'Are you still a virgin, George?'

George coughed and spluttered and sat up to smack Della's thigh with the palm of his hand, making a satisfying loud crack. She laughed at him gleefully and scrambled away, out of his reach across the narrow mattress, bed sheets getting raked up by her feet, as he grabbed for her again.

She'd asked the question, out of the blue, just as the smoke from the stolen cigarette had hit his lungs, timed perfectly to elicit the reaction from him she'd gotten.

'You can't ask things like that,' he said, still wheezing, voice hoarse as he gave up trying to catch her.

'Why not?' Della held out her hand for the cigarette and George passed it to her.

'Because,' George huffed, as his surprise turned to embarrassment. 'You just don't.'

'So that's a yes, then,' she said, eyeing him sideways as she took a long drag on the cigarette.

'I didn't say that,' George replied, and lay back down on his bed, in the hope she wouldn't see the pinkish colour he could feel his cheeks turning.

'But you are.' She scooted down to lie next to him again, George pressed up against the wall by the window, Della in danger of falling off the edge of George's single bed. She passed the cigarette back to him.

They lay in a companionable silence for a moment in the half-light of the evening. The branches of the tree in the middle of the green outside cast eerie shadows over the ceiling. As the tree swayed in the wind, the shadows danced in an oddly hypnotic fashion.

'I'm not, as a matter of fact,' George said.

Della laughed. 'You're a shit liar, George Harrison.'

'Not that it's any business of yours, but no, I'm not a virgin,' George replied, calmly, although saying the word gave him a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach.

'Who have you done it with then?' Della challenged.

George wet his lips. That was a good question. 'Sylvia Rousden.'

'Bollocks.'

George shrugged. 'Believe me or don't believe me. Doesn't matter to me.'

'Sylvia Rousden?'

'Yeah. Sylvia.'

'Sylvia Rousden?'

'Yes.' He passed the cigarette back to her.

'You didn't. You're lying.'

George turned his head and gave her a thin smile. Della stared at him. He was winning. She was starting to believe him.

'When?'

'End of last year.'

'That's such rubbish. She shagged you, when you were fourteen?'

'It was just the once.'

'Where?'

'What?'

'Where did you do it? Here? With your mam and dad downstairs?'

George laughed, derisively. 'Don't be daft. Round her place, wasn't it?'

Della sat up to extinguish the end of the cigarette in the small metal ashtray on George's night stand. George folded his hands behind his head and watched her. She continued to grind the cigarette butt into the ashtray long after it had already gone out, thinking, considering. She twisted around to face him again.

'Did you really?' she asked again, her voice flat and serious.

George couldn't hold it any longer. He broke into a wide grin and Della punched him in the stomach, a little too hard, making him writhe onto his side, unable to catch his breath from laughing.

'You fuckin' bastard, George,' she spat at him.

'You believed me!'

'I didn't though, did I?'

'Yes, you did. Should see your face, Del! You fall for it every time!'

'Fall for what?'

He shook his head, wiping at his eyes exaggeratedly. 'You're so gullible, Del.'

'I didn't fall for anything.'

'Now, don't get sour about it. Just because I got you.'

'Like she'd look at you twice.'

'Oh, she'd look,' George said, unsure exactly of what he meant.

'I'm disappointed in you,' Della said dully, flopping back against George's thin pillow.

'What? Why?' George settled next to her again, giving her ankle a playful kick.

'Sylvia Rousden. I would have thought you'd have better taste.'

'What's wrong with Sylvia?'

'What's right with her.'

'She's gorgeous, isn't she? She's got great legs and long, blonde hair like Brigitte Bardot, and the fucking biggest pair of beautiful, round...' He twisted his neck to look at her. '...Eyes,' he finished and Della gave him a withering look.

She sniffed. 'She's a slag, George. She's shagged half of Liverpool.'

'Yeah. And?'

'All these daft fuckin' lads follow her round like lost puppies. You gonna join them?' There was a spiteful undertone to her voice, unusual coming from Della. It made George pause.

'What's the matter?'

'Nothin',' she replied and made a show of plumping the pillow behind her head. 'Just...'

'What?' George asked and rolled onto his side so he could look at her, propping himself up on his elbow. 'Are you jealous?'

He grinned, fully expecting her to hit him with the pillow or something, but Della just looked away.

