My Friend Miranda

by Im Griffin

  A typical Miranda attempt at creeping up to Amanda would begin with, “Hey Amanda, I like your shoes. I had some that style last year, but they used to rub my big toe.”

  This would no doubt occur on a day when Amanda had already confided to her cronies that she was ‘hideously embarrassed’ because her mum had made her wear her Clarks shoes for the monthly uniform inspection, and Amanda would then assume that Miranda was attempting to make fun of her, and dislike her all the more.

  Another Miranda classic was, “Hey Amanda, did you go to the ice-rink at the weekend?”

  This seemingly innocent remark came two weeks after Amanda had publicly announced that Altrincham ice-rink was ‘tacky’ and she would never again honour it with her presence. The real reason was that some drippy bloke called Robbie who she’d been droning on about for ages had been seen snogging someone else by the chip-stand.

  My efforts were much more subtle. I complimented Amanda on her hair when I knew she’d just been to have it cut, I contributed to the Chelsea Girl versus Miss Selfridge debate, and I even asked her advice on what colours would suit me best – I knew there was nothing Amanda liked more than telling other people what to do. Three weeks before the party and hence only days before the invitations were due to be issued it was reported to me by reliable internal sources that Amanda was currently making her mind up between myself and Lisa Roberts, so I stepped up my efforts, shamelessly toadying more than ever and even bowing to her greater wisdom during a debate about nuclear disarmament, much to the consternation of Mrs Mackintosh. I was blessed with a stroke of luck in that Lisa was struck down with tonsillitis and didn’t make it in on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, and sure enough, come Monday morning that glossy invitation card with its funky eighties graphics was mine.

  Miranda was understandably a bit fed-up; she had found my syrupy girls’ talk particularly hard to stomach, and I think she thought I was behaving completely artificially in order to be accepted by the in-crowd. The truth was somewhere in the middle: there was no doubt I had been uncharacteristically obsequious, but I had genuinely begun to tire of some of our more childish pursuits.

  When I refused Miranda’s pleas to go and play German hopscotch in favour of staying in the classroom playing hangman or reading magazines, it was because I really didn’t enjoy German hopscotch that much anymore. Similarly, I had shown little enthusiasm for her suggestion that we should hold a party in her garden for the guinea pigs, with costumes for them and specially prepared lettuce cake, because it sounded so babyish. Ella and Tom would have loved it, but shouldn’t Miranda and I have grown out of that kind of thing?

  I don’t think Miranda understood my newfound maturity, but she was generally not the type to bear a grudge, and she perked up when I agreed to split the contents of my take-home bag with her fifty-fifty.

  When it came to it I didn’t enjoy the party all that much. The week preceding it was spent discussing what people were going to wear, but I had a nasty feeling my own clothes wouldn’t make the grade. I was proved right: I seemed to have gained weight recently and looked completely ridiculous in my cousin’s hand-me-down cotton trousers, which ballooned around my calves but were uncomfortably tight over my bottom and thighs. Even the shoes I had borrowed from Nancy appeared dated alongside the denim pumps and pixie boots sported by everyone else, and to cap it all I lost one of my Chelsea Girl clip-on earrings in the changing rooms.

  I hadn’t even given a thought to the fact that I was taking the same plain black swimming costume that I wore for lessons at school but this proved to be another faux-pas. Amanda was prancing around in a cerise number with frilly bits around the bust, and Vikki had a turquoise bikini that came in its own little turquoise bag. Then there was the etiquette for present-giving and being picked up (parent and car were keenly assessed – I think I failed on both counts); the social minefield of the birthday tea (how not to appear greedy while stuffing as many French Fancies as possible down your face); and my complete inability to warm to Amanda Parker’s mother, who they all thought was ‘dead trendy’ with her bleached hair and casually ripped jeans, but who looked to me like a simpering over made-up Barbie doll, and overall the experience was more pain than pleasure.

