by Im Griffin
Miranda wasn’t exactly a new victim. They had often picked on her before, for example by teasing her about BO and needlework, and on the occasion when Trisha poured fudge yoghurt into her desk. Still, these had generally been isolated incidents, and without that much real malice behind them, whereas now Vikki and Trisha seemed to be pestering her constantly, and being really nasty to boot. Hardly a day went by when there wasn’t something about ‘Sturdy-Gurdy’ for us to all have a good laugh at, and it was a sad sign of the authority wielded by the bullies that most people joined in, or at best kept quiet.
The bullying was rarely mentioned between Miranda and me, but I was sure it was having a bad effect on her; how could it have failed to? She was often late meeting me in the morning, and although she blamed this on over-sleeping, she hardly looked like someone who was sleeping a lot, what with the rings under her eyes and the pastiness of her skin. Then there were the days when she didn’t show up at all. I made the mistake of commenting that she seemed to be sick quite often at the moment and she got very defensive and said I could go and ask her doctor if I didn’t believe her.
She favoured Fridays for her days off because there was the added bonus of missing needlework, so I wasn’t particularly surprised when she failed to appear on the second-to-last Friday of term. I waited in Piccadilly until quarter to eight, which we had agreed as the cut-off point, before catching the bus to school on my own. Once at school I did my music practise and then went up to the form room to challenge Sinead to a game of hang man. Sinead and I were spending more time together given that Miranda was away so much, and I got her to myself in the mornings because her best friend Rachel was always on a late bus.
Sinead was already sitting on the radiator with her rough book at the ready.
“Best of five?” she suggested. We huddled together and tried to ignore the noise from the group of girls hanging around the doorway. They often stood there waiting for someone interesting to come past, and this morning they were on the look-out for Lindsey Norton from 1O, who had been spotted at Altrincham ice rink the previous evening with a ‘dead fit boy’ in tow. Dragging footsteps were heard approaching around the corner.
“Is that her now?” someone asked.
Vikki peered out. “No, just Sturdy-Gurdy.”
True enough, Miranda came into view, bent almost double under the weight of her enormous satchel, and eyes fixed firmly upon her heavy brogue shoes.
“Quick!” cried Trisha. “Don’t let her in!”
She flung her bony bottom against the door, and grasped the handle firmly. Giggling excitedly, the others took up their positions, and Vikki, who was tallest, peered out through the glass panels.
“Is she here yet?”
“Just coming I think.”
Miranda didn’t notice the blockade until she was level with the door, so engrossed was she in her private world of misery. As she reached out to turn the handle, she looked up and was greeted by Vikki’s grinning pumpkin face.
“Morning Sturdy!”
She tugged ineffectually at the doorknob and called “Let me in!” in a voice lacking any true conviction.
Trisha’s face took up a twisted parody of concern. “What’s up Sturdy? Having problems are we?”
The others joined in gleefully.
“Feeling a bit weak?”
“Weighed down by your bag perhaps?”
“Knob a little stiff is it?”
This last comment, from Vikki, prompted Trisha to wittily respond, “Only stiff knob she’ll ever get her hands on,” at which point the mob fell about in shrieking hysterical laughter.
Miranda saw her chance and attempted to push open the door during the temporary lapse of defences, but Trisha was too quick, and jammed her bum back into position. Miranda was almost in tears.
“You have no right to do this!” which merely prompted a fresh round of hilarious sarcasms.
Across the room, I squirmed with guilt and embarrassment, my face flushed a deep rose. Miranda was my best friend, and there was no question that I should be standing up for her. I could sense that one or two other people were uneasy about what was going on, but no one actually dared say anything. Instead, we left Miranda to push and struggle with the door, while the abuse from inside continued.
Suddenly, there was some sort of commotion in the corridor. We couldn’t see anything through the mass of bodies, but we could hear the steely tones of Mrs Oldershaw, Nancy’s form teacher.
“What on earth is going on?”
