I Think I Love You

by Allison Pearson

  5

  All right, have I got:

  high coloring that is prone to stubborn spots

  delicate pale skin that flushes easily

  sallow skin with greasy patches or

  none of the above?”

  We were in the Kardomah, just off the market square, drinking frothy coffee that they served in Pyrex cups and saucers. We didn’t like the coffee much, but we thought it was American so we swallowed it down. The coffee came scalding hot and burned the back of your throat, then it got cold and scummy without ever being nice to drink. The Kardomah was the coolest café in town, in our opinion. All the flashiest motorbikes were parked out front. Service was slow and the ashtrays got emptied only every other day, but there was a pinball machine next to the door and plastic flowers in a vase on the tables. Coffee was expensive, but Sharon and I could make two cups and a shared toasted teacake last most of the afternoon. You just had to avoid the waitress’s eye, that’s all. That Saturday, the place was packed and we could hardly hear ourselves talk with the noise of the steam machine clearing its throat every few seconds.

  We were wearing our ponchos over pointy-collared shirts and cord flares. Mine was brown-and-cream honeycomb, knitted by Mamgu, and I had a crocheted cap, with a two-tone appliquéd flower in lighter chocolate, which I had reluctantly removed to come indoors. I also wore a brown velvet choker, which was a bit tight, but I believed it to be an elegant accessory, plus it added length to my neck. (My neck was one of my weak points.) Sharon was sitting opposite me in a red poncho with a long white fringe and a big smiley David badge on the front. She was reading aloud from the multiple-choice quiz on the Beauty Dos and Don’ts page.

  “Well, what d’you reckon, Pet? What skin type am I, then?”

  “None of the above,” I said cautiously.

  “You’re a b, definitely,” she said circling the answer.

  That week it was Gillian’s birthday and we were all in town shopping for presents. We had left Olga and Angela rummaging grimly through the sale bin in Boots. Privately, I was determined that my present would be the best. I thought I had hit the jackpot with the purchase of a Mary Quant blue eye-shadow kit. The color palette went from the pale, almost duck-egg blue of Gillian’s own eyes to a gorgeous rich indigo. In its lacquered black case with the Mary Quant logo, the kit was a thing of giddy beauty and part of the giddiness came from thinking how much it cost. More than I had spent on Christmas presents for both my parents, a concept that made me slightly ill, but I was so excited by the idea of Gillian’s surprise and gratitude that any expense was worth it.

  Even when she wasn’t with us, Gillian filled our conversation. She belonged to a type of girl who must always have existed, but that didn’t make her any less fascinating. Gillian’s returning a smock top to Dorothy Perkins because the embroidery on the bust had unraveled was more riveting than any of the rest of us going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. An entire afternoon could be whiled away speculating on whether she was getting back with Stuart. Gillian and Stuart had more breakups than Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. They were our personal film stars.

  “Hey, Susan Dey. Deydreamer? Wakey-wakey. Are we doing this quiz or not?” Sharon tapped the red Formica tabletop with a teaspoon to get my attention.

  “Don’t mention her name, please,” I protested.

  “Susan Dey, lucky bitch,” hissed Sharon without malice, or not much.

  Every group needs a common enemy. For Cassidy fans, it was Susan Dey, the actress who played David’s sister in The Partridge Family. I wouldn’t say we hated Susan Dey exactly. I was just annoyed because I wanted to be her, and there couldn’t be two of us, plus she was insultingly pretty and—this really was the final straw—clearly a sweet person. In magazine interviews, Susan always denied there was anything going on between her and David. Although she was working with David every single day, she claimed not to be affected the least little bit by the charms that had worked on half the girls on Earth.

  Sharon and me, we had our suspicions, but we preferred to give Susan the benefit of the doubt. The alternative was too upsetting to think about. We spent quite a lot of time studying pictures of her and, although we never said it aloud, I think that we would have conceded that, in a straight contest, David might prefer Susan’s stunning Californian beauty to two Welsh chicks who had to be in bed by eight thirty.