  Sinead and I told Miranda all this on Monday, while around us people bitched about each other’s party outfits (Vikki was amusingly heard to say that my trousers looked as if they’d come from the Oxfam shop), and Amanda detailed the presents she’d received, but Miranda remained unconvinced. I think she was partly miffed that the take-home bag contained no edibles whatsoever; I’d had to eat the birthday cake on Sunday because it had cream in it, and that just left girlie things like stick-on nail transfers and a copy ofJust Seventeen. The Just Seventeen made for very entertaining reading but it didn’t satisfy our break-time hunger pangs the way a king-size mars bar would have done.

  Furthermore, it did feel as ifeveryone had gone, with the exception of a little cluster of social rejects in the corner (Honey Sanka and the like), and so Miranda was bound to feel a bit left out. She moped round all morning looking like she’d just been told she had only days to live, and it eventually began to grate on Sinead’s nerves.

  “For goodness sake Miranda, it was only a party and it was pretty crappy anyway. There’s no need to act like it’s the end of the world.”

  Miranda muttered something from behind her chewed fingernails, which sounded like, “That’s easy for you to say.”

  Sinead wrinkled her freckled nose in irritation.

  “Whatever Miranda. Anyway, we’re going to the art room now and if you’re coming you’ll have to cheer up because I can’t take much more of the poor victim act.”

  Miranda clearly did want to come – after all her alternative was to stay and hear version number twenty-three of Amanda’s party, but she was offended by Sinead’s breezy indifference, and the only way for her to register this was by turning pointedly to face the window and refusing to meet my eye as Sinead and I made our way out of the classroom.

  It was a pathetic thing to fall out over, but for some reason the situation escalated out of control, in the way these things do. To start with we missed each other going down to dinner. That did occasionally happen, for example if we were doing a test and one of us finished before the other, but on this particular day I couldn’t help wondering if she was avoiding me on purpose. Then after lunch I saw Miranda sitting on her own, and I was just about to go over to her when Rachel and Sinead came and grabbed me for a game of cards, so I suppose she could have thought that I was ignoringher. Anyway, the end result was that we didn’t run out for the bus together, and by the time I got on Miranda was already sitting there all cosy-cosy with Eileen Fisher, and so that was it. As far as I was concerned, we weren’t speaking.

  The stand-off lasted for ages. On the first day it didn’t really bother me, because Rachel had to leave at break-time to go to her granny’s funeral, so I just spent the day with Sinead. However, after that I felt increasingly miserable. The daily grind of bus journeys, lessons and hanging around at break times seemed unbelievably dull without Miranda to liven it up, and I hated it when I caught her eye and then had to stare past her as if she didn’t exist. Ignoring her in lessons where we partnered each other was particularly difficult; in science I burnt my hand because I foolishly removed a boiling hot beaker from the Bunsen flame, and then had to keep holding it while I fumbled for a mat with my free hand. In the normal way of things I’d have called for Miranda to help me, but there was no way I was giving her that satisfaction under the current circumstances.

  On Friday we finished at lunchtime for the school summer fair. Our class was running several stalls, and Miranda and I were in charge of Smash the Rat. It had been Miranda’s idea; all we needed was my beanbag rat, a hockey stick, and the long cardboard tube she had got free from ‘Broughton Discount Carpets’. People would pay 10p for Miranda to release the rat into the top of the tube and then they had to try and whack it with the hockey stick as it came o
ut the bottom. It sounded easy but we had discovered from numerous attempts that it was virtually impossible, so we were confident that the prize of a Black Magic Easter egg (kindly donated by Miranda; she didn’t like dark chocolate) would remain unclaimed.

  I wondered if we’d have to call some kind of truce for the fair, but Miranda set up the equipment in stony silence.

  “I won’t help if you don’t want,” I said, and she shrugged irritably.

  “I need someone to collect the money.”

  Fine! If that’s the way she wanted it I would collect the stupid money, but otherwise I would be as sullen and uncooperative as possible.

  In fact I actually enjoyed the afternoon, once I’d resigned myself to being hideously embarrassed that is. Miranda was a born saleswoman, and her cries of ‘Roll up for the Rat!’ could be heard echoing across the entire playing field. She was particularly skilled at stealing custom from Guess the Name of the Teddy on our left, and Ten on a Lemon on our right.

