It hung on the back of the wardrobe door for about a week, covered in a thin warm film of plastic. My sister daren’t touch it. Chocolate brown, waiting, expectant. And it was mine. Nobody else in our class had a suede coat. Nobody else was going on holiday abroad that summer. You didn’t in the 60s. Except Larraine Clarkson, who was the first person in 5A to go to Benidorm. And by plane. I was going to Austria, the long way. Me, my auntie and the coat. The evenings would be chilly, mum said. Every night before I got into bed I lifted the plastic ever so gently and sniffed. It made me think of riding a pony. I’d never ridden anything since my pink Raleigh bike, but I knew it meant something special. Important things would happen in that coat.

I don’t remember where I wore it for the first time, only that the smell followed me everywhere and it was delicious. You’re grown, the coat said. You’re you, people will take you seriously now.

The holiday came and went and Larraine Clarkson became my best mate. As the weeks went by, I stopped protecting the coat in plastic, then hung it on the door by its little suede loop, eventually tossing it onto the back of the sofa when I got home. It went with everything now – not just my favourite mini dress and platform boots. It flapped open over patched faded Levis, clashed with my black bellbottoms. The slit pockets and collar went dark and greasy and the middle one of the three big buttons began to come loose. Soft as an old shammy, it was just a part of me.

The day trip to Scarborough was all Larraine’s idea. It was the weekend before our final autumn term, last gasp fun. She wanted to show off her new cord Wrangler jacket and her step-dad had just given her five quid. We blew the lot on two day returns and posed on the prom eating vinegary chips from the News of the World.

“I can’t believe it,” said Larraine, “only one more year.”

“Yeah, one more year.” I raised a long chip to one of hers and we tried to clink them like glasses, then leaned on the railings with one foot on the bottom rung and watched people down on the beach. I suppose we pulled them all to pieces – she’s fat, look at those shorts, urgh put it away mate – we did a lot of that in those days. We shoved our chip wrappers into a bin and went down the long slope onto the sand. It wasn’t a hot day, but it wasn’t cold either. There were still lots of kids running in and out of the sea and people fussing with towels behind windbreaks. I wiped my greasy fingers on the insides of my coat pockets. It was shapeless now and, although I didn’t know it at the time, about to be kicked into touch by a herringbone maxi coat. I laid it on the beach (deckchairs were for old fogies), lining face down, shook sand out of my platforms and stretched out. I wanted to get as brown as Larraine. She already had dark hair and that trip to Benidorm, so I didn’t stand much chance. I took my watch off – just in case – closed my eyes against the sun and prayed for a miracle. We talked for ages without looking at each other. Later, we carried our shoes and ate 99s, biting the end off the cornet and sucking the ice cream out of the soggy bottom. Larraine accidentally dripped some on her jacket and we had to go in some cold dark toilets to wash it off. They stank of pee. We couldn’t get all the sand out from between our toes and I remembered how my mum always had a flannel in her bag.

After what would have been tea time, we drifted back along the South Bay towards the station, wandering in and out of amusement arcades as we went. We got through piles of grubby pennies on the slot machines and had loads of goes at grabbing teddies with a crane. When we gave up, we stood and watched the bingo over people’s shoulders for a while, thinking what we’d choose if we won.

“House!” shouted Larraine. She grabbed my arm and we ran out laughing and into the place next door. We counted the last of our money.

Gordon Adams, he said his name was. I could see his reflection as I fired pretend missiles at a line of floating aircraft carriers. He had brownish scruffy hair and dark red loons with denim insets in the flares. Larraine was already talking to his mate, shoving her fingers under his nose and saying how all those fruit machines made them smell funny. By the time we walked back out to the prom he was holding her hand. I put mine in my pockets. Gordon walked right next to me and we kept bumping against each other.

It was a long way up to the castle ruins. I’d never been up there before and wished I had different shoes on. The sun had started to go down. I buttoned my coat and shoved my hands back in my pockets. There was a hole coming in the corner of one of them. I poked my finger around in it and made it worse. I remember how for weeks later I kept feeling bits of my bus fare rolling around in the hem.

At the top of the hill, by the castle, we split into two couples. I didn’t know why. It was windier up there and looked a long way down through the rocks and bushes to the bottom. The traffic was small and quiet. Gordon took his jacket off, kicked some empty lager cans to one side and spread it out on the grass. He was wearing a thin black t-shirt with some kind of picture on the front.