  It wasn’t just Susan Dey, mind. Any other women in David’s life were a source of anguished speculation. Last August, our magazine had this photo of a really slim pretty girl with short brown hair who was wearing a bikini and sitting next to him by a swimming pool. The caption said: “David relaxing with a friend.”

  What friend? What kind of friend? The girl made me sick with jealousy. Her name was Beverly Wilshire. I couldn’t rest easy until the September issue when the mag ran another photo of the same girl, this time wearing a man’s shirt and jeans. Turns out she wasn’t called Beverly Wilshire after all. That was the name of the hotel where David was staying! She was Jan Freeman, who was David’s stand-in on the set of The Partridge Family. So that was okay, you know. Never thought he’d like a girl with such short hair, anyway.

  “Listen to this, then.” Sharon was pressing on with the Beauty Dos and Don’ts, swiftly circling the answers as her pen moved down the page.

  One of the things I loved about Sharon was how definite things were for her, how it didn’t seem to occur to her that the world was bewildering or scary in any way. We were forever doing these multiple choices that were supposed to reveal how to make yourself prettier or more attractive or to pinpoint your personality type. Boys weren’t sitting there doing quizzes about what they could do to make us fancy them, were they? But we carried on doing the quizzes anyway. I suppose we were so hungry for clues about how to grow up and be desirable.

  Sharon always ringed the answer she felt was right. Fearlessly told the truth about herself. Me, I stared at a, b, c and d for ages, then tried to sneak a look at the upside-down answers at the bottom of the page. Always weighing up which choices would prove that I was the best kind of girl to be, and then going back to change my answers if I didn’t come out as the right personality type. When I finally made a choice, even if it was the right one, I wondered where the others would have led.

  Tell you the really chronic thing, I even cheated at multiple choices when I was by myself. Pretending to be better than you really were to other people seemed normal, but trying to kid yourself was weird. I felt furtive and ashamed, just like the time I copied most of Olga’s answers when she sat next to me during a physics test and, by a complete fluke, I got a better mark than her and she knew what I’d done, but she never said a word. Just took her glasses off and rubbed the bridge of her nose in a really disappointed way. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. How can I put this? The fact was other girls seemed real to me in a way I didn’t feel real to myself. I felt as though I was still making myself up in a hurry, improvising from minute to minute. But the funny thing was, I didn’t mind feeling scared and unfinished when I was with Sharon: she was strong and definite enough for the both of us.

  My thoughts were disturbed by a loud squawk: “Oh, you’re not gonna believe it, Petra. Listen to this: ‘You scored eight to thirteen. You are very casual with your looks!’ ” Sharon laughed and took a bite of teacake before passing the last bit to me. The currants were burned and tasted like coal, but I was starving.

  “Sha, stop reading, will you? It’s bringing me out in a rash.”

  “Hang on. Here’s a good bit now. It says, ‘Even if you feel you are the plainest, most problem-plagued girl in the world, these days there’s no excuse—it’s easy to create a new image for yourself because it’s character and tequi—’ ”

  “Technique.”

  “—technique that really matter.”

  Sharon always asked me about words. I did words and she did pictures, that was our deal. She slapped the mag down. The dirty tea things from the previous customers were still on the
table and an open packet of sugar scattered over a wide area. “What’s technique when it’s at home?”

  I dipped a finger in the froth of the cold coffee, then rolled it in the spilled sugar and slowly licked it clean.

  “Mm. The way you do something. Like you drawing a picture or me playing the cello. Good technique is holding the bow right and sitting up properly. Bad technique is slouching, using only a bit of the bow, playing all tense and hunched up. Basically, if you’ve got good technique you get a richer sound.”

  Resonance. I remembered the word Miss Fairfax had taught me. When the cello resonates it sounds as beautiful as a forest, if forests could give up their secrets.

  Sharon nodded. “You got to play for that Princess Margaret, ’aven’t you?”

  “After we get back from seeing David. Got to plan our outfits for the White City first. Think I’m gonna wear my cords and my cream top under my brown bomber jacket. What d’you reckon?”