  A typical customer hovered uncertainly between us and Ten on a Lemon. “I’ve only got 10p left.”

  “Pah!” scoffed Miranda. “Which sounds like more fun, watching your 10p slide off that lemon, or taking a hockey stick to this rat?” She held the rat up by its tail, and swiped at it with the hockey stick to demonstrate. That was another 10p safely stashed in the biscuit tin.

  We only had a few minutes left to go when Miss Heaney came shuffling past, on her own as usual. She was on her way to guess the name of the hideous cross-eyed teddy, but Miranda soon put a stop to that.

  “Come on Miss Heaney, smash the rat! One deluxe Easter egg still to be won.”

  Miss Heaney peered doubtfully at our set-up. “I was never much good at hockey.”

  “No skill needed, just nerves of steel and a killer instinct. Come on Miss, you can do it!”

  With a rueful smile Miss Heaney handed over her 10p and positioned herself on the mat at the end of the cardboard tube, brandishing the hockey stick uncertainly.

  “Ready?” Miranda bellowed. She released the rat and the hockey stick went slicing through the air and slammed down onto his brown corduroy back. Polystyrene beads of stuffing squirted out over the grass.

  “Oh Miss Heaney,” Miranda said petulantly. “Look what you’ve done to Janet’s rat.”

  That was us finished for the day: the rat was ruined, and the Easter egg claimed. Following Miss Heaney’s victory a crowd gathered round to hear the explanation of how she’d done it (all logic of course; any fool could see that you had to strike in anticipation of the rat’s appearance from the tube – if you waited until you saw his nose you were already too late), and Miranda almost managed to charge them for watching the action re-play, but Miss Heaney looked in our biscuit tin and said we’d collected quite enough already.

  We counted our takings, and then Miranda dismantled the stall while I took the money over to the bursar. I had to queue for ages and it turned out from talking to other people that Miranda and I had made the most by miles. I was looking forward to going back to tell her, assuming we were speaking again, but then I overheard two girls in the queue behind me.

  “Who was that girl with the pigtails doing something with a rat?”

  “Who? Oh, you mean Miranda Sturdy! She’s in my kid sister’s class.”

  “God, what an idiot!”

  “I know, Anita says she’s the laughing stock of the first year.”

  My stomach screwed up in misery and embarrassment, and I walked straight to the bus stop without going back past Miranda.

  All weekend I was in a bad mood. I tried to cheer myself up on Sunday with the tried and tested technique of walking to Prestwich and buying a huge bag of pick ‘n mix, but even the sugar high did nothing for me. Basically I felt so guilty for abandoning Miranda after the summer fair that I wanted to phone at once to call a truce, but a stubborn nugget of pride within me argued that Miranda should say sorry first. My mum knew that something was bothering me and offered to talk about it but I declined; there was no way of explaining it without including the events of the summer fair, and I knew she would be sorely disappointed in me.

  I sat in my room and chewed my toffees mechanically without tasting them, trying to think of a way of apologising without actually having to say it. Then I had a great idea: I would bake Miranda a ‘sorry’ cake! I bounded down the stairs.

  “Mum, can I make a cake? It’s someone’s birthday at school tomorrow.”

  My mum looked at the kitchen clock. “Alright, but you’ll have to be quick. I need to put the dinner on soon.”

  The cake was banana, Miranda’s favourite. I forced myself to wait in the kitchen while it baked to stop it from burning, and I decorated it with cream cheese frosting and chocolate chips. It was a masterpiece.

  I wasn’t really expecting to see Miranda in Piccadilly on Monday morning, but there she was, looking just the same as ever. Before I could lose my nerve I marched up to her and thrust out the cake-tin inside its Boots bag.

  “Miranda, I’ve made you a banana cake. I think we should make friends, and I’m sorry about Amanda’s party. But it was rubbish so you shouldn’t have worried.”

  There! I had managed it! I couldn’t resist that last bit, but I didn’t think she had really noticed. She was grinning and fumbling around with her own carrier bag.

  “I’ve made you a cake too. It’s chocolate.” She levered the lid off and I saw the chocolate icing and a neat circle of candles.

  “It’s not my birthday Mim!”

