nobody gave a toss, no-one batted an eyelid at the sight of two girls dancing so intimately together, with their hands all over each other. Even if they hadn't been such familiar faces to most of the regular party crowd their passionate embraces, movements and attentions wouldn't have caused so much as a ripple of disapproval or outrage. They had always felt among friends here, accepted for who they were, not what they might represent.

As the record they had been so frenetically and suggestively dancing to came to an end, they looked at each other, exchanged silent nods and made their way out of the crowd and back to their drinks at the side of the floor.

'Who's that girl JJ's dancing with?' asked Naomi, amused to see their normally terribly shy friend who was famously diffident and unsure with girls looking so relaxed and at ease with this strange young girl that none of them had seen before.

'No idea,' replied Emily as she swept back her sweat-stained hair from her face and took a large gulp from her drink to cool herself down. 'All I know is that one minute he was dancing with Katie and looking very awkward and uncomfortable trying to keep up with her and the next she had moved on to some huge muscle man and he was dancing with this new girl.'

'Do you think he's pulled, then?' laughed Naomi in astonishment. That would be a first, she thought, assuming you didn't count his one night with Emily which you certainly DIDN'T, in her opinion – that was a completely different 'one-off'.

'I don't know. I really hope so. He so needs a girlfriend to help him come out of his shell. He needs to get more confidence to stand up to people like Cook and tell them not to jerk him around. Having a girlfriend would be a huge thing for him.' The genuine concern in Emily's voice told of her deep affection for JJ and her long held desire for him to grow as a person and become more confident and comfortable with who he was, just like she had done over the last six months or so.

'Hey, look at this now. He's bringing her over. Maybe he's going to introduce us to her.'

'Perhaps he's looking for us to give our approval.'

'What, like taking her home to meet the parents?' Naomi pulled a face at Emily, aghast at the image that JJ might see Emily and her as his surrogate parents. 'Jesus, please say it's not like that. I don't think I could handle the responsibility of looking after JJ.'

Emily giggled at Naomi's obvious discomfort at the idea of being a Mum to JJ and gently took hold of her hand and kissed it lightly. 'Don't worry, gorgeous, I'll be his second Mum if he really needs one. You can just be a kind of distant aunt, if you like.'

'Oh, thanks a bunch! That makes me sound like some sad old shrivelled up hag with no friends and no life at all!'

'Hi guys!' said JJ beaming all over his flushed, sweat-filled face as he and Mary interrupted their conversation. 'I want you to meet Mary. I met her at the water park this morning and we arranged to meet up again tonight here. Mary, this is Emily and Naomi, two of my closest friends from college.'

The girls exchanged greetings and Naomi shot a sly, wicked glance at JJ before giving in to the urge to make a telling remark about Katie's rapid disappearing act from JJ's half-hearted clutches.

'So have you dumped poor Katie already, JJ? Not that I blame you, of course. Mary seems so much nicer.'

'Um, not exactly,' said JJ, not quite sure how to answer that one. He didn't want to say anything bad that might upset Emily. 'I mean, we weren't going out together, really, were we? I just brought her here so she wouldn't have to turn up on her own.'

'That was my doing, palming off Katie on to some other guy. I wanted to have JJ all to myself,' explained Mary, smiling shyly at Emily and Naomi who smiled back at her.

'Sweet!!' said both girls in perfect harmony and all four of them burst out laughing at the touching way the couple were of one mind and one voice.

'So, are you two going out together?' asked Naomi, looking at them with barely concealed anticipation and curiosity.

'Um…..I…..I don't know……' said JJ, clearly thrown by such a typically direct question from the tall blonde. 'Are we?' he asked, turning to Mary and looking at her with much uncertainty, metaphorically crossing his fingers behind his back.

'Oh, I think so, JJ,' said Mary, casually slipping a hand into his. 'Definitely!' and JJ's face lit up like a beacon into the widest of smiles on hearing his hopes confirmed.

Time: 00.51.27

Jenna looked at her watch and almost fell off her chair in astonishment. She had completely lost track of the time and had no idea it had got quite so late. Probably the couple of whiskies she had been offered by Kieran to calm herself down and 'keep me company' as he had cheerfully and very persuasively put it had had some effect on her ability to keep track of time, she thought. Plus, the emotional nature of their conversation had left her drained, confused and utterly disorientated. She apologised for having kept them up so late – 'there's no need to apologise, we never go to bed early in this house,' Gina had reassured her, and got up to go.

