"Enjoy them, Love," he said.

"We will."

"What’s your name?" he called, before I could escape.

"What’s it to you?" I asked and laughed right into his raspberry sauce coloured face.

Heidi was waiting across the road on the wall in front of the playing fields. We were dressed identically in knee-length skirts and short-sleeved, low-buttoned blouses, over which we’d hung layers of cheap plastic necklaces and silver-buckled belts. We’d copied the look from Heidi’s Madonna poster, which was a free gift with Smash Hits.

"It’s melting," Heidi groaned as I handed her an ice cream.

"Ice cream man wanted to know my name," I told her, biting into my cone.

"Did you tell him?"

"Did I heck, he’s dead old."

Heidi squinted in the direction of the van, where the man was leaning out and giving a small boy in shorts and T-shirt an ice-lolly.

"Not that old," Heidi said.

"At least twenty-two," I guessed.

"Bet he’s more sophisticated than the lads at our school," Heidi sighed, pulling her blouse so it hung slightly over one shoulder.

"What you doing that for?" I asked.

"Well you’re not interested in him," she pointed out.

"I might be," I told her, throwing the rest of my ice cream on the ground.

"Funny way of showing it then," Heidi snorted.

"Haven’t you heard of playing hard to get?"

"I’ve heard of prick teasers," Heidi said, chucking her half-eaten cornet with mine, in the grass and dog muck.

"What we doing now then?" I asked crossly, wishing I’d never mentioned the man.

"Going back to mine for tea," Heidi said, rubbing at a grass stain on one of her white stilettos with spit, before jumping off the wall.

I followed her as she crossed over the road and sauntered past the ice cream van. There was no queue and the man leant over the counter.

"Girls!" he called.

Flicking her hair, Heidi smiled at him.

"Talking to us?"

"Yeah, came over here."

Reluctantly I followed Heidi up to the counter where he was leaning on his big tanned arms.

"Well, well, well," he said, looking pleased with himself, "what are your lovely names, then?"

"She’s Beth an’ I’m Heidi."

"How old are you?" he wanted to know.

"Sixteen," Heidi said, pouting a little.

"Really?" the man looked both pleased and unsure.

"Yeah, aren’t we?" Heidi elbowed me sharply and I just about managed to nod.

"How old are you then?" Heidi asked.

"Twenty-four," the man said. He looked a bit embarrassed. "Another ice cream, girls — on the house," he added quickly.

"We’ve just had one," I said.

"But we’d both like a flake," Heidi told him.

He handed one to each of us.

"So what do you get up to in the evenings?" the man asked.

"Depends," Heidi told him. "But we’re going to the Majestic tonight to see Gremlins."

"Might catch you there."

"With your wife?" I asked haughtily, silently cursing Heidi for telling him where he could find us.

"Not married, me," the man laughed.

"Good thing to," Heidi said, wiping chocolate-stained hands on her skirt.

"Name’s Jim," he said quietly, as a customer approached.

" Bye Jim," Heidi shouted loudly, moving out of the way of the customer, a harassed looking woman with a spiral perm. Jim didn’t reply.

It took Heidi and me two hours to get ready. We debated well over half an hour on what we should wear, finally deciding not to change anything except our fishnet tights. But we washed our hair and rubbed it with moose and dried it upside down to make it curl. And we added makeup to our bare faces: beige foundation and large strokes of red blusher. Then there were eight layers of blue eyeliner to colour in under both eyes, and black mascara to apply to our eyelashes, followed by purple eyeshadow to the lids. We shared a shimmery pink lipstick, which we coated liberally over our lip lines to give us fuller lips. We finished with a spray of Heidi’s Charlie.

"It’s gorgeous this perfume," Heidi remarked, spraying it in a wet line down her inner arm.

"He won’t turn up you know," I said, admiring myself in Heidi’s full-length mirror.

"You shouldn’t care, seeing as you’re not interested in older men," she replied, joining me in front of the mirror and patting her hair.

"Twenty-four’s isn’t too ancient," I said graciously.

"Changed your mind, haven’t you?"

I re-arranged one of my belts and didn’t bother to answer.

"I look more like Madonna than Madonna," Heidi said, and blew her reflection a kiss.

The Majestic cinema was situated at the lower part of the high street, opposite a chip shop and a newsagents. We joined the queue, which extended untidily out onto the pavement.

"Can you see him?" Heidi asked as the queue moved forward.

"He won’t turn up."

"He will."

"Been stood up?" one of the lads in front asked with a cheeky grin. He had sandy hair and milk coloured skin.

"None of your business," Heidi told him abruptly.

The sandy-haired boy laughed and nudged his friend, who was paying for their tickets. He looked like Roger Taylor, my favourite member of Duran Duran.

"That’s Bill from the sixth form," I muttered to Heidi, gesturing to the lad with sandy hair as he moved away.

