The Worst Girlfriend in the World
Page 21
‘You going to buy yourself something nice in Manchester then?’ Mum asked. I frowned, until I remembered that she still thought I was spending the weekend with Shuv. ‘Maybe some clothes? They’ve got a big TopShop there, haven’t they?’
Mum hovered in the doorway of my sewing room, which was next door to my bedroom. Back in the day, it had probably been home to four Victorian housemaids but now it was home to my proper industrial sewing machine, which the Chatterjees gave me when they bought a new one for the dry-cleaning shop. All my buttons and zippers and findings were neatly stored in an old shop display unit that my dad had bought me from a French flea market, and on the IKEA shelving were all my fabrics arranged according to colour. No one ever bothered me when I was in my sewing room, and while I totally appreciated Mum showing some interest in my life, I’d just successfully sewn the first sleeve into my leather dress and I was keen to start on the second, while my luck was still in and also… ‘Well, I don’t buy new clothes,’ I explained. ‘It’s just a waste of money when I could make something or buy vintage or second-hand clothes and repurpose them.’
Mum pulled a face. ‘Yeah, but…’
‘And at the same time, it’s educational,’ I said brightly, as I very carefully positioned the tacked sleeve under the needle. ‘Even making that wrap skirt I gave you last Christmas was working towards my future. That’s kind of ace, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose.’ Mum didn’t sound convinced but she’d loved the denim skirt I’d made her last Christmas. I’d even appliquéd little felt flowers on to it and anyway we were having an actual conversation, and Dad hadn’t put any dates on the kitchen calendar and we were deep into November now so there was no way he was going to disappear into the wide blue yonder this close to Christmas.
It was all good. Pretty much all of it. There was still the Alice thing, I thought, as Mum muttered something about an episode of Don’t Tell the Bride waiting for her on the Sky box, but I was missing her less and less.
I didn’t need Alice any more. When I thought back to being friends with her, which seemed like a gazillion years ago, my world had been much smaller. There had only been room for Alice in it.
Now my world had expanded to encompass all these new people. Not just Sage and Dora and the others, even Karen and Sandra, but Thee Desperadettes and especially Francis and Louis. Louis was properly in my life now and when I thought about the weekend in London, I’d get a shivery feeling of excitement though it felt a bit like terror too, because I knew something important was going to happen.
‘It’s my do-or-die weekend,’ I said to Sage on Friday afternoon as I put the final touches to my leather dress, though part of me never wanted to see it ever again. The leather had stretched from being worked on so much and the hem had gone seriously wonky.
‘You mean it’s your do-Louis-or-die weekend.’ She smiled slyly when I shuddered because I didn’t want to do Louis. Not yet anyway. But kissing would be good – if he could stand still and be quiet for long enough. ‘So, shall we talk outfit options?’
‘Well, I’m wearing this, of course!’ I gestured at my grey leather dress. ‘With my —’
‘No, don’t tell us. Let us guess,’ Mattie drawled from where he was perched on top of his desk, swinging his legs and flicking through the new Vogue. There was a big interview with Martin Sanderson, which we’d all pored over; photographs taken in what he called his atelier (and what I called his workroom) above his first ever shop in Notting Hill. The whole building was painted in his signature shade of pink, a dull, smudgy pink like the dusky Merrycliffe skies in winter. ‘You’re going to wear thick black tights and…’
‘… either your kitten heels or those block-heel black knee-high boots,’ Dora said. She tilted her head and looked at me. ‘Maybe with Mattie’s black leather jacket. I know you despise double denim but how do you feel about double leather?’
‘I think I could make it work,’ I decided and Sage made a funny noise at the back of her throat. ‘What?’
She shook her head. ‘You’re going for a fashion look when you should go for a pulling look. Boys don’t get fashion looks. They’re not that evolved.’
I glanced over at Mattie, who shrugged. ‘I am one of the very few who are evolved, but the rest of my kind think girls should do legs and cleavage.’
