Even if I had let that stuff bother me, though, it wouldn’t have bothered me that day. It wasn’t just my birthday. It was my fifteenth birthday! One more year down!

All I’d ever wanted to be was grown up. Then nobody could boss me around and I could do what I pleased. The age I really wanted to be was sixteen, of course, when you can legally do things without getting someone’s permission, but fifteen was pretty close. Adulthood was shining like a beacon in front of me only twelve months away.

I usually walked home from school with my best friend, Shanee, but since Shanee was away and it was my birthday and raining I took the bus. I sat right at the back in the corner, where no old lady would hit me with her shopping or glare at me to give up my seat. I put my headphones on and stared out the window. I didn’t care what the other passengers thought, I sang along with my Discman all the way home. I was that happy.

Listening to my Discman and watching the street from the bus was one of my favourite pastimes. It was like a film. You know, like the bits between the talking when there’s just music and people doing stuff. Sometimes I was in the film, and sometimes I was just watching it, making up stories about the people I saw.

Today, since it was my birthday, I was in the film.

The camera watched me watching the shoppers hurrying through the rain. I had Garbage on my Discman.

“When I Grow Up” was my favourite song.

There were tons of women with plastic-covered pushchairs in the street. They looked like they were pushing bubbles filled with babies. The bus stopped in front of McDonald’s. There were more women with pushchairs sitting together in the window, talking and laughing while their children mashed up chips and played with the toy of the week.