Memoirs of a Wild Child Read Online Free Page A

it, or both. I settle Holly down on the sofa and tuck her in, kissing her on the temple before taking a moment just to look at her. She’s everything to me. I never imagined that another person could be the centre of my universe, but she is. Holly, and Ben, and the wriggler in my belly, and I’d do anything to protect them all.
    I walk into the bedroom and feeling guilty for neglecting Vinnie, I pick him up and head back into the living room.
    It’s a beautiful day outside. Not particularly warm, but bright and fresh. There’s hardly a cloud in the blue sky, and I’m drawn to the window seat. I sit and prop myself up with some cushions before looking out onto the street.
    I love sitting in the window in moments of quiet. It’s a calm, comfortable spot, and I’m the only one who takes advantage of it, which makes it my little haven in this mad house.
    We live in a fairly quiet area, we don’t get a lot of traffic and the cars that do tend to drive down here, do so slowly, knowing the amount of kids that live here and that they like to all play together outside. Today, some of the older kids are playing football in the garden opposite. I watch them for a minute and smile, they remind me of Rafe, Rosie and me in our younger days. So innocent and free-spirited, before we were tainted by ‘adult’ experiences. I lean my head back and think about the next steps in my life, the ones that I chose to take, and the ones that were chosen for me, but that shaped the woman I became. I open Vinnie and start to write.
     
    As Rosie and I approached sixteen, like most teenage girls, we thought of little else but boys. Rosie was already winning trophies, racing cars, so the boys in school thought she was amazing, and I was amazing by association. It didn’t hurt that from fifteen, I was racking up regular modelling jobs.
    Of course, we weren’t interested in the boys at school. We were interested in the local bad boys, who were two years older, smoked weed, cruised around in their cars and looked smokin’ hot in their Ralph Lauren shirts and Nike Air Max.
    They would try to talk to us when we walked past, whistling and following us down the street. As much as we craved their attention, it scared us a little. We were both still virgins and fairly inexperienced with boys, and they were older. They had done it all.
    If Rafe hadn’t been so preoccupied with trying to figure out what being gay meant, and trying to stick his dick in as much as he could, he’d have kicked ten tonnes of shit out of Rosie and me for going anywhere near Jonah and his friends. They had been in his year at school, and they were bad news.
    Despite showing an interest when they saw us, they never actively pursued us until two major events in our little village occurred. I booked an advertising campaign that put me on the TV every night during Coronation Street, and Rosie beat Lucas, one of Jonah’s gang, in one of the car rallies she competed in. We were the talk of the village and certainly got their attention.
    When Jonah started to ask Rosie to give him a chance, Ben begged us not to get involved with any of them. He didn’t want to see us get hurt. I laughed his warnings off to his face. I told him not to be so stupid. But as Rosie and Jonah became an official couple, and Lucas became more insistent that he and I do the same, I heard Ben’s warnings ringing in my ears and found myself pulling away from them and asking Rosie to pull away with me.
    Holly moans from the sofa and I wait to see if it’s going to turn into a cry. It doesn’t, and within a few brief seconds, she’s breathing softly again. I look down at my words on the page and sigh. I know that this is an important period in my life, and I need to relive it. It really did shape me into the woman I became, but it’s hard, so much happened to us during that time.
    As the cheers of a goal scored ring out from across the street, I take a deep breath and return my pen to Vinnie’s