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it’s like they actually like each other, Yazz suspects they have gruesome threesomes, and can’t bring herself to ask

besides, she’s lost count of the women who’ve come and gone to the point that the new ones barely register on her Richter scale of annoyance

there’ll inevitably be a new face around the breakfast table trying to befriend the daughter of their new lover, running around making her toast, omelette with cheese and tomatoes, pouring her juice, washing up the dishes after her

the daughter who’ll drop numerous unsubtle hints when her birthday/Christmas/Easter are approaching

(and why isn’t the marmalade on the table?)

when Yazz talks about her unusual upbringing to people, the unworldly ones expect her to be emotionally damaged from it, like how can you not be when your mum’s a polyamorous lesbian and your father’s a gay narcissist (as she describes him), and you were shunted between both their homes and dumped with various godparents while your parents pursued their careers?

this annoys Yazz who can’t stand people saying anything negative about her parents

that’s her prerogative

anyway, she’s resigned herself to hanging out with the squad at uni rather than going out manhunting

it’s unfortunate that she’s coming of age as one of the Swipe-Like-Chat-Invite-Fuck Generation where men expect you to give it up on the first (and only) date, have no pubic hair at all, and do the disgusting things they’ve seen women do in porn movies on the internet

which she suspects the boys in her halls watch all day and all night, boys who are rarely seen outside their rooms (lectures? what lectures?)

she’s only been on one date at uni, which involved sitting at a bar with a male specimen she’d thought was an interesting person, who was obviously swiping his phone to see if someone more fanciable was in the vicinity before making his pathetic excuses about having to do revision

she left shortly after he did, saw him chatting up a woman in a bar a few doors down when she passed on her way home

Yazz reckons that by the time guys her age want to settle down, her ovaries will be busted and they’ll be on to women half their age who can still drop babies at the drop of a hat

so

even though she’s considered reasonably attractive (as in not 100% ugly), with her own unique style (part 90s Goth, part post-hip hop, part slutty ho, part alien), she’s having to compete with images of girls on fucksites with collagen pouts and their bloated silicone tits out

Yazz has considered dating older guys in their thirties (who are always up for banging teenagers), until she visualizes the nose hair, wrinkly cock and pot belly scenario

so until such time as someone suitable comes along (if he ever will) who can offer proper commitment with a view to a monogamous relationship in the long term (her mother she is not), she’s got herself a booty call in Steve, an American who’s studying for a PhD on ‘the interrelationship and aesthetics of hip hop and racial politics in the eighties’

unfortunately, he’s also got a girlfriend in Chicago, which provokes something of a moral conundrum when they’re in bed together, and she calls and he lies about what he’s doing

Yazz sometimes has sleepless nights worrying she’ll be alone for the whole of her life

if she can’t get a proper boyfriend at nineteen what hope is there for when she’s older?

a couple of Mum’s female friends have been single for decades, not the lesbians who have little problem getting off with each other, but the straight ones who’ve got good jobs and houses and no partner to share it with, who say they’re not prepared to settle at this stage in their lives

Mum accuses them of ‘Looking for Obama Syndrome’

behind their backs

Nenet, the third member of the squad, is engaged to Kadim who’s studying in America, her parents chose him for her

she resisted at first until they threatened to cast her out, and the thought of having to actually find a job after uni and earn her own money, like the rest of them, brought her round

luckily, she hit it off with him once she actually met and got to know him, and is often off for long weekends (like Wednesday to Monday) in Connecticut where he’s studying

even so she gets As for her coursework, she’s that clever

she’s also super-confident and the last person anyone should mess with

when a boy on campus starting sending her explicit texts, she reported him to the university and he narrowly avoided being thrown out

when a classmate was raped and broke down in front of her, Nenet paid for a lawyer who got the rapist imprisoned for six years

after which, they all agree, he’ll be back on the streets raping more women

Waris is dating Einar, a Somali-Norwegian boy she’s been with since they sat in History together at school

they’re both big anime fans and go to London Comic Con every year

Waris draws cartoons as a hobby and is developing a female Somali superhero

who hunts down men who hurt women

and castrates them, slowly

without anaesthetics

while they lounge around, Yazz makes everyone hot chocolate from sachets and offers the shortbread biscuits Mum makes for her as she’s weirdly taken up baking since Yazz went to uni, almost like she realizes she’s not been the perfect picket-fence mum and is making amends

three-quarters of the squad don’t drink much, if at all

Yazz’s mind is her most valuable asset and she’s not going to mess with it

Waris says yes to the hijab and sex outside marriage, no to booze and pork

Nenet says she expects to start drinking after a few years of marriage to Kadim when he takes on his first official mistress, which is what happened with her own mother, who starts the day with a G&T and ends it with a liqueur, having consumed a bottle of wine or three in between

Courtney’s the only one whose social interactions are accompanied by red wine

Yazz was drawn to Waris on the second day of Fresher Week at the welcome party in the sports hall where they both skulked on the periphery; Yazz gravitated towards Waris’s resting bitch face, as she later told her, which Waris took in good humour, asking Yazz if she’d looked in the mirror recently

they agreed that their peers were really immature, while sipping iced tea in a corner of a Starbucks on campus far away from the bedlam of the other freshers running around with their foam parties, disco paintballing, treasure hunts and group pub crawls that were bound to end up with A&E emergencies, Yazz predicted

whose idea was it? she wrote on the official Fresher Week feedback form

to introduce these poor young things to alcohol poisoning the first week they’re away from home?

why don’t you also book them into rehab now instead of waiting for the first signs of liver damage to show in their second year?

Waris

matches her headscarves with the colour of her flowing clothes

she has green days, brown days, blue days, floral days, fluorescent days – never black days (she’s not a traditionalist)

she often sticks her phone just inside her hijab to carry out hands-free conversations, which Yazz tells her is an excellent blend of religiosity and practicality

to which Waris replies that she wears a hijab to make a statement about her Muslim identity, and while there are those who make out it’s a proper religious thing, there’s nothing about women covering up in the Koran, you know?

Waris doesn’t ever leave her room without applying a smooth paste of foundation on to her already perfect complexion

whole tubes of mascara to thicken already forested eyelashes

and her eyebrows are painted into a high arch that practically stretches all the way to her ears

Waris says she’s ugly without her ‘face on’, even though Yazz reassures her that Somali women are the most beautiful in the world, and that includes you too, Waris