‘No!’ I was genuinely shocked. Francis had claimed that he was far more evolved than me, but he’d been talking about emotional maturity rather than fashion. Then I thought of Alice’s strike rate and the stretchy short black bandage dresses she preferred because they made the most of her three B’s. ‘Not all boys, surely?’
Mattie looked at me pityingly. ‘Most boys don’t understand fashion.’
I thought about the smirks and nudges when I wore my cropped trousers, Chanel-ish jacket and brogues to The Wow. Even when I wore one of my Edie-esque slinky T-shirt dresses, boys looked at me in confusion because of the thick black opaques and the lack of six-inch stripper heels.
‘But if the boy was, like, in a band or something, he’d be creative and arty and he’d totally go for a girl like me,’ I pointed out, but Sage just rolled her eyes and said that most boys in bands would go out with a blonde model given half the chance, even indie boys in indie bands, and that if I was really serious about pulling Louis I’d at least have to wear bootie shorts with my thick black tights.
‘The day I wear bootie shorts is the day that I’ve suffered a mild concussion,’ I said grandly but now I was worried that I hadn’t thought hard enough about my outfit options. I hoped Sage was wrong.
There were plenty of boys who got fashion. Francis, for instance, had been full of praise for my leather dress and we often discussed sixties designers like Mary Quant and Barbara Hulanicki of Biba. Though even Francis had got a bit glassy-eyed when we watched a film called Girl on a Motorcycle because the actress starring in it, Marianne Faithfull, spent all her time in a black leather catsuit.
It was all so confusing.
‘Anyway, even if you do wear bootie shorts, you’ll have to wear a bum bag or money belt,’ Sage reminded me. She’d been to London five times, which was more than any of us. Even Karen and Sandra. She’d even been to Camden and said that the streets of London were not paved with gold but rapists, muggers, pickpockets and gangs of gypsies who’d steal your phone while they distracted you by cursing when you wouldn’t buy their lucky heather.
There was so much to worry about, but Francis had told me that London was also really exciting. It was fast and noisy and there was always something happening, something new to look at, something that you’d never seen before. He’d also said we’d have enough time before Thee Desperadoes soundchecked for him to take me to Berwick Street in Soho where there were loads of fabric shops.
‘Take lots of pictures and put them on Instagram,’ Paul told me as we left college. ‘Live tweet everything so I can pretend I’m in London too.’
He was the only other person who’d never been to London before and he made me promise that I’d have my photo taken next to Camden Town station. Sage stood over me until I’d downloaded a tube map on to my phone and Dora wanted me to go to a particular shop and see if they had a purple leather bustier in her size and they all walked with me to the seafront and waved me off, like I was going to war and they might never see me again.
The giddy, sick feeling of excitement that made my tummy churn and my toes curl up inside my Dunlop Green Flashes (I refused to wear any other kind of trainer) intensified until I thought I might actually throw up.
I was still awake at two the next morning, mentally reviewing my outfit options but always returning to the leather dress. Then it was seven and my alarm was shrieking me awake.
It took a few seconds to penetrate my sleep-fogged brain, then I sat up with a tiny cry because I wasn’t going to spend the day doing alterations. I was going to spend a lot of the day in a minibus with Thee Desperadettes and Thee Desperadoes and Louis.
I was going to London.
I had to have a barely lukewarm shower because it was too early for the boiler to come on. It woke me up quite a bit and soon I was squeaky clean and wide-eyed as I assessed my hair in the bathroom mirror.
It was three weeks since my shearing. The bald spot was no more, the tufty bit was a lot less tufty and my fringe was long enough to sweep to one side and smooth down with serum in a very gamine, sixties way. I almost loved it now.
I was also going to have to learn to love my leather dress. The thin leather had stretched so much that it was shapeless rather than A-line and made me look even more stick-like than usual, and one of the three-quarter-length sleeves was tighter than the other one. All I could do was hope that, to the untrained eye, it would look very stylish and directional.