“Aren’t you cold?” I said.

He just smiled and pulled me down next to him. The grass was full of tiny bits of stone that dug in my back. Gordon’s breath smelled of Opal Fruits. The green ones. Larraine was round the other side of the wall somewhere with Gordon’s mate. I’ve forgotten his name. I could hear her giggling in a way I’d never heard her before and going mind my jacket. Gordon snogged me. I snogged him back for a while, then wriggled free and propped myself up on one elbow.

“You don’t look like a Gordon,” I told him and he fell back onto the grass and laughed up at the sky.

“What’s up?” shouted his mate. His voice sounded funny, up there in all that space.

“She doesn’t think I look like a Gordon.” He held his stomach and carried on laughing. Round the other side of the wall his mate was laughing too. Then it died down and I heard whispering and some kind of moving around.

I sat up and flicked my hair from my face. Sometimes I liked it tied back but Larraine said that made me look younger. It had tiny bits of rough grass in it. Gordon Adams looked different up there, older, not like in the bright amusements. I began to think about the last train home and looked at where my watch should have been. I called to Larraine to ask her what time it was. She didn’t answer. Gordon rolled over and eased me back down.

“Never mind that.” His face was serious.

We snogged again. Longer this time. The Opal Fruits were gone and he began to taste quite good. His hand was undoing the bottom button of my coat. He gently pushed his tongue into my mouth. Nobody had ever done that before. I touched his tongue with mine to see what it would feel like.

“You coming?” Larraine was suddenly round our side of the wall, brushing herself down and picking bits out of her corduroy.

Gordon’s mate was already heading down the steep bit towards the path.

“Not yet,” said Gordon. He stroked my hair back out of my face and carried on snogging me.

“Suit yourselves.”

I could hear Larraine and Gordon’s mate getting quieter until there was just the sound of us. Our mouths, clothes rubbing, tiny stones slipping away. I didn’t want that any more.

“Wait for us!”

I pushed Gordon off and scrambled up. He laid there for a minute, looking up at me as I worked out how to get down. Then he shook his head and held out his hand. I took it. He pulled himself up and followed me towards the path. Part of me thought we’d only just got up there and part of me thought we’d been up there forever. All I wanted to do was reach the bottom again.

There was hardly any sun left. Strings of coloured lights had started to come on, hanging between all the lampposts. There were only a few people wandering down the prom. As we got nearer the bottom, I realised we were coming down into the North Bay. The path wound through proper grass and fancy flower beds and the noise from the other prom got louder. There were no amusements on North Bay, just a long thin car park with hardly any cars left. You couldn’t see the beach any more. The tide was right in, covering the place where me and Larraine had buried our toes in the sand and talked about what we’d do next year. I couldn’t see her. Gordon held my hand tightly as we walked along past bins and benches. Then he stopped and pushed me back against the railings by one of those swivelling telescopes. The waves were bumping up gently against the sea wall. His tongue was in my mouth again, only he didn’t feel soft like he had before. After a while, he pulled away and pointed towards the big flower beds where we’d just come from.

“We don’t have to go back to the top,” he said. “Let’s just go up as far as there.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, so I just snogged him. His hands went down my back and kept going. I was thinking about the train and whether our tickets were safe and how people could be watching us and how I needed to stay down there, not go up to the flower beds. I eased away and looked around. The prom looked very wide, long and empty. The sun had gone altogether and I still didn’t know how far the station was. Gordon’s hand came round the front and pushed my coat open.

“Come on,” he said.

The loose button flew off, over the railings behind me and into the sea below. He was snogging me really hard and his fingers were cold and scratchy. All I could think of was my coat button. Whether it would have sunk or was maybe floating, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, until it might reach somewhere hundreds of miles away, like one of those bottles with a message in it.

When I went to my Saturday job in Woollies, one of the full-time girls sat next to me at dinner break and asked me questions. I answered yes and wanted to be sick. She just laughed, said mucky cow and passed the ketchup.

I did wear the coat a few more times after that, but it was never the same. I was sitting upstairs on the bus home from Larraine’s one night, fiddling with the long thread where the missing button used to hang, and realised that no, of course he didn’t look like a Gordon.

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