by Carmen Reid
‘Always lovely to see you too, Amy,’ Jason said, but his voice sounded warm – the flirt. This was the only way Jason operated, in full-on flirt mode at all times.
‘Hello,’ Charlie piped up. ‘So who’s the lucky guy you’ve got with you today?’
For a moment, Amy and Gina wondered what on earth he meant. What guy? Where?
But then, to their horror, they realized what he had thought, just as Niffy piped up with, ‘No, it’s me: Niffy. I’ve just had my hair cut.’
She shrugged and tried to be casual, but the wounded look on her face was obvious.
‘Ha! Niffy! Of course, sorry . . . it’s dark,’ Charlie said. ‘Hey, Yankee,’ he directed at Gina, ‘haven’t seen you around for a while.’
‘Much to my relief,’ Gina snapped.
Jason now asked Amy, ‘Didn’t I see something about your dad’s clubs in the papers?’
A look of astonishment passed across Amy’s face.
‘Losing lots of money, in administration . . . something like that?’ Jason asked.
‘No!’ Amy said, a little too strongly. ‘No, nothing to do with my dad.’
‘The White Tiger Club? That’s his, isn’t it?’ Jason persisted. ‘The one that we went to together,’ he added.
‘Yeah, but someone must have made a mistake . . . everything is fine with my dad’s business.’
Amy was flushing up frantically.
How on earth could this be public?
How on earth could someone like Jason know about this?
She felt as if she could just about cope with everything, so long as she could keep it to herself and her closest friends and pretend to everyone else that everything was OK. It hadn’t occurred to her for a moment that it would be in the paper, be public . . . and people as distant as Jason would be able to find out.
‘Oh, there’s our bus!’ she said, sticking out her hand just to make sure the bus stopped, although with a crowd this big at the bus stop, someone else was bound to be flagging it down.
Gina looked up at the bus and could see that it wasn’t the right number. It was only heading partly in the right direction, but she and Niffy immediately understood that they had to get onto this bus to spare Amy any further questions.
‘It’s OK,’ Gina soothed once she sat down on the bus seat next to Amy. ‘Don’t worry about him. He’s a creep. You got rid of him months ago. Who cares what he or his creepy friends think?’
‘Yeah,’ Niffy agreed, hauling her hockey bag onto the seat behind them.
‘But . . .’
Amy was fighting the desire to cry. She didn’t want Jason to make her cry. Not again. Not after all the wasted tears she’d shed for him in the past.
‘I didn’t want anyone to know!’ she blurted out. ‘I didn’t think anyone else would know! I thought it could just be private, between me and my dad and my closest friends. How stupid of me! Of course people are going to find out. And people are going to laugh and gloat and . . .’ She swallowed hard. She wasn’t going to cry. She really was not going to cry.
‘It’s going to be fine,’ Gina told her. ‘Everyone goes through stuff . . . through really difficult stuff. Everyone does. We’re all going to be here for you and we’ll help you get through.’
‘Thanks,’ Amy said and she squeezed Gina’s arm.
She felt Niffy’s hand squeeze her shoulder reassuringly as well.
For a few moments, she looked out of the window. They were whizzing down Princes Street, past the row of bright shop windows.
‘And what he said about you, Niffy!’ Gina said.
Amy nodded, suddenly remembering the insult.
‘Yeah, unbelievable!’ Gina added.
‘Oh, let’s face it,’ Niffy said gloomily, ‘I do look like a boy.’
Amy suddenly reached up and pressed the stop button.
‘Huh?’ Gina asked. ‘Aren’t we going to the bottom of Prince’s Street? We can change there.’
‘No,’ Amy said, standing up as the bus pulled to a stop. ‘I’ve got a much better idea. If we get off here, we can all go in to that Superdrug and we can buy Niffy a home highlighting kit, some lipstick, some eye shadow and some nail varnish. You are never, ever going to be mistaken for a boy ever again, girl.’
‘What??!!’
Chapter Eighteen
THE ST JUDE’S boarding house had a small, cramped bathroom up on the attic floor with an old-fashioned bath, toilet and sink. This Sunday evening, the little bathroom was packed.
