The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

reached the main road, and had to wait for the pedestrian signal. A car full of lads came past and slowed right down when it was level with us. There was music blaring out and they were shouting something. Then one of them leaned right out and spat on me. A horrible big glob of white slime sliding down my bare arm. I screamed. I wasn’t hurt, it was just the shock. Nat grabbed a handful of leaves from a dusty little garden behind us, and quickly scooped it off. I asked him what they were shouting.
    â€˜Just crap.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Rubbish. They’re dickheads.’
    I knew he’d heard something he didn’t want to tell me. I felt like scrubbing my arm until the layer of skin they had polluted was scraped right off. I was furious but there was another feeling too, like a dog that slinks back towards you after you’ve yelled at it, looking up at you with his eyes ashamed and hopeful. I wanted them to come back so I could prove to them that I wasn’t the sort of person you should spit at. I tried to pull myself together. ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked Nat. ‘If you’re leaving?’
    â€˜Animal Liberation Front. I’m going underground!’ He looked extremely pleased with himself.
    I remembered what Lisa’d said at the first meeting. ‘You think what happens to animals is more important than what’s happening to women.’
    â€˜No, I think MDS came out of this kind of research, and scientists should be stopped before they invent something even worse. D’you really think it’s OK to torture animals?’
    I didn’t but bashing scientists just wasn’t the most important thing. It seemed childish, cloak and dagger stuff, underground , breaking the law in the name of the ALF. I thought we could achieve more inside YOFI.
    Then the next day Sal said she wanted to start coming to meetings. I was surprised because she was usually busy with Damien. But she came and had tea with me and we walked down to the community centre together. I asked her what had happened to Damien.
    â€˜Football.’
    He worked at the leisure centre so that wasn’t very surprising, but she said, ‘He’s obsessed with it.’
    â€˜What d’you mean?’
    â€˜His football mates. They meet up every night.’
    â€˜Every night ?’
    â€˜Well. About four times a week. For a practise and a drink, he says.’
    â€˜You think he’s seeing someone else?’
    She shrugged. ‘He’s an arse.’ But she didn’t say it as if she couldn’t care less, in the usual Sal way.
    â€˜Sal?’
    â€˜Oh, he’s just being weird.’
    I knew it must be something embarrassing, because she used to tell me most things. Then she suddenly said, ‘I think he might be gay.’ I couldn’t help it, I just went ‘Ooh ducky!’ and we both burst out laughing. I thought about the times I’d seen him, when he was all over her.
    â€˜He’s changed,’ she insisted, ‘I can’t explain it, but the way he is now, he’s impatient, he’s kind of contemptuous.’
    â€˜Well sack him. Plenty more fish in the sea.’ Sal’d been going out with lads since we were 11 and not one of them had ever dumped her. It was hard to see why she was making such a fuss over Damien.
    â€˜He wants me to go out with them, him and his football mates.’
    â€˜Well can’t you?’
    â€˜I can. But they drink themselves stupid and only listen to each other.’
    â€˜Haven’t they got girlfriends?’
    â€˜On Friday I was the only girl. He changes when he’s with them. It’s like he’s bored with me.’
    With everything that was happening in the world, all Sal could do was obsess about a stupid man. ‘Forget him,’ I said.
    I wish she had. Or I wish I had taken her more seriously. But I took over organising the airport protest, and I was so busy