by Jo Cotterill
Samantha’s eyes narrowed as she turned to look at Fliss. ‘I don’t know what you think you’re playing at,’ she said in a dangerous voice, ‘but don’t you dare try to steal my boyfriend. Or you’ll be sorry.’
Fliss felt drained of all energy, so she simply nodded. Samantha stared at her once more before turning on her heel and marching off, calling over her shoulder, ‘You’ll have to take that costume home and dry it yourself.’
Mari and Victoria came bursting out of the bushes. ‘You OK? My goodness, you’re like a drowned rat! Where have you been?’
Fliss shook her head. ‘The bandstand.’
Mari looked curious. ‘On your own?’
‘No,’ said Fliss unwillingly. ‘Tom was there.’
Mari and Victoria exchanged a look. ‘You and Tom in the bandstand – just you?’ said Victoria. ‘How romantic!’
‘It wasn’t romantic at all,’ snapped Fliss. She suddenly wanted to go home and climb into bed and not talk to anyone at all. Even her best friends.
Mari peered at her. ‘What happened? Have you been crying?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Fliss. ‘Nothing happened.’ Which is true, she thought. It would have done, if I hadn’t opened my big stupid mouth. He would have kissed me. Properly. Not as Juliet – as Fliss. But that would have been wrong, wouldn’t it? He’s going out with someone else! She felt absurdly angry. How dare he put her in that situation!
The sky was clearing but the air was still chilly. Fliss’s nightdress clung to her, making her colder by the minute. ‘We’ve got to get you warmed up,’ said Victoria, noticing Fliss shivering. ‘Come on, we’ll look after you.’
The two of them put their arms around Fliss and helped her back to the tent. At the doorway, Fliss couldn’t help looking back at the clearing. But Tom and Samantha were long gone.
Chapter 12
you’ll get over it
FLISS FELT COLD for a long time that night, even though Jeanette had made her a hot-water bottle, and she was wearing thick socks. She lay back and stared at the ceiling. All she could see was Tom’s face. His eyes, drawing her in. His hand, brushing the hair away from her cheek.
And then she heard her own voice, asking about Samantha. Ruining the moment – spoiling her chance. Two more seconds and she would have had her very first kiss. Not a pretend one on the stage. A real kiss meant for her, Felicity Richards. But she had to go and mess it all up. Maybe if Tom had kissed her there, in the rain, he might have realized how she felt about him. How she still felt, despite trying to ignore her feelings. And he might have decided to split up with Samantha . . . but how would Fliss have felt about that? She didn’t want to be responsible for them breaking up, did she? No. He was taken. He was someone else’s boyfriend. It was wrong to go behind their backs, wasn’t it? Even if that person was Samantha. It would still be wrong to cheat with her boyfriend.
Fliss felt all mixed up in the head. Why did things have to be so complicated? And why, even though she knew she’d done the right thing, did she wish she hadn’t?
‘Something’s going on,’ Jeanette said four days later. She looked at her daughter with a frown. ‘I’ve never seen you this miserable. It’s not good for you. You usually like being in plays. You get excited. Over-happy. Not like this.’ She sighed as she cleared the kitchen table. ‘And you’re not eating properly. You’ve got to eat, Felicity. At least have some fruit for pudding.’
Fliss glanced at the two ancient apples and the wrinkled orange in the basket. ‘No thanks.’
‘Some yoghurt then.’
Fliss shook her head. Jeanette sighed. ‘Now listen, love, don’t get angry with me, but . . . well, have you thought about pulling out of the play?’
Fliss gave her mother a look.
Jeanette held up her hands. ‘I know, I know, I don’t understand, you can’t possibly do that, no one can do your part, blah blah. But sweetie, if you were hit by a bus and were in hospital, they’d have to manage without you, wouldn’t they? Someone else could do your lines.’ Fliss rolled her eyes. ‘I’m just saying,’ said Jeanette, her voice sharpening, ‘that it’s not the end of the world. This play is making you unhappy. I don’t know what happened the other night, but obviously it was something big. And since you won’t tell me, I’m just guessing in the dark here.’ Jeanette was sounding more annoyed by the minute. ‘You’ve been up and down more in the past few weeks than you have in the past few years.’