The giggling stopped abruptly, and the girls attempted to slink casually away, but Mrs Oldershaw was too quick for them. She flung open the door and commanded, “Nobody move!” Taking in the situation with a contemptuous flash of her eyes, she continued.
“Right. Vikki Charlton, Trisha, and you, you and you whose names I don’t know, come to see me outside the staff room at one o’clock today. This kind of behaviour is unacceptable.”
Flushed and panting slightly from their exertions, they stared silently at the floor.
Mrs Oldershaw turned to Miranda. “I’m sorry you have to share a classroom with such a miserable bunch of people. You can expect a full apology.” With that, she turned on her heel and marched off towards the needlework room, no doubt to enjoy a good bitching session with Mrs Trotter.
Vikki and the others sidled back to their desks, making rude remarks about Mrs Oldershaw in an attempt to reclaim their dignity. Meanwhile, Miranda hovered uncertainly at the doorway, clearly fearing some sort of reprisal. I saw my chance to compensate in part for my spineless behaviour, and edged across to the doorway.
“Hi Miranda! I’m just going to see Nancy if you fancy coming.” I didn’t quite have the nerve to escort her across the classroom, but I hoped that things would die down if we left it for a bit.
When we got to Nancy’s classroom, she was actually quite pleased to see us – I think she enjoyed playing the magnanimous big sister act. She peered at us over her copy ofSmash Hits.
“What are you two doing in here then?”
“Oh, we’re just escaping for a bit. Vikki and that lot are being their usual lovely selves.”
Nancy scrutinized Miranda, who still looked slightly tearful. Although Nancy liked to wind me up by making fun of Miranda when she wasn’t around, referring to her as ‘the barrel on legs’, she was in truth rather fond of Miranda. In particular, she liked to advise her on the best way to apply eyeliner, or the most fashionable shade of lipstick, and Miranda lapped it up gratefully, even though the only make-up she possessed was a Constance Carroll trio of purple eye-shadow that she had swiped from her mum’s sad collection.
“Are you ok, Miranda?” Nancy asked.
“Yeah...” Miranda sounded very shaky, and Nancy tactfully changed the subject.
“Trouble with you two is, you look dead pale. See in this magazine...” she withdrew a Just Seventeen from her bag. “It shows you how to put blusher on to give yourself cheekbones. You’ve got to have a make-up sponge; if you do it with your fingers it just goes all blotchy.”
“You’re not wearing it now, are you?” I gasped. Make-up was strictly against the school rules.
“Course I’m not. Can’t you tell? But me and Miz are going to Boots tonight to get some.”
Miranda stroked the page enviously. “Will you do me a make-over Nancy, next time I come to your house?”
I could tell Nancy was tickled pink, although she tried to act casual. “Alright, if you like. I’m not sure about doing Janet though – there are limits to my abilities.”
I gave her a sarcastic smile. “If I want to look like a clown I’ll go and join a circus. Anyway, come on Miranda, we’d best get going. See you later Nancy!”
“Ok! Watch out for Trotter! It is a needlework day, isn’t it?”
“Don’t mention that word...”
Miranda was finally smiling again, and we returned in safety just as Mrs Mackintosh was starting the register.
At home that evening, Nancy ask
ed me what had been wrong with Miranda.
“It’s mainly just Vikki and Trisha and a couple of others. They’re always picking on her.”
“Don’t you stick up for her?”
“I do my best...” It was difficult to admit that the precariousness of my own standing in the classroom was such that by defending Miranda I risked being targeted along with her.
“Can’t you get her to talk to a teacher? Mrs Mackintosh would be dead nice about it.”
“I know, and I have tried, but she won’t. She says that’ll only make them worse.”
“Hmm...” Nancy inspected her newly filed nails and reached for the pot of frosted lilac polish. “The thing is, if she does nothing, they’ll just keep going. And she’ll end up a complete wreck.”
