Toni Le Busque's stories.

Today I had a visit from my step daughter and her friends.
They ate their junk food lunch of crisps and chocolate and pasta and sandwiches in plastic containers and told me stories about school.
They told me about a boy they knew from school who’d been found hanging, by his mother.
They talked a bit about the circumstances and I asked them what they felt about suicide.
'I'd never do it,' said Bei, 'I like food too much.'
Everyone laughed at that.

Then they told me about a boy at school who, while not handsome, had an amazing personality and was therefore very attractive.
'I don't know how he got his hair, but he has an afro,' says Zoe, 'and it isn't curly.'
All of them agreed that they fancied him.

Then they went into great detail about someone they know, someone from school, who is having a sex change.
They described this person’s hair and physical attributes.

Then they told me about a girl, who while you wouldn’t know it if you saw her in the street, was an extreme slut.

During all of these tales there was laughter.

Then, after a while I told them I was going back to drawing.

'Can we make badges before we go back to school?' they asked, getting excited, reminding me that even though all these 'grown up' events are happening around them, they still have a toe in some kind of childhood.