‘Maybe it’s because I’m a teenager,’ muttered Fliss rebelliously. ‘Aren’t you going to mention hormones?’
Jeanette sat down. ‘Don’t take that tone with me. I’m only trying to help. And as a matter of fact, Vivienne did mention hormone levels only yesterday.’ She caught her daughter’s accusing stare. ‘I was worried,’ she said defensively. ‘I rang Vivienne to see if she had any advice. She said Sofie went through something very similar at your age. But then she put her on starflower and evening primrose oil and everything went back to normal.’
‘I don’t need vitamin tablets,’ said Fliss, exasperated.
‘Everyone needs vitamin tablets,’ said Jeanette, who took three different sorts herself every morning. ‘Especially if you’re not eating a balanced diet,’ she added pointedly.
‘All right!’ snapped Fliss. ‘I’ll eat a yoghurt, OK?’
Jeanette sighed. ‘It’s not just the eating, Felicity. You’re so quiet – even quieter than normal. Why can’t you tell me what’s happened?’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘I might.’ Jeanette put her hand over her daughter’s. ‘I was young once myself, you know. It wasn’t that long ago.’
‘When you were young,’ said Fliss, ‘they didn’t even have the internet.’
‘No,’ agreed Jeanette, ‘we talked to each other instead.’
Fliss bit her lip. ‘All right. But you mustn’t laugh.’
Jeanette nodded.
‘There’s this boy . . .’ Fliss glanced up at her mum to see how she would react to this, but Jeanette’s face remained impassive. ‘You remember? The one we talked about before . . . I really like him. But he’s going out with someone else.’
Jeanette smiled in relief. ‘Oh, is that all!’ She patted Fliss’s hand. ‘I thought it was something serious! Sweetie, everyone gets crushes at your age.’
‘It’s not a crush!’
‘And you’ll get over it,’ continued Jeanette. ‘Is this the boy in the play? Tom something?’
Fliss nodded, dumbstruck. Her mother wasn’t even trying to understand!
‘Sweetheart,’ said Jeanette, ‘I know how intense it can feel. Like he’s the only boy in the world for you. Like your life is going to fall apart if you can’t be with him. But, darling’ – she leaned forward and looked sympathetic – ‘it’s only another three days to the performance. The best way to get over someone is not to see them any more. Believe me, I know. After this weekend, you won’t see him again, will you? So it’ll stop hurting.’ She smiled. ‘And I bet by the time you get to the Christmas play, you’ll have forgotten all about him.’
Fliss snatched her hand away and stood up so quickly her chair rocked violently. ‘Stop talking to me as though I’m a child!’
Jeanette’s jaw dropped. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Fliss felt anger sweep through her – anger built on hurt and incomprehension. ‘You don’t even know how I feel! You have no idea!’
Her mother lifted her eyebrows. ‘I do remember what it’s like to be a teenager.’
‘Maybe what it was like when you were a teenager, Mum.’ Fliss felt hot with frustration. ‘That was a long time ago.’
‘Not that long,’ said Jeanette sharply. She was astonished. Her little Fliss, answering back!
‘And that was you, Mum, not me! You’ve said yourself how different we are! So stop patronizing me by saying you know how I feel!’
Jeanette’s expression darkened. ‘Now, hang on a minute . . .’
‘You have no idea how much this pl
ay means to me. You think it’s just silly nonsense. You’ve complained about it enough! But I love it, Mum, I love it more than anything. And you don’t know the first thing about it! So how can you sit there and tell me that everything will be fine after the weekend? You don’t know what you’re talking about!’
‘That’s enough,’ snapped Jeanette, getting to her feet. Fliss stopped, her face burning and her throat aching. ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that! I’m fed up with the whole thing. I wish you’d never signed up for that play. Since you’ve been rehearsing, you’ve been moody and rude. Up and down all the time.’
Fliss clenched her fists at the injustice of this. When had she been rude? Jeanette was making it up!
‘Especially the last few days,’ Jeanette went on. ‘You won’t talk to me and you spend all your time in your room. You’re not the only one who lives here, and I’m fed up with your mood swings. You’re draining all the good energy out of the air. Every time I come into a room, I can feel your black mood. It’s not good for either of us.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Fliss cried. ‘Why are you spouting this rubbish at me? Good energy in the air? Come on, Mum, you know it’s a load of tosh! It’s just the sort of thing Vivienne would say!’
