Primperfect by Deirdre Sullivan Page B

would totally ruin my plans to go to millinery school.’
    â€˜Babies are wont to do that. It is a tough one. Do you know what sort of contraception you want?’
    â€˜Well, I kind of want to get the pill, but I can’t ask Mam’s GP for it, because they are, like, friends and stuff, so it would totally get back to her, which is why it would be better to go to the family planning clinic and get it from someone who is a doctor who doesn’t still try to give me lollipops and stickers when I visit. Also, I am NOT buying condoms.’
    She said this as if buying condoms were up there with selling heroin.
    I offered to buy them for her, which was actually pretty generous of me, because I’d get a bit nervous about that sort of thing too. I don’t even like buying tampons.
    â€˜Would you? Wow!’ she said. ‘I don’t know, though. Isn’t buying condoms a bit of a slutty thing to do?’
    â€˜What? No! Why would you think that?’
    â€˜Well, you have to buy, like, this big box of them. I mean, I think you can get, like, little packs of three, but that’s still committing to have sex three times, which is huge. I mean, I’m not even sure I want to once, you know?’
    â€˜Buying condoms does not mean you have to use them, Ciara.’
    â€˜But they’d only go to waste otherwise.’
    â€˜Condoms are NOT ham sandwiches. They don’t like “go off” or anything if you don’t use them within six weeks.’
    â€˜I think buying them is the boy’s job.’ She nodded her head, the way she sometimes does when she agrees with herself. ‘Only … I don’t want to ask Syzmon to buy them, because I don’t want him getting any ideas. I want it to be a lovely surprise if I decide to share my body with him.’
    Ciara actually says stuff like

    I lent her some of Mum’s Viking books a couple of years ago and they really took.
    â€˜I wonder if Joel is sharing his body with that Duncan creep?’ I tried not to sound like I was making air quotes with my voice when I said ‘sharing his body’. It was really challenging.
    â€˜You are NOT to ask him that on Saturday.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    â€˜Because it is private, and you need to woo him back with niceness and not being judgey before he is your friend-you-can-say-anything-to again.’
    This is sound advice, but I am not sure if I will be able to follow it. I can’t believe Ciara is thinking about having sex when I don’t even have a boyfriend. It’s so unfair.
    Not that I want to lose my virginity, but I would like to have the option, in the context of a loving relationship, of course. I’ll most likely end up losing it to Kevin (or someone just as bad) on a pile of coats, while she gets roses and scented candles and a soft and tender playlist she is probably already in the process of compiling.
    Mum didn’t lose it to Fintan. Which is why reading your mum’s old diaries is a mix of

    She had a secondary-school boyfriend, who she was with for the first six months of college. His name was Seán, which is a very normal name for a man to have. She broke up with him for not being THE ONE . She has this whole bit about wishing she had met him when she was twenty-five or thirty and ready to get married and all that. She was weirdly sure she was going to get married. It is kind of sad she never met anyone she liked enough, apart from Fintan for an ill-advised period preand-post-me.

Sometimes I wish I had stayed with Seán. I wouldn’t be happy, but I wouldn’t be pregnant either. Probably.
    Quote from Prim’s mum’s diary
    um loved me once I came out. I know this for a fact because she has written about it. But I’m kind of hurt by the fact that she wasn’t happy about the possibility of a me for a long time. She didn’t want a baby. She didn’t want to stop being irresponsible and she didn’t want