Not wishing to discuss the whole miserable situation further, I wandered off to attempt a raid on the biscuit tin. I knew that Nancy was right, and I felt a kind of guilty churning in my stomach whenever I thought about Miranda struggling unaided at the classroom door, but there was also a tinge of resentment that I seemed to be expected to take responsibility for Miranda. It was hard enough looking after myself in the classroom, but it was a nightmare to try and protect someone else as well, particularly when, in truth, that person did sometimes ask to be ridiculed.
I tried discussing it with her during lunchtime on Monday, when we were sitting side by side on the piano stool in our favourite practise room. I knew that Miranda wasn’t on top form because she had failed to finish her jam roly-poly, never mind getting her usual seconds, but it still seemed as good a time for talking as any.
“Mim, you know Trisha and the others...”
She tensed immediately. This wasn’t going to be easy, but I continued anyway.
“...Can’t you try to stand up to them a bit? I’m sure they’re only being so horrible because you let them.”
“I do try!” Miranda retorted angrily. “But what am I supposed to do when there’s five of them on the other side of the door?”
“Well...” That was a difficult one. “You should probably just have walked away rather than giving them the satisfaction of seeing you struggle.”
“Oh, so now it’s walk away. A minute ago you were saying stand up to them!”
“I know but...oh forget it!” I broke into a lurching rendition ofChop Sticks. How could I explain that there was appropriate behaviour for every situation and that Miranda, somehow, unfailingly, managed to get it wrong?
For the next few days things were a bit cool between myself and Miranda. We still got the bus home together because it was basically unavoidable, but her hard-done-by act was pretty wearing, and on a couple of days I made excuses not to meet her in the mornings. Consequently on the Monday when she had her big news I had arrived at school ahead of her, and was already installed on the radiator with Sinead revising Latin vocabulary when she walked in. She made a bee-line for us and waved her hand annoyingly in front of my face.
“Hey, guess what you two?”
We ignored her to start with.
“Are you learning all the verbs, Janet?” Sinead enquired.
Miranda tugged at my sleeve. “It’s important! I’ve got some major news!”
She was so excited that I felt a bit mean doing my standoffish act.
“Go on then, what is it?”
“I can’t tell you here. It’s private!”
“Oh for goodness sake...” I was all for getting on with the Latin, but Sinead with her intuition for all things of a feminine nature had guessed Miranda’s secret.
“Hey Miranda, you haven’t, you know, started, have you?”
Miranda blushed bright red and nodded sheepishly. “Yes. At the weekend.”
This was indeed a big event. There were four girls in our class who had started their periods so far: Geeta, Gillian, Emma and Sharon. Each girl had been a celebrity for a few days after the event, the centre of little clusters discussing sanitary towels, PMT, and How To Tell Your Mum (Emma still hadn’t, because she said she couldn’t bear the fuss her mum would make). When the rest of us had to go swimming there would always be one or two of them sitting by the edge, with arms folded across their stomachs and smug expressions firmly in evidence. And now Miranda had become part of this elite group! I was unavoidably jealous, but also proud to be so closely associated with Miranda and first to know about it.
Sinead clearly felt the same way, because she had put her Latin book back in her bag. “So, tell all! When exactly?”
“It was on Saturday afternoon. About two o’clock. No, it must have been more like three because my dad had already taken Ben to the football.”
“Yeah, yeah...and? What did it feel like?”
“Well...” Miranda was clearly tempted by the potential for dramatic license but honesty got the better of her. “Nothing really. I just noticed when I went to the toilet.”
“So what did your mum say?”
“She wasn’t surprised at all, actually! She said that she started when she was exactly the same age, and that most girls start the same time their mums did.”
“Right.” This was not particularly good news for me. My mum had been a late developer and hadn’t started her periods until she was fourteen and a half. Miranda saw what I was thinking and did her best to rectify the situation.
“But not necessarily. You can do stuff like eating curry to make it happen faster.”
“Miranda you idiot!” Sinead snorted. “That’s when you’re pregnant and you want to get the baby out.”
“Oh...” Miranda paused doubtfully, and then joined in with the laughter. I saw Trisha looking curiously across at us and laughed harder than ever. She would find out soon enough that Miranda had got one up on her.