Jeanette’s mouth dropped open. ‘Vivienne talks a lot of sense!’ she spluttered.
‘No, she doesn’t, Mum, she’s a fake and you know it.’ All the things she’d been bottling up suddenly came pouring out of Fliss. ‘Why do you even have her round? She just looks down on you – on everything about us. Our house, the way we live – even the way I do my hair!’
‘She does not look down on us,’ said Jeanette, her face slowly turning beetroot. ‘She’s a good friend. She’s given me a lot of good advice over the years.’
‘Like what?’ asked Fliss. ‘What has she ever said that has made our lives even the slightest bit better?’ Jeanette was speechless. ‘You see? She just comes and tells you stuff because she knows you’ll lap it up and it makes her feel all superior. She probably goes home and laughs about it afterwards!’
Jeanette’s lip trembled. ‘She’s been a good friend,’ she said, tears starting in her eyes. ‘You don’t know. When your dad . . . after all that, she was good to me. She was the only one who stuck by me.’ Her voice suddenly rose, shrill and sharp. ‘You have no idea what I went through! All alone! No one to look out for me!’
‘You said you stayed with your parents.’ Fliss’s anger was subsiding. Her mother looked so upset and pathetic.
‘Yes, but every single day, I felt like a stranger in their house. Mum said I was an idiot. She was so rude about Rob – about your father. She kept saying if only we could turn back the clock, but it was too late.’ Jeanette turned miserable eyes on her daughter. ‘You might think that Vivienne is stuck up,’ she said quietly, ‘but she’s been more faithful to me than my own family. So don’t you dare criticize her again.’
Fliss felt cold. Jeanette had never spoken to her like this before. But then she’d never dared argue until now. Her mother looked tired; broken. Fliss’s heart ached for her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a whisper.
Jeanette nodded. Her eyes no longer looked unhappy. Now they looked hard, like stone. ‘Do what you like,’ she said. ‘Do the play. Let this boy make you miserable. I don’t care.’ She turned and walked out of the room.
Fliss sat down heavily on a chair and tried not to cry.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Mari asked anxiously for the sixth time. ‘You just look so pale.’
The friends were getting ready for the Thursday run-through in the park. The tent was crowded with girls, but thankfully it hadn’t rained since earlier in the day and there were clear skies over the stage. Candy had told them not to wear costumes, since they were too precious to risk getting wet again. ‘You can wear them for the dress rehearsal tomorrow,’ she said, ‘but it’ll cost us a fortune if any of them are damaged.’ Fliss was a bit disappointed. The blue party dress in particular really helped her to get into the role of Juliet. She hoped the long skirt she was wearing would give her the same feeling.
Fliss glanced in her little hand mirror. Mari was right, she did look pale. ‘I just didn’t sleep too well. I’ll put some blusher on.’
Victoria sighed. ‘I wish you’d tell us what happened that day in the thunderstorm. Something did, didn’t it?’
Fliss turned away to find her blusher. How could she admit that she had nearly kissed the boy of her dreams but ruined it all with one stupid comment? Mari and Victoria were shocked enough when she’d blown her chances of a date with Tom. What would they say if they knew she’d messed up a kiss too? It was too embarrassing. Instead, Fliss shrugged. ‘Nothing happened.’ Mari and Victoria looked unconvinced. ‘It didn’t! It might have – but it didn’t. I just – I had an argument with my mum last night.’
Mari looked astonished. ‘You never argue with your mum.’
‘You never argue with anyone,’ said Victoria.
‘And now I know why,’ said Fliss with a grimace. ‘It was horrible. She got really upset and I felt so guilty.’
‘What did you argue about?’ asked Victoria.
‘Oh, all sorts of things,’ said Fliss vaguely. ‘The play, mostly. She said she wished I’d never signed up for it.’
‘No!’ Mari was horrified. ‘Doesn’t she know how good you are?’
‘It’s not about that,’ said Fliss, patting blusher onto her cheeks. ‘She thinks it’s making me rude and moody. And anyway, she thinks I should be studying.’