'Ah, don't worry, Del. You can be my girl if you want. If you think you can handle a man like me. I'll tell Sylvia we've got to knock it on the head. She'll be heartbroken, but that's the risk you take if you fall for George Harrison.'

He smiled again but still she ignored him, silent and sulky.

'Della?'

'I can't stand you when you're like this,' she snapped.

'Like what?' George asked, taken aback.

'And you're not a man, George. You're a boy. A fifteen year old boy.'

'I'm only kiddin',' George said, regretting starting all this now, her bad mood infectious.

This is how they would usually talk to each other; all jokes and teasing and piss taking, but lately, it seemed to be falling flat. Della kept taking offence or she'd sulk and go quiet. It was worrying George. He didn't know where he was going wrong. What was he doing to annoy her so much? He knew her well enough to deduce there was something else behind it - at least he thought he did - but at the same time, he thought she'd tell him if there was something troubling her.

'You could do a lot better than Sylvia bloody Rousden,' she said, a little kinder, turning back to him. 'You shouldn't set your sights so low.'

'Really?' George asked. 'Like who?'

Della shrugged. 'Someone prettier. And not such a tart.'

George lay down again and thought. 'Maggie Tinker?'

Della laughed. 'George! She's as bad! Worse! I mean someone nice. You're worth ten of Sylvia Rousden or Maggie Tinker.'

George smiled and Della returned it, until a moment later they both seemed to realise they were staring at each other and looked away.

'What like?' George asked, to break the awkwardness as much as anything else.

'What?'

'What kind of girl, then? Blonde hair, blue eyes, big tits?' he teased, turning his head to her.

'Yeah,' Della replied, flatly. 'If that's the sort of thing you go for.'

'I don't really fancy Sylvia,' George said, and that was another lie because he did. Of course he did. Any young lad with blood in his veins and lead in his pencil would fancy Sylvia, but it was clearly the right thing to say because Della smiled. 'How about you?'

'No, I don't fancy Sylvia Rousden either,' she said smartly.

'Are you a virgin, Del?' George asked her, boldly, but feeling even stranger the second time he had to say that word.

She rolled her eyes. 'You know I am. When have you ever known me have a boyfriend?'

'Well, what are you asking me for then? I haven't got a string of girlfriends either.' Della didn't reply so George added, quieter, 'You don't have to have a boyfriend to do it, you know.'

She studied him for a moment. 'No, you don't,' she agreed and looked away. 'Light us another fag.'

He sat up against the pillow with her. 'Can't. I haven't got anymore.'

'You only nicked one?'

'There were only four left in the packet. If I'd took more than one, Harry would have noticed.'

Della sighed.

'I'll get some more tomorrow.'

'Doesn't help us now though, does it?'

They lay in companionable silence for another few minutes. A car pulled into the road and drove all the way around the oval green. George followed the light cast by the headlights as it spun across the ceiling of the bedroom and then died away. It was completely dark now. It was getting darker earlier. Only a week ago it was still light past nine o'clock in the evening. Summer was nearly gone.

'I'm sixteen soon,' Della said, suddenly.

'In January,' George replied. 'Still half a year away.'

'I'm gonna lose it when I'm sixteen.'

'Lose what?'

Della shot him a look.

'Oh,' George said. 'Who's the lucky guy?'

'I don't know yet. I was thinking maybe Jim Mullins.'

'Who's that?'

'You know. The grocer boy from Dutton's. Brings the stuff around on a bike.'

'Him?!' George laughed and immediately stopped when he saw the look on her face. 'What, really? You like him? He's covered in spots.'

'Says you.'

'Isn't he nineteen?'

'Yeah, I think so.'

'Why him?'

'Why not him?'

'He's a bit thick, isn't he?'

Della shrugged. 'He likes me.'

'How do you know?'

'He told me.'

'And that's a reason to shag him?'

'It's reason enough.'

'Maybe I should tell Sylvia I like her.'

Della didn't react.

'Don't shag him, Del. He's a few bob short of a quid. He was in Pete's class at school, even though he's nearly two years older.'

Della shrugged again.

'Just because he likes you?'

'It's a place to start, isn't it?'

'Lots of other guys like you. You don't need to settle for Jim Mullins.'

'What? Even though I haven't got blonde hair and blue eyes and big tits?' she asked sarcastically, and George thought perhaps that was the reason for her sulking.