  I was an expert when it came to dodging inquiries about the cello. I loved my instrument as much as I hated talking about it. I wanted to talk about things that made me feel the same as the others. Let me tell you, a cello is not a good instrument if you want to be invisible. Stick to the flute is my advice. The standard response to me carrying the cello was “How you gonna get that violin under your chin?” Not funny after the twentieth time; not that funny the first time. Then, I was lugging my big case onto the school bus a few weeks before and a boy on the backseat stood up and shouted: “Oi, skinny, give us a tune on yer banjo.”

  Since then, I’d stopped taking the cello home and kept it behind the upright piano in the small music-practice room at school. My mother and Miss Fairfax both thought I was practicing for the Princess Margaret concert every break and every lunchtime, and I wanted to, I really wanted to, but I couldn’t take the risk of leaving my friends. They might wonder where I was. Worse still, the worry that couldn’t be admitted, not even to myself, was they might not miss me at all—and I would come back one day to find my place was taken. Like a room where they’ve removed a chair and rearranged the furniture so you don’t know the chair was ever there. Karen Jones had been vanished overnight like a lamp no one liked anymore. The other day in PE, Karen had to be partners with Susan Smell. It was a warning and maybe an omen. Plus, I didn’t want Gillian to see me as Miss Hoity Toity up-herself classical music.

  Impress Princess Margaret or Gillian Edwards? It was no contest.

  “You two finished by any chance?” The waitress stood by our table with a hand on her hip.

  “Still going strong,” said Sharon. She had poured the cold tea from the previous customers’ pot into her empty cup and she raised it with a cheery grin toward the waitress, who stalked away.

  “That woman’s got a face like a smacked arse.”

  “Shar-rrron.”

  “She has. Just cos we’re too poor to have proper food. If you have gammon and chips they let you be. Spend a lot on Gillian, did you?”

  “Not really. Not much to play with after buying the concert ticket.”

  My foot touched the carrier bag under the table and I got a jolt of pleasure thinking about its precious cargo. I was positive that the classy Mary Quant eye-shadow kit would soon change my life for the better. In my head, I was already foreseeing various heart-warming scenes. Gillian ushering the other girls into her legendary bedroom on her birthday. “Have you seen what Petra got me?”

  Gillian receiving admiring comments for her makeup on Saturday night at the Starlight disco. “Yes, it’s indigo, actually, from the Mary Quant eye-shadow palette that Petra gave me for my birthday. It was recommended in Jackie.”

  When the camera swiveled round, it was me who was center stage for once. Petra being promoted to Gillian’s best friend to the astonishment of the rest of our group. Petra as the wise and effortlessly funny confidante in Gillian’s legendary bedroom. Petra maybe even invited to accompany the Edwardses on their summer camping holiday to France. They were the only people we knew who went abroad.

  The Gillian fantasies sort of muddled in with my David dreams, filling up a lot of my waking time as her birthday drew near, and Bach had to take a backseat. I had always been conscientious about practicing. Now, every time I looked at my cello, I felt guilty, as if the cello knew it didn’t come first anymore.

  “I got her Pond’s Cold Cream,” Sharon was saying. “Cleanses without drying the skin, leaving it radiant, that’s what the ad says.”

  At thirteen, our notions of sophistication were drawn entirely from magazines. We were the perfect consumers, Sharon and me, believing absolutely everything the mags told us. I had an oily T-zone, which I dutifully tried to tame with Anne French Cleansing Milk. A bottle cost a lot, but the pointy blue cap with its pleasing ridges felt good and purposeful as you opened it. It made me feel like I had a skincare regime, which beauty editors said was vital. It was never too early in life to start a skincare regime.

  We bought one of those little brown barrels of Linco Beer shampoo because Sharon had read that it gave your hair incredible shine. Did we look like the brunette in the advert with a curtain of hair so glossy you could see your reflection in it? Not a chance. We smelled of hops, which, if you ask me, is in a dead heat with bad eggs for the most sick-making smell in the world. That smell is so bad it makes your ears hurt. During our Linco Beer period, Sharon’s Uncle Jim asked if we’d started brewing our own. It was not the kind of male attention we’d had in mind.