Gina was squashed into one corner, Rosie was sitting in the empty bath because there was no other space, Min was watching proceedings with a troubled face from another corner and there, in centre stage, was Niffy, seated on a chair, a plastic cape around her shoulders. Amy, with plastic gloves on her hands, was fiddling with wet bits of Niffy’s hair.
‘OK, I’m just going to brush this on in little sections all over,’ Amy explained. ‘Just sort of randomly lighten up your hair here and there. I think it’ll look really natural,’ she added, sounding scarily like a real hairdresser.
She had a broad brush in her hand and she dipped it into a dish of pungent white goo which Gina was holding out for her.
‘Have you done this before?’ Niffy asked nervously. ‘I mean, do you know what you’re doing?’
‘Look,’ Amy began, patting the goo into Niffy’s hair with the brush, ‘how often do you think Gina and I have had our highlights done at top salons?’
Niffy made no answer to this, so Amy said, ‘Loads of times. Trust me, I’ve been watching hairdressers apply dye since I was thirteen years old.’
‘Yeah, but watching is not the same as doing,’ Niffy pointed out.
‘I thought you wanted me to do this?’
‘I thought you’d done it before! I didn’t realize I was your guinea pig. You’re just testing this out on me before you dare to put any of it onto your own precious head.’
Now this . . . this was sort of true.
Amy knew that expensive trips to expensive salons were no longer going to be part of the Amy McCorquodale maintenance routine. So yes, she was interested to know how the home-highlighting was going to work because if it was a success, well . . . then maybe she would consider allowing Gina to apply this stuff to her head.
‘It’s going on very smoothly,’ Amy tried to reassure Niffy, but then she couldn’t help giving a ‘whoops!’ as a little chunk of goo fell down through Niffy’s hair and landed on her scalp.
‘What was that?’ Niffy asked nervously. ‘I do not want to look like a badger.’
‘Don’t be silly!’
‘How long do you have to leave it on for?’ Min asked, picking up the box and scanning the instructions.
‘Probably twenty minutes or so,’ Rosie replied from the bathtub.
Suddenly they could hear the fire door pull open and a breathless voice called out, ‘Gina? Are you up here? Please don’t tell me I’ve run up all these stairs for nothing!’
Gina called out, ‘In the bathroom. It’s OK, you can open the door, we’re having a party in here.’
The door was opened very slowly by a fourth former who obviously did not want to run the risk of catching some Californian hippie naked in the tub.
The girl was very surprised to see the room so packed. She wrinkled up her face at the overwhelming smell of hair dye.
‘Ammonia,’ Min pointed out. ‘NH3 suspended in a water solution. It’s almost as stinky as my spot lotion.’
‘It’s the phone,’ the girl said once she’d found Gina’s face in the crowd. ‘There’s a guy on the phone for you. I think he said his name was Callum.’
At this, the bathroom erupted into shrieks of laughter and cries of ‘Wooo hooo.’
Gina was astonished. ‘What! Again?’
More whoops followed.
‘I’m really sorry,’ Gina told the girl, ‘but I think you’ll have to tell him that I’m out. Would that be OK?’
‘Go all the way back to the phone booth?’ Th
e fourth former groaned.
‘Please?’ Gina asked. ‘It’s just so awkward.’
‘I’d go and do it, but I’m up to my eyeballs,’ Amy said, waving her plastic gloves and sending spatters of bleach flying.
‘Watch it,’ Min warned, ‘or we’ll have little bleached spots all over our clothes.’
‘Yikes!’ Rosie said from the bath. ‘No one said it was going to be so dangerous.’
The fourth former reluctantly turned on her heel. ‘OK,’ she said grudgingly, ‘but you owe me, Gina Peterson.’
For the next five minutes or so, Amy dabbed away industriously as Gina was questioned and teased about Callum.
‘I’m not interested in him . . . I think he’s just trying to be friendly,’ she kept telling the other, over-interested girls.
‘OK, we’re going to leave that to cook for twenty minutes while I do your make-up,’ Amy instructed, unzipping her large toiletries bag.
‘To cook! You’re not making soup, you know.’ Niffy’s patience seemed to be at breaking point.