'I'm so glad we had this chat,' said Gina warmly as she accompanied Jenna to the front door, after motioning to Kieran to stay where he was in his comfy chair, seeing that he was already half asleep anyway. 'I've been worried about Emily staying over here so much. Not that I mind her staying here, far from it, she's adorable, but I've been worried that she's been feeling ostracised from her home and her family and I wouldn't want that to happen.'

'I'm glad we talked as well. It's made me feel much better. I think I can see things a little differently now. Maybe I will take your advice and invite Naomi round one evening for dinner with the family. I guess it's about time they all got to meet her, if she and Emily are……………well, you know….such close friends.'

Gina had to suppress with some difficulty a smile and a slight giggle – Jenna still couldn't quite bring herself to say the words 'lovers' or 'girlfriends'. They still clearly were getting stuck in her throat and wouldn't come out yet. Oh well, give her time, she said to herself, this must be all very new to her and she's still trying to get her head around it.

'I think that would be a great place to start,' she said nodding encouragingly. 'I'll speak to both the girls tomorrow and encourage Naomi to accept the invitation. Do you have any message you'd like me to give to Emily?'

'Just tell her I'm so sorry about the card and could she please call me some time tomorrow morning after she gets up?'

'Better make that tomorrow afternoon,' pointed out Gina with a wry grin. 'They'll be sleeping off tonight's excesses all morning, I shouldn't wonder.'

But not in separate beds, fretted Jenna, shaking her head imperceptibly as she walked down the garden path and headed for home.

Time: 01.14.53

Cook lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply on it and puffed the smoke defiantly into the cold early morning air. He had come outside for some peace and quiet, a bit of personal space to think and breathe, away from the mind-numbing intensity of the pounding music and the senseless, trivial chatter of the people around him. He had intended to get rat-arsed that evening but somehow he had found that his heart just wasn't in it. Unusually for him, such a simple exercise which he would normally pull off effortlessly without even having to try was proving to be beyond him.

He didn't know what had happened to the girl – he hadn't clapped eyes on her for an hour or more, although she had agreed to join him and the others in the club. Cook presumed that she was more worried about hanging around on the streets and being seen by her irate father than she had any particular desire to drown her sorrows in a dancing and boozing blitz. They had spoken briefly about their situation to begin with but her mind was still made up – she wanted rid of the baby and she expected Cook to do his duty and stump up the cash for the abortion. He had begged her to change her mind, without being able to put forward a single convincing reason for her to keep the baby other than it was HIS child and she didn't have the right to take it away from him. They had exchanged words, most of them foul and abusive, and she had stormed off fuck knows where and he had seen neither hide nor hair of her since.

He puffed furiously on his cigarette, reflecting his mood and the inner turmoil that was threatening to engulf him and swallow him whole. A few other people were standing outside like him having a fag break but they were largely couples who were too wrapped up in each other to pay him much attention. Anyone who did show him any interest was met with a typical Cook scowl that shouted out 'Fuck off! Back off unless you want a smack.'

He finished his cigarette and threw the butt aimlessly on to the ground but felt no great desire to return inside – he didn't feel there wasn't anything in there for him. So he just sat down on a ledge and stared off into the distance, wishing time had stood still and that it was still twenty-four hours ago when life was grand and he didn't have a care in the world. The sound of a pair of familiar voices dragged him out of his pointless reveries and back to grim reality.

'Cook! Are you okay?' Freddie and Effy were walking towards him, cigarettes in hand, having come outside with the same purpose in mind and spotted their mate sitting on his own.

'Sweet. Never better, guys.' Cook lied, not even bothering to look up at them for more than a second or two before resuming his long distance navel-gazing. Effy and Freddie exchanged glances and went to sit down alongside him, huddling up against each other for warmth.

'What the hell are you going to do, man?' asked Freddie after a brief silence.

'Fuck knows, Freds. There ain't much I can do, is there? '

'Have you spoken to the girl?' Effy's soft, hushed tones at least made Cook look up and meet her gaze even if there was no hint of any spark of hope in his eyes.

'Oh yeah, I've spoken to her, alright.'

'And?' the couple persisted with their enquiries in unison.

'She doesn't want to know, does she? She says she doesn't want to fuck up her life by having a baby at sixteen. She says what would be the point seeing as I wouldn't be interested in hanging around to be a father for more than five minutes.'

'Cook, you know she's right, don't you? However much you might hate the idea of getting rid of it, a kid's the last thing you need in your life right now. Surely you can see that?' Freddie had decided that if the truth was going to hurt, then so be it. He wasn't going to give Cook what he wanted to hear just because they were best mates.

'So tell me. Freds, what do I need in my life right now? What have I got at the moment that's worth anything?'