Chapter 16
Unfortunately my newfound camaraderie with Miranda was short-lived, because we soon found ourselves arguing again over the subject of Amanda Parker’s birthday party. This probably constituted the most talked-about event of the summer term: Amanda’s birthday was not until the beginning of June, but we were barely back from the Easter holidays when the party discussions began. Amanda’s mother was going to hire Altrincham Baths for the event, which apparently was a ‘very upmarket swimming pool – not like those scruffy ones with bits in the water and dirty changing rooms’. Then it would be back to the Parker mansion in Timperley for ‘cheese straws and dips from Marks and Spencer’; no cheese and pineapple chunks on cocktail sticks for Amanda Parker.
The chances of us being invited were slim. Amanda had labelled Miranda as deeply uncool ever since the ra-ra skirt conversation, and was hardly going to risk the reputation of her party through the appearance of Miranda in god-knows-what kind of frightful outfit. I, on the other hand, had actually been best friends with Amanda for the first three days of my school career, and although on the face of it this might have appeared to put me in a stronger position than Miranda, my chances were blighted by the run-ins that Amanda and I had endured since. In my opinion Amanda was deeply materialistic and incredibly small-minded, and I didn’t see why she thought she was so superior just because she lived in Cheshire. In fact I didn’t get the Cheshire thing at all: people who lived there referred to it smugly as ‘the country’, but when I’d been to visit it was all dreary mock-Tudor estates and huge road systems chock-a-block with fancy cars.
Cheshire’s innate superiority over every other county wasn’t the only thing that Amanda and I disagreed on, and within the confines of our religious studies classroom and a fair few lunchtimes afterwards, Amanda and I had rowed about everything there was to row about: immigration (Indian people were apparently undercutting Mr Parker’s retail empire because they were prepared to work harder than he was), social security benefits (why should Mr Parker subsidise those ‘dossers who sit around all day’ through his own hard work?) and green politics (it was a free country and Mr Parker had the right to drive his petrol-guzzling Merc as much as he wanted). It’s true that most of Amanda’s opinions were probably inherited dire
ctly from Mr and Mrs Parker, but that’s no excuse.
Given that I disliked Amanda so much, it might seem surprising that I was so desperate to attend her party. Well, clearly it wasn’t to continue our fascinating series of political debates, nor to swap hair and make-up tips, it was more just knowing that everyone else who was anyone would be going, and not wanting to be the odd one out. Oh, and the chance of a free feed. However, I do have some conscience, and so to start with Miranda and I tried to convince each other that we didn’t want to go anyway.
“They’ll all be boasting about their dads’ jobs...”
“Yeah, and we’d have to suck up to Amanda and go on about how nice she looks...”
“And the food probably won’t be that great. My mum says Marks and Spencer isn’t what it was...”
Then we would break off and fantasize about party packs of vol-au-vents and mini quiche Lorraines. It wasn’t easy, this trying to have high principles.
In the end we gave up and began our campaigns for an invite. I’d like to say that we worked together as a team, consoling ourselves that either both or neither of us would go, but it didn’t really happen like that. Amanda was allowed to invite twenty people, so it was obvious that by the time she had invited all the popular girls from our class, plus a few of her ex-prep school mates from the other classes, there’d be at best one or two places left for girls from the popularity ‘B’ list, or maybe not even that if everyone else was able to go. Miranda and I should have known, we’d spent long enough drafting likely-looking guest lists. So I’m afraid it was a strict case of ‘every woman for herself’.
We both employed similar tactics: given that Amanda was a shallow, superficial airhead, the best way to win her over was with a stream of endless compliments about her appearance, combined with a bit of small talk about shopping and other aspects of Cheshire life. The main difference was that Miranda was useless on fashion and not much better on posh pursuits –Broughton Baths and roller-skating on the River Irwell path don’t really measure up to Hale tennis club and horse-riding in Lyme Park. I on the other hand had Nancy at home as a source of wisdom, plus my first-hand experiences of the charms of Cheshire from visiting Sinead.