I packed my bag with all the stuff I’d need for the next twenty-four hours. We weren’t getting back to Merrycliffe until God knows what time on Sunday morning but Lexy had already said I could stay at hers because Mum and Dad thought I’d be all tucked up on Shuv’s sofa in Manchester.
I felt a tiny pang of guilt about lying to Mum and Dad, but it was lying for their own good. And my own good because even if they had agreed to let me go, which was doubtful, there’d have been conditions attached. I was used to Mum’s benign neglect but Dad was a bit more hands-on when he was around. He didn’t mind what I got up to in Merrycliffe because there wasn’t much I could get up to, but whenever I ventured further afield there were hourly texts and phone calls.
Anyway, I was going to be fine in London. It wasn’t like I would be chugging down alcohol – no more than I would on a night out in Merrycliffe – and I’d be with older, responsible people. Well, they were older anyway.
It was no use. I still felt guilty. Enough that I decided to make them a cup of tea before I went. Both Mum and Dad had been very suspicious of why I needed to leave for Manchester at eight in the morning but Shuv had told them there was a vintage fair on and we had to get there before all the good stuff went. When it came to lying to the parents, there was still so much Shuv had to teach me.
But she didn’t have to teach me anything about sucking up. Not only did I make tea but toast too, and put the jam and butter in little dishes. Then I carried the whole lot upstairs on a tray quietly so as not to ruin the surprise, until I came to their bedroom door. It was always ajar when Dad was home because he said that once you’d had kids you couldn’t not sleep with your bedroom door ajar to hear them if they cried out in the middle of the night. Innate primordial instinct he called it, though it had missed Mum out because she managed to sleep with the door tightly shut when he was away.
Anyway, now it was ajar and I paused to listen carefully to make sure I wasn’t interrupting anything. Like, sexy times. Oh God, it didn’t even bear thinking about. But I couldn’t hear anything that was going to require me to have huge amounts of therapy, just Dad saying…
‘Well, we’ll talk to her when she gets back from Manchester, before I head off to the continent.’
My heart sank. Not just to my feet but right down to the floor. He wasn’t meant to be going anywhere. And before I could even wonder what they needed to tell me that was so important…
‘I can’t see the harm in Franny staying on to do her fashion BTEC if she passes her retakes,’ Mum said. ‘Then she’ll have a qualification to fall back on.’
‘Not a proper qualification though.’ I knew I should stop listening, all that chuff about eavesdroppers never hearing any good, but I was rooted to the spot. ‘We both thought Franny was as bright as Shuv, but she’s not and this ridiculous idea that she’s going to do some fancy fashion degree and move to Paris to make frocks for a living? Best nip it in the bud.’
He said it so matter-of-factly that for a long moment I agreed with him. Even getting into Central St Martin’s to do a fashion degree would be lottery lucky, but to actually become a successful fashion designer – that would be like winning Euromillions when the jackpot had rolled over week after week. It was a once-in-a-generation kind of deal.
I glanced down at my leather dress. It hadn’t turned out as I’d planned, but even Barbara had been grudgingly impressed with what I’d managed to achieve from some off-cuts of cheap, thin leather. That was nothing to do with luck. It was to do with working bloody hard and I needed to be somewhere where I could harness my talent, work even bloody harder.
This was about the time that Mum should have been sticking up for me. It was the least she could do. I waited.
‘Well, she could still be a machinist, couldn’t she?’ she pondered. ‘I mean, it’s not what she wanted, but it’s a career in fashion. Sort of.’
‘Yeah, but that’s all outsourced to the Far East now,’ Dad said and I couldn’t believe they thought they had the right to decide how my life was going to be. They wanted to take my dreams and rip them into tiny pieces because their world was too small and narrow to make room for them. ‘I looked at the course fees for that fashion degree in London. Thousands and thousands a year, plus rent and whatnot. With her track record, who’s to say she’d even stick at it? She’s better off going full-time for the Chatterjees. The recession doesn’t seem to have affected them.’