‘Studying what?’ asked Mari. ‘It’s the holidays! You can study again when we go back to school next week.’ She leaned forward. ‘You’re all uneven. You’ve got more blusher on one cheek than the other. Let me have a go.’
Fliss closed her eyes obediently as Mari vigorously brushed blusher over one cheek. ‘It’s only because she never went to university,’ she said. ‘She wants me to do really well at school so I can have the opportunities she didn’t.’
‘But, Fliss,’ said Mari, ‘it’s your life, not hers.’
‘I know that,’ said Fliss, ‘but I don’t want to let her down, you know?’
Victoria nodded. ‘I understand. And she did bring you up on her own. You feel like you owe her.’
‘That’s exactly it.’
Mari sat down on a stool, a worried expression on her face. ‘But, Fliss, you can’t go through your life trying to please everyone else. You can’t make decisions just to make your mum happy. What about what you want?’
‘But what if she’s right?’ said Fliss, trying to see herself in a small hand mirror. ‘What if it would be better for me to do something normal with my life? There’s no money in acting, everyone says so. Am I just wasting my life if I put all my efforts into it?’ She frowned. ‘Mari, I look like I’ve dunked my face in strawberry ice cream! You’ve put far too much on!’
Victoria handed over a packet of baby wipes. ‘Take it all off and start again.’
‘You’re not wasting your life,’ said Mari, determined to continue the topic. ‘You’re good, you’re really good. Even Candy says so.’
‘But she’s just one person,’ said Fliss, scrubbing her face. ‘And Mum said she’s only a college teacher, so how would she know?’
‘That is such a catty thing to say!’ cried Mari. ‘Surely if you’re good, you’re good. Candy’s taught loads of people. And she did stuff for the BBC. She’d know talent when it came along. Your mum doesn’t have a clue.’
Fliss flushed. ‘She’s only doing what she thinks is best for me.’
‘Mari, I think you’re being a bit harsh,’ said Victoria. ‘It’s natural that Fliss’s mum wants her to have a good career. And you know acting isn’t very secure.’
Mari looked mulish. ‘It is if you’re good enough.’
‘Well, let’s not talk about it now,’ said Fliss, sweeping the blusher brush across her face. ‘Is that OK?’
‘You look lovely,’ said Victoria.
Samantha strode into the tent. ‘Hello?’ she shouted. ‘Everyone listen!’ The chatter died down a bit. Samantha frowned and tapped her foot. ‘I’m waiting.’
Mari glanced at Fliss and rolled her eyes. ‘Why does she have to make herself sound so important all the time?’ she muttered.
‘Mari, if you have something to say, maybe you’d like to share it with all of us?’ said Samantha in a sneery voice.
Victoria grabbed Mari’s arm before she could speak. ‘No, no, she’s finished. Honestly.’
‘Fine,’ said Samantha. ‘This is a call for beginners. We’re about to start.’
‘That’s me,’ said Victoria, smoothing her hair back. ‘See you guys in a bit.’
‘Break a leg,’ Fliss called after her.
Samantha turned to look at them. Her gaze slid over Mari and came to rest on Fliss. There was something odd in her expression. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You too, Fliss. Break a leg.’ Then she turned and went out of the tent.
Mari stared after her. ‘What was that about?’
‘No idea,’ Fliss said slowly. ‘Weird, though.’
Mari shrugged. ‘She’s probably realized that after this weekend she’s got no reason to hate you any more. Dress rehearsal tomorrow, then performance on Saturday. Then it’s all over.’
‘I wish we were doing more performances,’ said Fliss, smoothing out the creases in her dress. ‘All this work for just one show! It seems so unfair.’
‘Better make it count then,’ said Mari.
‘Yeah . . .’ Fliss’s thoughts turned to Tom. If she were honest, her thoughts had almost all been about Tom since the last rehearsal. Even though she kept telling herself it was all useless, still she couldn’t help dreaming . . . And Mari’s words had just made everything so much more intense. After this weekend, it was all over. No more play, no more Tom – no more kissing Tom, that was more to the point. Back to seeing him on the bus on the way to school – back to real life.
Victoria came back into the tent, scowling. ‘I know Candy said everything had been dried off, but the grass is still wet. Nearly sprained my ankle coming off the stage. Be careful of your shoes.’