  There were so many problems girls like us could have. And those posh women up in London, well, they had all the answers:

  The current trend is for delicate, highly curved brows, unlike your own, which grow thick, dark and bushy! Which of the following do you do?

  Pluck them fiercely into a thin, fashionable line

  Leave them just as they are, unfashionable or not

  Trim up the untidy bits at the inner edge, thin down the outer edge to a narrow line and lighten the general effect with some brow coloring of a lighter color

  Pluck them evenly along the whole length, taking hairs mainly from underneath

  A surprising amount hung on that question. We worried about eyebrows a lot. Mine were a pair of hairy caterpillars straight out of the Ugly Bug Ball, from Dad’s half of the family. Not like my mother’s. She had Grace Kelly arches, of course. But I didn’t want to make the same mistake as Angela, who had plucked hers from on top and now they wouldn’t grow back. Eyebrows were like the punctuation marks of a face; you didn’t realize how they made sense of the rest until they were missing.

  The magazines generally had seven pages of things you had wrong with your looks, followed by an article called “Confidence and How to Get It.” One day, when we were much older, we might have a laugh about that, but not yet. If our skins were still problematic and subject to uncontrollable eruptions, then so were our hearts; agonizingly tender and so easily hurt.

  Mags could make you do really crazy things, mind. That afternoon in the Kardomah, Sharon announced she was getting a perm. She’d been reading about Problem Face Shapes.

  A round face can easily look like a full moon, especially if you have the wrong kind of haircut. Fringes don’t improve round faces and neither do short cuts. Hair is crucial so aim for width at the side. A light perm will give body to your hair and need only make it slightly wavy if you don’t fancy a head of curls.

  “Go on, you’ve got gorgeous hair, what are you on about?” I said.

  Sha’s sunny face was suddenly shadowed with doubt. Her baby-blond mane was so fine I couldn’t imagine it in any other style. Out of all of us, Sharon came closest to the ideal Disney princess. It wasn’t just the long golden hair that flicked up happily at the ends. There was such a sweetness in her, any minute you expected her to throw open the window and start singing to the birds, who would come in and help her make a dress. “ ’Sall right for you with your cheekbones.” Sharon sucked in her cheeks till they were concave. She looked like Mamgu with her dentures out. �
��My face looks like the blimmin’ moon.”

  “Stop it. I look like a whippet that needs a square meal, I do.”

  “You want your ’ead examining, you do, Petra Williams. You’re like a model, you are. I’m fat,” she said flatly.

  “No you’re not. You’ve lost loads of weight, mun. Look at that top, it’s baggy on you.”

  And so we carried on the game, the eternal ping-pong of female friendship, the reassurance that never truly reassures, but we crave it anyway. The game that always ends in a score draw, if you want to keep your friend.

  The waitress came up and banged down the metal plate with the bill. “It’s not a hotel, you know.”

  We paid and walked along the street to the seafront. In a few minutes we were on the concrete steps that led down to the pebbled beach. After the warm, soupy air of the café, the sea breeze was like a slap. When I opened my mouth wide, the salty air blew all the way down to my lungs. From across the bay came the mournful sound of the hooter that told you it was tea break at the steelworks. In the distance, I could see the flame flickering on top of the gas tower. It never went out. My dad would be eating the sandwiches my mother made for him. Ham and cheese every day. Schinken mit Käse, my mother would say under her breath as she wrapped them in greaseproof paper. Dad asked for less butter, too thick a layer turned his stomach. Mine, too. He never asked for anything else.

  Sharon was scrutinizing the pebbles on the beach and I sat next to her, knees tucked under my chin, poncho pulled tight around me. She was always searching for the perfect pebble, especially the ones she said looked like thrushes’ eggs. Very pale greeny-blue with a sprinkle of black spots. She liked to draw them. Filled page after page of a sketchbook with them.