He had been going on about Brigette, and Jayne Mansfield and Anita Ekberg and the rest quite a lot lately. Della didn't realise it, but it was because she was the only one that he could comfortably talk to about this sort of thing. He talked about girls with his mates of course, but he never said all that much. Not when they'd go into what they'd like to do with these women, and in great, lewd detail. It made him a bit tongue tied, made him blush and then they'd take the piss.

George usually settled for just nodding and laughing along and agreeing with what everyone else said. He tried to talk about girls with Della, but even she was getting difficult recently. She always wanted to talk about him instead and what he'd done, which was pretty much nothing, and about real girls and women that they both knew.

John liked Brigette and company too. John Lennon, from the band, and Paul, and just about anyone George knew. They had to be blonde and shapely and just that little bit tarty. Maybe you might slip in a redhead like Rita Hayworth or Maureen O'Hara, but it rarely deviated from the roster of blondes.

Della wasn't blonde. Her hair was a mahogany brown colour. She didn't have blue eyes, her's were hazel, but quite pretty anyway, not that George would ever tell her that. And as for breasts, well, she wasn't in the realms of Sylvia Rousden, but she wasn't... bad. She wasn't "two fried eggs on an ironing board", as John said. 

To be truthful, George tried to avoid looking at Della's chest. If he did, then he felt guilty for it. She was his friend and not to be looked at like other girls. It was just he wasn't used to his friends having things like tits and nice legs and long, dark hair, so sometimes his eyes might wander, particularly when she wore a dress. Apart from her school uniform and on Sundays when her mother made her, Della didn't wear dresses. She would normally only ever wear jeans, shirts, t-shirts, but it hadn't escaped his attention that recently - and only very occasionally - Della would wear a dress without any coercion from her mother. She had one that buttoned up the front like a long shirt, but Della would leave the top three buttons undone, as if the fabric didn't quite stretch to meet together, and that meant it was possible to see them, her breasts.

Holding his breath as if she might have been able to hear what he'd been thinking, George surreptitiously stole a sideways glance at her and more specifically at them. She was wearing a short sleeve shirt, buttoned all the way up today, apart from the top collar button. Nothing on show, but still, they were there, weren't they? Under the fabric. Just... there. And they looked bigger than the last time he'd looked. Fuller and more round. Was that possible?

'Yeah, course,' George finally replied, gruffly. 'You're... alright.'

Della raised an eyebrow. 'Who likes me?'

'Lots of guys,' George repeated and Della tutted, disbelievingly. 'Paul for one.'

'Paul? Bus Paul? Paul from your band?'

George smiled. Della had only met Paul twice; once, months ago, on the bus to the Inny when she'd cadged a lift into town - hence forever he'd be known as Bus Paul - and again, three weeks ago, when she met George after a band practice.

'He likes me?'

Paul hadn't said so in as many words, but he wasn't exactly subtle in his line of questioning. Is that your bird, George? - Where do you know her from? - She got a fella?

'Yeah, I think so.'

'Really? Well, well. Bus Paul,' Della said, and her eyes seemed to sparkle even in the dim light of the darkened bedroom.

George smiled and nodded but fell silent, an odd feeling settling over him and a twist of regret in the pit of his stomach, which was strange, because why should he care if Paul liked Della and Della liked Paul? Why would that bother him?

'How's the band going?' Della asked.

'Alright,' George replied casually and Della laughed.

'They still lettin' you play then?'

'Yes,' George said, defensively. 'Why wouldn't they?'

'No reason, Georgie. No reason,' Della said in a sing-songy teasing voice and George dug his fingers into her ribs, making her laugh and squeal. George scrambled over her, sitting on top of her, trying to tickle her, while Della laughed and gasped for breath and tried to fight him off.

The landing light outside the bedroom flicked on, illuminating yellow round the cracks of the door, and George stopped, both of them freezing, as if caught doing something they shouldn't. A moment later George's mother was standing, silhouetted in the door frame, dressing gown buttoned up to her neck. 'It's late, George. Keep the noise down, will you, love? Think of the neighbours.'

'Sorry, Mrs. Harrison,' Della replied meekly as George clambered off her.

George's mother turned to go and then hesitated. 'I think it's about time you were going home, Della,' she said. 'You know what your dad said, love.' 

'He's not her dad,' George said automatically, surprised when his mother threw him a sharp look.

'Don't split hairs, George.'