'You've got all of us,' said Effy and she laid a hesitant hand on his arm as if to reassure him that she was speaking from the heart. 'You've got your friends.

'Oh yeah, I forgot. Friends who screw each other up. Friends who take away from you the only thing that was worth having. Yeah, right. How could I walk away from them?'

'Oh, well if you're going to bang on about that again, then what's the point,' said Freddie, angrily getting to his feet and giving Cook a withering look which spoke of contempt for his general attitude as much as it did of pity at his unenviable circumstances.

'Cook, come inside with us. Come back and join the rest of the gang. They're concerned for you, you know. Sitting out here on your own feeling sorry for yourself won't do you any good. For fuck's sake, I've seen what can happen if you do!'

Cook looked up at an anguished Effy and read in her eyes the genuine anxiety and pain she was feeling, not just for him but for her mother too. This sudden, sharp reminder that there was someone else he knew who was worse off than him seemed to jolt him out of his self-pity and depression. He got up, snatched what was left of a cigarette out of Freddie's mouth, puffed on it a couple of times and then chucked away the butt end. Both Effy and Freddie smiled ruefully at the first sight of the old Cook for some considerable time and the three of them trudged wearily back towards the side door of the club.

'Come on then, campers. The night's still young, I guess. Anything can still happen.'

Time: 01.40.28

JJ and Mary, Emily and Naomi and Pandora and Thomas were all huddled together in a group, taking a much needed breather, taking in some fluids and wiping the perspiration off their brows. They had all been giving it some serious welly on the dance floor and were now enjoying taking a short break and watching Katie in full flow, turning on the charm and wrapping her new victim around her little finger.

'The words spider and web come to mind, don't they?' said Naomi, laughing and the others nodded, appreciating the analogy. Katie had certainly got the poor bastard in her sights and was intent on luring him in to her deftly spun web to meet his inevitable fate. He was like putty in her hands as she wriggled her slight but perfectly proportioned body all along his tall frame, shaking her chest unashamedly and wiggling her arse back and forth against his groin while he lapped it up with a huge grin on his face. His luck was in that night and he knew it and he wasn't going to do a damn thing to stop it.

Suddenly in amidst the pulsating, heaving mass of dancing teenagers, there rose up an almighty raucous cheer, followed by a crescendo of laughter and the gang all instinctively looked over towards the source of the noise to see what was going on. All they could make out from where they were standing was that someone, clearly in considerable distress, seemed to be attempting to plough an unlikely furrow through the teeming mass of humanity. They watched, mildly curious and amused, as this person, who they could make out was a girl as she got nearer to them, was barging her way through and past everyone in her path as she lurched with ever increasing desperation towards the safety of the edge of the dance floor. She appeared to be hotly pursued by some guy who was trying to help her to get out of the crowd and it didn't take much guesswork to work out that this girl was trying to head for the toilets near to the entrance before she presumably threw up all over the floor.

The gang smiled and giggled in typical show of disrespect for a fellow party reveller in distress and eagerly waited to see if she was going to make it to the ladies in time. Sadly it was not to be, despite her emerging finally from the tightly packed crowd on the dance floor, As she frantically ran over towards the toilets, she tripped up in her unseemly haste and fell on her hands and knees, right in front of the gang who observed with a mixture of sympathy and embarrassment on her behalf as she proceeded to vomit copiously and gloriously all over the floor, making hugely off-putting chuntering sounds as she did so.

A hush had fallen on the gang as they now saw that this had gone beyond a laughing matter and the girl was clearly in need of help to get her up on her feet and guide her towards the sanctuary of the ladies where she could recover her poise and dignity in relative peace. Ever the Good Samaritan, Pandora was the first to step forward, despite wrinkling her nose in distaste at the sight and smell of the technicolour yawn on the floor beside the poor girl and knelt down to come to her assistance. She reached out a hand towards the poor unfortunate and said, 'You poor thing! Are you okay? Here, take my hand and I'll help you over to the toilets.'

The sickly girl, who had been hunched over the floor, her face hidden from view, while she was throwing up, now slowly raised her head to look up at Pandora in gratitude for the sound of a friendly voice at a time of great need and vulnerability. As she tried to focus on the face of her kind saviour, she heard a shriek of disbelief and she stared hard at the girl who had just knelt down beside her.

'MUM!!' screamed Pandora in utter astonishment, stunned to see the unmistakeable face of her mother looking up at her with a glazed, frozen expression which told of a person totally out of control of her senses and completely appalled at the sight of her embarrassed daughter looking down at her in obvious bewilderment.