Sarah works in a pub.

I’m 19, I’ve just finished my A levels and I’m starting university in September. Gosh, I don’t really know what else. I don’t have a partner at the moment. I just got out of a bit of a sticky relationship recently so I’m just sort of enjoying being single. I live in my dad’s old house with my best friend Meg so at the moment. He’s just sold it, so when it he sells it, then I’ll have to think of somewhere else to live.

Well, my mum is a homeopath, so I’ve always been around alternative sort of things. My dad is a musician, as is my brother, so that was always fun. I don’t really know… we moved down to here from London when I was about 9. That was good, I loved it. I loved being in the countryside. There was always so much to do and stuff – it was good. I moved with just my mum and my mum’s sister and her three girls. My parents were divorced when I was about 7, and that was actually really fine – that never bothered me at all. My mum moved down here with us and her sister and the three girls, just by themselves, they just decided to pick everything up and go when my grandmother died, they just decided let’s leave it all behind, and so we moved down here. We didn’t have a telephone or a toaster or a fridge or anything at all. We just lived in this little cottage, and then she met Adam and we sort of built our life here. And my dad followed us because he didn’t want to be so far away from us. He was working in London, but he moved down here as well so he could spend more time with us, which was good. I suppose I spent a lot of time ... It was me and my brother, and we spent a lot of time with our cousins, my mum’s sister’s three girls and my uncle and his daughter, who we spent a lot of time with, so it was usually like seven or eight of us together at one time and we just used to ask a lot of Always. It was never like, ‘Oh I’ll tell you when you’re older,’ or ‘Don’t ask questions like that.’ Just anything that we asked they would tell us so – and more ... (laughs) They were always like completely normal and fine about it. I think that’s where I got all the obvious facts about sex and that sort of thing – the true stuff – but then being with that amount of people, like with 8 sort of people around the same age as you …and you sort of hear things at school and pick things, and we had an older cousin, Lauren, who’s now like 22, and she used to tell us the biggest amount of shit about everything. Like, 'this happens and this happens…' and me and David and Zoe who were the same age used to believe everything she said – like, ‘Really? That’s disgusting!’. She would tell us all this stuff that really wasn’t at all true. And then we’d go to my mum and say “Lauren told us this, is it true?’ and she’d be like ‘No.’ And then Lauren would be like, 'Well I heard it at school, so it must be true.’ And my mum was like, ‘No, it’s not true at all – it’s not true.’ Lauren loved winding us up, she used to do it to scare us. 'Cause she probably went and asked her mum before she told us, ‘Mum is this really true?’ and Jo would be like ‘No’. And then she’d be like 'I’m going to wind them up.'

It was always like we’d be sat around the dinner table and someone would just start talking about sex. So it was never like, 'Don’t talk about it, it’s inappropriate,’ or… it wasn’t like a joke, but they used to laugh at us quite a lot for the things that we thought were true. So it was always good, like, completely open. It made me feel like, never uncomfortable to talk about it. 'Cause I’m sure there are some people that I know definitely that would … like, if you asked them to do this same thing, they’d be like, ‘God no, I couldn’t do that, it’s far too embarrassing!' Whereas it took all the embarrassment out of sex, and like now I don’t have any embarrassment around it or even before, and I know a lot of people who still do, do you know what I mean?

I was 14 when I lost my virginity – about 5 years ago. It did just sort of happen, but I sort of wanted to, if you know what I mean. And I was with my boyfriend, who I was really really in love with. We were together for 2 years or something. From when I was about just 14 to when I was sort of 16, almost 17, so we were together for two years. I lost my virginity when I was 14, but just a couple of months before I was 15 – so sort of in the middle somewhere.

I’ll tell the story but I don’t know that there’s that much to sort of tell. It seems like so long ago – yours must seem like … (laughs) We went out with some of our friends, and then we went back to his house – yeah, we went back to his house, he lives on a local estate. Oh yeah, it was really funny, I remember, we got locked out so we were like, ‘Oh no, we’re locked out!' So we sat outside for ages, like, 'Oh my God, what are we going to do?' Then he was like, 'Oh, I remember, I think my mum left the back door open for me’. I was like, ‘Um, thanks, I’ve just spent ages in the freezing cold!’ So we went round and the back door was open and we let ourselves in. And then, we’d sort of not actually had sex up to that point, but always sort of done all those other sorts of things. And then it just sort of happened. It was obviously very quick. And it didn’t actually hurt at all, a lot of people were saying it hurts … There were myths about it hurts and you, like, bleed everywhere ... but it didn’t hurt at all and I didn’t bleed at all, which was good. I was like, a bit worried about that, I suppose.

He knew I was a virgin; he was as well. We were both the same age. So yeah, I suppose you don’t really know what to do, but you sort of guess. It was nice though, it was sort of, I don’t know, I felt quite, kind of like, special, because I really was very in love with him and he was with me as well, so it felt really like nice, do you know what I mean? Because we did really really love each other, I mean I don’t see him any more and we hated each other for ages, but at the time it was really nice. I suppose it was to show each other how much we did love each other, which was good. We had talked about it lots in advance, I mean we all did, my friends and stuff.

Looking back, I feel I made the right decision. I wouldn’t have changed it now. Because I did love him a lot and it felt like a sort of good time for me. I didn’t ever regret it afterwards and I felt like I’d done it with the right person so, yeah, it was good.

I think my first experience set a tone for later relationships, purely because of the love thing. I think when I enter into relationships and stuff, because obviously sex is quite a big part of relationships, I ... the love thing is very important for me. And also feeling so secure when I lost my virginity now makes me – because I felt really safe and secure and it felt really fine - so now, any sexual experience or relationship … I don’t know, I sort of have more confidence around sex, and, do you see what I mean? Because I felt confident when I did it, I didn’t feel sort of shy or embarrassed or stupid or used, so I think now around sex I have, yeah, more confidence. Which is good.

- I think with my own children I’ll do exactly what my mum did, which is tell them everything they want to know, anything they ask – tell them the truth whatever, because it’s just so much easier than not. Because then they’re going to find themselves in tricky situations… But a lot of people, when I say I was 14 when I lost my virginity, say that’s quite young. So I can’t really say there’s a good age to do it or a good time to do it. But I think definitely for me, the in-love thing was quite important. I’m sure there are a lot of people who don’t fall in love until they’re like, you know, whatever age in life, so I don’t really know, I think I was probably someone who was quite lucky. Maybe just to wait - I think being in love for me was lucky - maybe just to wait until they felt completely safe with that other person, completely secure in the situation and like, you know, not at all embarrassed to talk about it before it happened, or talk about it after it happened – or you need to be able to sort of laugh afterwards. Just the confidence thing has definitely helped me in my relationships so, to feel confident is a big thing.