'Well, he's not,' George mumbled. He pulled his knees up to his chest, leaning against the wall, the ledge of the window sill pressing into his back. 'He's only her stepdad, if that.' 

Della scrambled to a sitting up position and nodded her head. 'It's okay. I'm going home in a minute.'

'And you've got to be up in the morning, remember, George. You don't want to be late on your first day.' She lingered a beat longer to give George another look he didn't understand before she closed the door on them both.

Della and George looked at each other. 'Whoops,' Della said, but flatly, the mirth gone out of her.

'What's he said?' George asked, returning to lie on his side next to her again.

Della ignored the question. 'Are they going to to be rehearsing here again? Your band?'

'Yeah,' George said, furrowing his brow. 'What did your--'

'Can I watch? Next time?'

'No, I shouldn't think so.'

Della pouted. 'Why not?'

'Because,' George said, pompously. 'We'll be working.'

'Working,' she repeated, scoffing.

'Yeah. What do you think we do?'

'I just can't picture it. You, with your little guitar, twanging away, trying to keep up with the big boys...'

'Sod off,' George said, joking, but half meaning it too. 'I "keep up" just fine, ta. You've seen me play guitar before.'

'Yeah, but not in a band. Not with those lads. They're all so much older than you. It must look like they're babysitting you.'

'No,' George said, and sat up. 'I'm not that much younger than them. Paul's only--' he tried to work it out in his head. 'He's not more than nine months older than me. And besides, I'm better than they are.' 

'Are you now, bighead?' Della said, skeptically. 'How do you figure that? I bet that whatshisname didn't say that. That John.'

'I can just... I know a few things they don't always,' George said, bashfully, embarrassed to have just said that. 'Anyway, look,' he held his hands out to Della, turning them over.

'What?' She sat up straighter and leaned over to switch the lamp on beside the bed.

'See?' George said. 'Look at my fingers. That's from playing. That's how much I've been practicing.'

'What am I looking at?' she asked and took his hands in both of hers. George had to resist pulling away. She held his hands, gentle but firm, her fingers around the back of his hands and her thumbs in his palms. She rubbed the palm of his right with the pad of her thumb and his stomach fluttered. Which was weird because it was only Della.

She turned them over for him. 'The skin's all rough,' she said. 'And it's been bleeding round your fingernails.'

'Yeah. Bleedin',' George said, distracted and took his hands back from her. 'Why would you want to watch anyway? You'd be bored,' he told her in an attempt to steer the conversation away from himself.

She shrugged. 'I thought it might be fun.'

'You just want to be there because Paul is,' George said, teasingly. 'Now I've told you that.'

'No, not at all,' Della replied, defensively, so defensively that George didn't really like it. 'I'm not interested in Bus Paul. He's just a kid.'

'Right.'

'Like you,' she added, giving him a little kick in his shin.

'And what are you? You're all of three weeks older than me.'

'It's different for girls,' she said. 'Girls grow up faster than boys. Boys are just... childish.'

'Whatcha come round here for then? Why'd yer hang around with me?'

'Oh, I don't know. Someone has to, don't they?'

'I've got lots of mates. I don't need you.'

'Well, it must be me then. I must need you.'

George didn't reply for a beat, then he said. 'Do you?'

She smiled. 'Course I do, Georgie. You're my best friend. You always have been.'

George returned her smile. He sat up.  'I better had go to sleep.'

Della's smile dimmed. 'Alright,' she said, but made no effort to move.

'Where's yer mam?'

'She's on nights again.'

'What about him?'

'He's in,' she replied bluntly, looking away from George.

Her mam's boyfriend, Alan. Della's real dad had left when George and Della were six years old. George only had a vague memory of him; a tall man with hair the same colour as Della's, who called Della 'Princess' and George 'Champ'. He left one night and never came back. Della said she'd heard her parents rowing. They'd woken her up with the shouting and banging. Della's dad had only come back from London a day earlier. He hadn't unpacked his suitcase yet. He took it with him and neither George nor Della had seen him since, although Della said he still sent her letters and presents for her birthday and Christmas.

She was lying about that, George knew, but he'd never say so.

After that, Della's mam had a couple of boyfriends, over the years they'd come and gone, but only Alan had lasted. It's been nearly six years now. He wasn't Della's dad and he could only be described as her stepdad at a pinch because he wasn't married to her mother.

'Wanna stop here tonight?' George offered.

Della raised her eyes to him and smiled thinly. 'I'd better not. You heard what your mam said.'