But Amy paid no attention and just bossed her friend with the words, ‘OK, sit still, close your eyes and first of all I’m going to put on a bit of tinted moisturizer.’
As she dabbed at Niffy’s face with a sponge, there was another knock on the bathroom door.
‘Apparently hair dyeing is in progress,’ came the voice they all recognized as Mel’s.
‘You can’t come in,’ Amy told her.
‘What do you mean, I can’t come in?’ With this, Mel opened the door. ‘If you’re dyeing hair, then you need me. No one else in the entire boarding house has dyed their hair as often as I have.’ She ran a hand over her head to make her point.
Mel’s current look was a spiky bob with thick bleachblonde highlights and just the faintest trace of a pink streak at the front. The pink had sent the Neb into a frenzy and Mel had been washing it twice a day for several days now in an effort to tone it down.
Mel pushed her way into the crowded room and bent over to inspect Amy’s handiwork.
‘Hmmm, is that supposed to be highlights?’ she asked, sounding unconvinced, ‘You’ve put that on a bit thick. It might come up a bit blonder than expected.’
‘Oh, shut up, Mel, it’ll be fine,’ Amy huffed as Niffy gave a little gasp of concern.
‘Well, don’t leave it on for the full development time,’ Mel advised, ‘then it won’t be too over the top.’
‘Let’s get it off, right now,’ Niffy decided. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’
‘But I’ve not done your lips yet . . . not even put on mascara,’ Amy protested.
‘Let’s get the hair dye off, now! Before I turn into something even more horrible,’ Niffy insisted.
‘OK, OK,’ Amy huffed.
Rosie pulled herself up out of the bathtub and Amy began to run the shower attachment so that she could rinse Niffy’s hair.
‘Have we got lots of lovely plans for Valentine’s Day?’ Mel asked as everyone rearranged themselves in the space so that Niffy could get to the edge of the bathtub.
Amy and Niffy groaned.
‘Valentine’s Day?’ Niffy said. ‘No, I definitely have no plans for Valentine’s Day.’
‘Me neither,’ Amy added, running the water over Niffy’s hair and massaging at the cropped mop with her gloved hands.
‘Has Finn still not been in touch?’ Niffy asked, sounding surprised.
‘No. And don’t you dare say anything to him about it,’ Amy warned.
‘Oh dear,’ Mel sympathized, ‘but Gina, you’ve got a boyfriend. You must have something special planned.’
‘Not yet . . .’ Gina began. ‘We’ve both got a lot of work on.’
‘Guess what I’m going to get for Bryan?’
Before anyone could answer, Mel told them: ‘Brand-new black and red underwear, then I’m going to wrap myself up as his present.’
‘Eeeek.’ Gina was the first to answer.
As usual with Mel, this was way too much information.
‘OK, I think that’s all the stuff rinsed out. I think we’re supposed to add the conditioner that comes in the box now,’ Amy said.
‘No, don’t bother,’ Niffy grumped. ‘It’ll be fine.’
‘What about Mrs Knebworth though?’ Rosie asked. ‘The big question is: does she have something special planned for Valentine’s?’
‘Huh?’ Mel asked.
‘You mean you don’t know?’ Amy asked.
Every head turned in Mel’s direction.
‘About what?’ Mel asked.
‘About the man in the Neb’s life,’ Amy said.
‘NO! Tell,’ Mel instructed.
‘I’m going to go and dry my hair,’ Niffy said, making her way out of the bathroom.
Everyone else huddled around Mel to give her all the little titbits and scraps of information that they’d heard, or in Amy’s case, seen for themselves.
‘They’ve been on two dates,’ Amy informed her, ‘one being a very swanky dinner.’
‘No!’ Mel kept repeating, astonished that somehow she had managed to miss this tantalizing gossip.
There was a loud shout of ‘AMY!’ from the hall.
‘That’s Niffy,’ Amy said, jumping up from her perch on the edge of the bath.
Mel pushed open the bathroom door and there in the hallway stood Niffy. Her face, beneath the carefully applied moisturizer, blusher and eye make-up, looked thunderingly furious.
Her short hair was standing on end. It was still mainly brown but now it was also dotted with great frizzy, orangey tufts. It looked . . . terrible. There was no other word for it.