  “I know. That’s just what I told my mum when she wondered what on earth I was making it for. Not your birthday, I mean. Someone else’s.”

  “Great minds think alike.”

  We had wedges of cake on the bus – a big one for Miranda, and a smaller one for me because I was watching my weight a bit, and Miranda asked if I wanted to do something at the weekend. I suggested we could go round the shops in Salford precinct, and although I knew she’d have preferred to continue our handstand competition in Broughton Baths, which I was personally getting rather fed up with, she smiled and said that would be fine.

  Furthermore, I was relieved to discover that as far as Miranda was concerned we had just been unlucky on Friday afternoon. She had waited for ages and then been forced to give up on me because she had to meet her mum in town. Had there been a long queue to give the money in? I nodded and said that yes there had, and I had probably only missed her by a couple of minutes. We were friends again, at least for the time being.

  Chapter 17

  Smash the Rat aside, the most exciting thing about summer term was that we got to learn about sex in science. It wasn’t called sex, of course, it was called reproduction, and we weren’t allowed to do people until we’d been through amoeba and plants and all the rest of it, but we knew what it was leading up to. Mrs Donaldson prepared us one Friday afternoon.

  “Now, as I’m sure you all know, we’ll be moving on to do human reproduction next week. It’s a very important part of the syllabus and I want everyone to feel free to discuss it and ask me any questions you like.”

  Vikki’s hand shot up immediately and Mrs Donaldson smiled wearily.

  “I was thinking we’d start on the questions next week, Vikki.”

  “Yes Miss, I know, but I just wanted to ask if we’ll be doing oral sex and contraception and stuff.”

  There were giggles from around the classroom, but Mrs Donaldson had heard it all before.

  “As I said, you’ll be able to discuss whatever you like. Now you’d better go before your buses leave without you.”

  We had double science first thing on Tuesday morning. Miranda and I were late because of Miranda messing about for ages in the toilets, and when we arrived Mrs Donaldson had already handed out diagrams of the male and female reproductive organs for labelling and colouring in. I’d heard most of the names before, although I was intrigued to learn that a womb was now a ‘uterus’, which sounded much less biblical, and that Fallopian tubes had been chan
ged into ‘oviducts’. There was a lot of sniggering from the back of the classroom, where Trisha had labelled her male diagram with ‘dick’ and ‘balls’, but she had done it in pencil and was able to rub it out before Mrs Donaldson got to her.

  As I attacked the diagrams with my pencil crayons, it struck me not for the first time that women really are much better thought out than men. The female diagram had a certain grace and symmetry to it, and the arrangement was compact and discrete, whereas the male anatomy was just a disaster! It was hardly any wonder that little boys giggled such a lot and grew up so awkwardly. The poor things were just coping with their affliction as best as they could. I remembered the bizarre white pouch one of the boys from school had self-consciously carried around in his cricket bag – surely the need for that was evidence enough that men were designed all wrong? The thought of this set me off giggling and I earned a stern look from Mrs Donaldson, who clearly thought that the biological misfortune of men was no laughing matter.

  In reality the science lessons turned out to be something of an anti-climax. Despite the boasting that went on at lunchtime regarding the outrageous questions we were planning to ask, when it came to it no one had the nerve. Instead our discussions focussed on the relative merits of the contraceptive pill and the diaphragm, and the difference between identical and non-identical twins. Mrs Donaldson managed to conduct the discussions with a dignified detachment, and the only time when she made her personal views felt was during one of our Friday afternoon sessions, when she halted our colouring in of developing foetuses to deliver a lecture on the perils of sex before marriage, and the joys of giving yourself to your husband on your wedding night.

  A few people sneered afterwards but I think that the majority of us were utterly convinced, sold on romantic visions of ourselves in flowing white peering demurely from beneath our veils and swooning in the arms of burly George Michael look-alikes. Amanda Parker announced in her usual knowledgeable way that ‘if you make a man wait he’ll respect you more’, and was satisfyingly shot down by Trisha, who commented that it was a shame Amanda’s cousin hadn’t know that, because wasn’t she the one who got pregnant and left school even before taking her O-levels?