'What? Why not? What's happened?'

'Nothing's happened. It's just... Just somethin' Alan said the other day.'

'Something he said?' George asked, genuinely perplexed, not just at Della's blasé use of his name when usually saying it made her cringe, but also at the fact that she appeared to be ready to abide by whatever daft law he'd laid down. 

'He said you can't stop over anymore?'

'He said... It doesn't matter. I'll just go home, George. It's not worth the arguments.'

She made to get up. George wrapped his hand around her wrist, stopping her. 'Del, you don't want to go back there. Stay here. What's wrong? What's he said?'

She sighed. 'He said that now we're both... getting older that he didn't want me and you to...'

'What?'

'Be... around each other so much.'

George frowned. Della shrugged.

'He doesn't want us hanging around together?'

'No, he means... Messing about like we do. Wrestling and fighting and... And we're not to share the bed anymore.' She patted the top of the mattress with her palm and smoothed it, like she was petting a dog.

'The bed?' George echoed with a laugh, because it seemed absurd. 'What's wrong with that?'

Ever since George could remember Della would sleep over at their house when her mother worked nights, and due to being almost the same age and the lack of space at 25 Upton Green, Della got to share a bed with George. It'd never occurred to George to mind. He'd shared beds all his life. Before they moved to Upton Green, he'd shared a bed with his brother Pete from the day he'd outgrown his cot. If anything, he preferred sharing with Della. She didn't steal all the covers and then kick George if he tried to take them back. One of the reasons George shared with Della in the first place was because he and Pete just fought all the time.

'Girls and lads our age can't be friends like we are. Not without... things happening.'

Those were his words, not Della's. George could tell. He snorted. 'We just sleep,' he said. 'What's he think is gonna happen?'

'He said if your mam let us carry on "like we do", then we'd be taking a trip down the registry office before we turn seventeen.'

George laughed. 'That's just bollocks, that. Fuck him, Del. He's not telling us what to do.'

Della wasn't laughing though. There wasn't even the trace of a smile. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. It was supposed to go that Della would tell George and he'd say it was rubbish and make her laugh and then Della would cheer up. That wasn't happening any more either. He couldn't seem to say anything to her lately and now she was keeping things from him too.

Everything was changing, and George didn't like it.

'Pete's not here tonight. You can have his bed,' George said, nodding towards the empty identical narrow bed opposite his own. 'That's not against the rules, is it? Stay over here, Del.'

Della cast her eyes over it. 'Really?'

'Yeah. Sleep there.'

Della thought about it, then she smiled. 'Okay then.'

Half an hour later after teeth and bathroom and borrow us a t-shirt, George lay on his back, under the covers, Della in the bed opposite. It was cold. The summer had been mild but it got chilly at night. There was no heating in the house and all he had for covers was a sheet and a blanket. 

'George?'

'Yeah?'

'Are you asleep?'

'Yeah, I'm fast asleep.'

'Are you nervous?'

'Nervous about what?'

'Tomorrow.'

'Oh. No. Not really. I haven't thought about it much.'

Tomorrow the next phase of George's life started. Working life. His first job. Well, first proper job. He was going to be a butcher's delivery boy, taking parcels of meat all over the town by bicycle. Not what he would have chosen to do normally and the pay was meagre, but he needed an income to keep up with the payments on his new Hofner President.

'You'll be alright,' Della said, as if George had answered her differently.

'Yeah.'

'You might like it when you get there,' she added and yawned. 'At least you'll be getting paid. Better than going to school.'

''Suppose.' 

George didn't really care about the job. He didn't care about the money, apart from paying off the tick on the guitar. The man who owned the butchers told him all his apprentices had started on the delivery round, but George didn't want to be a butcher's apprentice or anything else. All he wanted to do was play guitar. If he couldn't make a living doing that, there didn't seem much point in anything else.  

'Del?'

No answer, just soft, deep breathing. She was asleep.

A moment later George threw the bedcovers back, crossed the small space between the two beds and slipped under the covers next to her.

'What are you doing..?' Della murmured, but shuffled over towards the wall anyway.

'It's cold,' George said. 'I can't fall asleep if I'm cold.'

He pulled the covers over them both, as Della rolled onto her side, facing away from him. She sighed dreamily and drifted off back to sleep. George wrapped his arm around her waist, moving up behind her, immediately feeling better for being close to her.