"Not bad," Heidi whispered as she gave the old lady in the ticket booth our money. "Better than the babies in our year."

"His friend’s nicer," I said as we walked through into the orange-carpeted foyer. We stood near the sweet kiosk, pretending to decide between a large packet of jelly babies, or cans of coke, but really trying to see if Jim had arrived. People swarmed through the oak panelled swing doors to the lower part of the cinema, or hurried up a staircase to be on the balcony; but we couldn’t see the hulking tanned body of the ice cream man.

"I’m telling you, he’s not turning up," I said finally.

"Come on then," Heidi said and I followed her through the swing doors. We found two seats on the back row, where all the teenage couples sat, who planned to spend the duration of the film kissing and groping each other.

"I don’t want to sit here," I complained, although I had the seat by the aisle. Along from Heidi, a couple was already engaged in a slurping embrace, and I was glad not to be so near them.

"He might turn up yet," Heidi explained.

"But…"

"Stop your moaning," Heidi interrupted and bit the head off a jelly baby. A few rows in front, I could see Bill and his friend laughing about something, and I wished Heidi and I could join them. But the lights were dimmed then and the carmine curtain lifted in shuddery epileptic movements, to reveal the gleaming screen. Whoops and claps and shouts filled the cinema as the adverts started.

"Hello," a voice breathed close to my ear, and I looked up at the ice cream man, colours catching his face from the screen and turning it into a kaleidoscope.

The ice cream man wanted to sit next to me. He asked Heidi to move along, so he could be in the seat by the aisle. Heidi didn’t comment, but she moved up. Stuck in the middle, I felt like the filling of a human sandwich, with Heidi furiously biting heads off jelly babies on one side, and Jim breathing heavily on the other. None of us spoke, as we sat through adverts for Opal Fruits and new film releases and the B Movie about skiing. The curtain was lowered and the lights went on. People bought mini tubs of ice cream and cartons of orange juice from the usherette who stood at the front of the cinema with a laden tray attached around her neck. And still, we didn’t speak. Then the lights were dimmed again and the curtain rose for the second time. I felt Jim shift in his seat. I edged away from him, but his arm lowered, like a guillotine, around my shoulders. I gazed at the screen: tried to concentrate on the bright Hollywood images as Gremlins began and there were shouts of approval from the audience. After a few minutes I started to relax, as Jim hadn’t tried anything more, but then suddenly, unexpectedly, he pulled me close in a warm, smothering hug with his arm and kissed me on the cheek. It was like a small vacuum cleaner being pressed against my face. I knew if I stayed where I was more would follow.

"Come to the loos." I shook Heidi’s arm, as if I was waking her from a deep sleep.

"Won’t be a minute — need the loo," I muttered to Jim as I removed his arm and stood up. I scrambled over his long legs and out into the safety of the wide aisle. Heidi came slowly after me, as if following me didn’t seem natural to her. She stumbled over Jim’s legs, and for just a moment perched on his lap as if by accident, before clambering into the aisle. We walked past the usherette at the back of the cinema, who no longer had a tray and was holding a torch. Heidi and I were silent until we reached the door marked Ladies, but this time it was a companionable silence.

In the toilets I examined my reflection in the long mirror above the basins. My blue eyeliner was smudged and I tried to wipe some of it off.

"Don’t you like him?" Heidi asked, switching on a tap so it dripped painfully.

"No, I can’t stand him." I watched her reflection. She raised her eyebrows at me staring at her, and we both laughed at our selves in the mirror.

"You can have him if you want," I offered generously.

"That’s what I thought. Anyway, we better get back, or we’ll miss the film." With that, she opened the door and I hurried after her, not wanting to be left behind.

Jim didn’t seem to mind that Heidi and I had decided to swap over. I sat in the seat that had been Heidi’s and ate the bodies of the jelly babies she had left in the packet. I slouched down in my chair and concentrated on the plot of the film, but I couldn’t absorb myself completely as next to me, Jim folded Heidi in his arms. I was aware of Heidi moving about, whispering what sounded like conspiratorial things to Jim, touching his face, slobbering over him like a puppy. I tried not to think about what Jim was doing to Heidi. What Jim would have done to me, had I let him. I couldn’t understand how Heidi could put up with his hands sliding over her body, rooting in her clothes, while his tongue explored her ear. I was grateful when the film finished, the curtain sank back down over the screen, like a bloody sky, and Heidi and Jim adjusted their clothes. Jim left while Heidi was tucking in her blouse.

"See you," was all he said, and then he was lost among all the people scurrying to reach the luminous green exit sign.

That night, I dreamt Roger Taylor invited me to the pictures to see Gremlins, but part way through the film, Jim leapt out of the screen and pelted us with cornets of vanilla ice cream. Although I screamed and begged for him to stop, that just made him more enthusiastic. Even when I ducked down, I could hear the thud of cornets hitting the wall behind me. I glanced over at Roger, but he was making a run for the luminous green exit sign.