Every mouth in the bathroom hung open with shock.
Chapter Nineteen
THE BEDSIDE ALARM told Min that it was 2:47 a.m. She sat up and looked around the darkened dorm. Everyone else was asleep, despite the fact that it had been a very eventful evening.
Niffy had freaked out about her hair, Amy had stormed off, Gina had promised that the application of an all-over brown dye would return everything to normal, then Niffy had pointed out that yes, that was all very well, but when were they going to be able to get brown hair dye between now and Monday morning? There wasn’t going to be a chance until Friday afternoon at the earliest.
‘All week I’ll have to listen to people’s stupid comments at school! And what about the Neb, what’s she going to say?’
That question had been answered fairly quickly by the Neb turning up in the dorm to wish them good night and having a total hissy fit at the sight of Niffy’s hair.
‘Luella Nairn-Bassett, what on earth have you done to your hair now?’ she had demanded. ‘Wasn’t it bad enough chopping it off in the first place? Now you have to go and paintball it orange? What on earth has got into you?’
That was so cruel that tears had actually formed in Niffy’s eyes and she’d not been able to think of anything to say in her defence.
Gina was the one who’d jumped in with: ‘Mrs Knebworth, it wasn’t supposed to turn out like that. We’ll get it all fixed up with some brown dye, just as soon as we can.’
‘Good grief! Brown dye? I think you’ll need a hairdresser to rescue that disaster, Luella,’ the Neb had added.
But on Niffy’s pocket money, a hairdresser was out of the question; everyone in the dorm knew that. Her eight-pounds trip to the barber’s shop had left her with exactly £22 spending money for the rest of the term. And her friends knew not to offer her any money because she would never take it.
Min looked at the clock now. The seconds blinked past and the minutes changed from 47 to 48 to 49. She threw back the cover, deciding to head down to the sitting room to see if her new night-time friends Zarah and Clare were there.
She didn’t wake up and go downstairs every night. But since she’d first bumped into them, there had been another two meetings in the small hours. It was sort of comforting to share the insomnia. Min was sure she’d be even more lonely and stressed out at night if she didn’t meet Clare
and Zarah in the sitting room every now and then. Plus, it was fun to talk about Greg with someone as endlessly interested as Zarah.
Zarah thought that Min must be the luckiest girl in the world to have a lovely, studious boyfriend like Greg. According to Zarah, Min should be meeting Greg every weekend, at least for a coffee and a chat, even if they were both studying round the clock.
‘Go on!’ Zarah encouraged. ‘Otherwise, some other girl is going to notice him and steal him away. You wouldn’t want that, would you?’
‘I have to wait until the spots have completely gone, though,’ Min had protested.
Tiptoeing along the corridor on the ground floor now, Min was pleased to see the light seeping out from under the door. They were there! Maybe one of them? Maybe both of them, but someone was definitely in the sitting room and could keep her company.
With a smile on her face, she pushed open the door.
Clare and Zarah looked up, at first in surprise and then with smiles of greeting too.
‘Hey, Min,’ Clare spoke first, ‘come to join the three a.m. study group?’
‘There are these equations,’ Min began. ‘They’re just going round and round my head and I’m not going to get any peace until I can think of how to answer them.’
‘Bring ’em on,’ Clare said with a smile.
‘What are you up to?’ Min said, directing the question at Zarah as she rummaged about the room for a piece of paper and a pencil.
‘Just reading,’ Zarah replied. ‘I’m supposed to be reading Jane Austen, but I’m actually reading Heat.’ She held up the magazine to demonstrate.
‘Tut, tut,’ Min said with a smile.
Then she wrote the equations down on the envelope she’d managed to find in the bin and passed them over to Clare.
After reading them through, Clare took a pencil and began to work on the first one with a furrowed brow and a long: ‘Hmmmmmmmmm.’
Several minutes later she added, ‘Min, you really don’t need to know these yet, they’re Advanced Higher level.’
But she carried on trying to figure them out.
It was very quiet in the sitting room, just the sound of Clare’s pencil scratching as Min watched and the occasional flick of a page from Zarah’s magazine. It was not difficult to hear when somewhere on the ground floor of the boarding house someone opened and then closed a door.