Mum grunted in agreement. ‘It would be good to have her around for when you’re not here,’ she decided and I’d heard enough.
I kicked the door open so hard that it crashed back on its hinges. I really wished that I hadn’t made them breakfast, because after my dramatic entrance, both of them managing to jump even though they were sitting up in bed, I then had to set the heavy tray down very carefully on top of the chest of drawers.
‘I’m staying on at college and getting my BTEC whether you like it or not,’ I burst out. ‘And then if they’ll have me, I’m going to Central St Martin’s to do my fashion degree —’
‘Now, Franny,’ Dad said in that voice of his that he dug out when he thought I was being completely unreasonable. ‘I’m sorry you had to hear that but it is what it is. The real world doesn’t work the way you think it does.’
I knew all about the real world. It wasn’t like I’d spent most of my life at Eurodisney. ‘If you don’t want to get saddled with my tuition fees, then fine! I’ll leave home so I can be means-tested and not have to pay them.’ The unfairness of it all made me clench my hands into tight, painful fists. ‘You’re my parents! You’re meant to encourage me to be whoever the hell I want to be! Why can’t you be like those parents on The X-Factor who support their children even when they can’t sing a note? Except I have found something I could be really good at and you’re meant to tell me to go after my dreams and —’
‘That’s all very well, Franny, but you failed half your GCSEs.’ It was the worst thing he could have said.
I looked at Mum and she looked back at me with a wary, frightened look. Then her gaze skidded away. I was done with this. ‘I didn’t fail half my GCSEs.’ I’d given up counting how many times I’d said it. ‘I didn’t even fail my Maths and English GCSEs…’
‘Franny, please, don’t…’ It was a frantic little whimper that was easy to ignore.
‘But you did fail them,’ Dad pointed out, frowning as he glanced from me to Mum because he was still too dumb to work it out.
‘I didn’t fail them. I would have had to turn up at school to take them in order to fail them. Do you want to know why I missed school on those days? While you were God knows where in the middle of Europe because it’s too much to expect that you might phone at least once every day?’ I could feel the spittle collecting at the side of my mouth as the words flew out. They were both silent, staring at me in horror, but for very different reasons. ‘I didn’t dare leave the house because I was terrified that if I did, she’d have done something awful while I was gone. That I’d have come back to find she’d overdosed on the pills t
hat she stops taking the minute you get into your lorry and disappear.’
It didn’t even come close to describing those five awful, wretched days in June, Thursday through to Monday, when I’d stayed in the house, curtains drawn so not a chink of blinding sunlight could penetrate, no restorative sea breezes allowed to gently sweep through the house.
Mum had been neither manic nor maudlin. Instead, she’d cried for five days straight and kept saying, ‘I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it,’ and when I wanted to phone Linda or the doctor or even Dad and tell him to come home now, she’d cried harder and said she’d be sent away again and she’d never forgive me.
Neither of us had slept. I’d been too scared to close my eyes. How could I when my mother was lying on the bathroom floor telling me that there was no point in going on when she felt like this? And she didn’t sleep because all she could do was cry.
I’d spent most of the time on the floor with her, back propped up against the tub. When she’d let me, I’d held her narrow body and it seemed like it was so frail that it might snap in two with the force of her sobs. Every time I ventured downstairs to get a drink or to snatch something out of the fridge, I’d race back up again and it was always a relief to find her still foetal on our tatted blue bathroom rug. I had fallen asleep eventually, head resting on the lip of the bath, and when I’d woken up on the Tuesday morning, she was in her own bed fast asleep. ‘God, what do you want?’ she’d snapped when she woke to find me standing over her, watching the rise and fall of her breath to make sure that she was still alive. ‘Leave me alone, Franny. I’m tired.’