Saying that, I am happy, considering what the last couple of years have thrown in my face. There was Sally pretending to be pregnant by Julian and trying to tear me and Renée apart. Then my dad dying suddenly from a heart attack and then Julian having sex with Renée and then revealing to me he is actually only my half-brother and then running off to live in London for no apparent reason without ever taking a minute to ask me if I was OK. Then there was the drama of moving schools last year, and now the daily panic attacks that come with not having to wear a uniform.
I am glad we’ve moved schools. I miss Tudor Falls some days, but I am much better here, much more myself. Much freer now that I am not being bullied by Sally, and much more loved than ever before, because I have Renée. Our friendship saved my life. Without her I would have stayed sitting where I was the day Dad died and never been able to move, as if my bum had been welded to the chair. Renée is the kind of friend who is so in your face that you can’t escape her. It’s intense but lovely. I couldn’t live without her. I can’t imagine having to make friends all over again. Maybe I could just be a recluse instead.
I have to stop worrying. I need something else to focus on, apart from the impending exams. I need a happier distraction, maybe something like playing an instrument. I could take up the clarinet again. Or swimming. The grammar school has a brilliant inside swimming pool. I am sure I heard something about a new life-saving course starting in the next few weeks. That’s perfect – I will take up life-saving! I get my notebook out of my bag and write ‘LIFE-SAVING’ in huge letters across the top of a new page. I will go and check the noticeboard the minute the bell rings.
When the bell does eventually ring I feel excited about the prospect of my new hobby. I stuff my things into my bag and start to hurry towards the pool area. But just as I leave the RS room I nearly trip over as Kerry Hamilton falls to the ground in front of me. The contents of her bag spill everywhere.
‘You tripped me up,’ she says from the floor.
‘I think you just fell,’ I say, kneeling down to help her. ‘I really don’t think I tripped you up.’
‘Not you,’ says Kerry, gesturing at someone behind me. Three people loom over us. One girl at the front is particularly intimidating. I think her name is Bernadette Rodgers, and the other two are possibly called Samantha and Anthea, or it could be Andrea. I know so few people in my year.
‘God didn’t help you then, did he, Kerry?’ says Bernadette. Her two stooges laugh. ‘You can say all the prayers you like, but he won’t stop you smashing your face up when you can’t even stand up straight, will he?’
A cold feeling goes down my spine. I know this situation only too well. This was my life most days with Sally.
‘I didn’t fall over, you tripped me up,’ says Kerry weakly, wiping a small drop of blood off her lip.
‘Tell it to the altar, you Jesus freak,’ says Bernadette, turning on her heel. I want to say something to her, but I don’t know what it should be. When she has walked far enough away that I know she can’t hear us, I turn to Kerry.
‘Are you OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m used to it. She does it all the time. She’s not drawn blood in a while, but this is nothing new.’
‘You seem really chilled out about it.’ I say, helping her up.
‘Bernadette is angry, and that anger is about herself, not me,’ says Kerry. ‘She is so confused about her own existence that she needs to attack me for mine. I’m just grateful I have my faith and that I don’t have to look for other people to blame.’ Kerry gets properly to her feet and brushes at her skirt. ‘I can take it,’ she says. ‘But thank you for being nice, Flo.’
I am surprised she knows my name – flattered, if I’m honest. Kerry and I have been in the same Religious Studies class for a year, but we have never actually spoken. It’s easy to do that at the grammar. She is a little more vocal than me in class and often puts her hand up and reads sections from the Bible when we are asked to. She is about a size 12, freckly with strawberry-blonde hair, and she wears penny loafers and a cross around her neck. I wouldn’t say she was pretty, but she’s not unattractive. She doesn’t wear any make-up, but why would she? Those freckles are like her own natural make-up. Even though I bet she hates them – people with loads of freckles always hate them.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ I ask one more time.
‘Yeah, I’m really fine. I’m used to it. Bless you. Thanks again.’
She gives me a really nice hug. A long, lingering kind. The kind of hug that’s actually a cuddle, like a parent would give a child to let them know they were proud. It’s been a while since I had one of those.
I watch Kerry walk away. I’d lose it if someone pushed me to the ground and drew blood. It’s horrible. But she seems impenetrable. With all my social insecurities and paranoia that everyone hates me, I envy her self-assurance.
Making my way down to look at the noticeboard by the swimming pool, I wonder if I need more than a weekly life-saving lesson to toughen me up.
Renée
Every lunchtime I go to the lay-by across the road from school where everyone smokes. There’s a mix of people from my year and the Lower Sixth, with the occasional person from the Fifth Year who is willing to risk getting caught having a fag in their uniform to look cool in front of the rest of us. It’s way more fun in the lay-by now that I am in the Upper Sixth. It was kind of boring last year feeling like I had to impress the older kids all the time. But when you’re in the top year it’s like you have instant power. It’s not that I really use that power, but I won’t deny that I like how people in the years below automatically treat me with a bit of respect.
There is one guy from the Fifth Year who is a bit of a weirdo. His name is Matt Richardson. He just stands there, doing grunty laughs and smoking fag after fag after fag. He’s not really friends with anyone, but I think he just wants to hang around with the cool kids. He doesn’t offer much to the conversation and his uniform is always a mess. Though who am I to judge? It’s a miracle I never got suspended from Tudor Falls with the state of my uniform.
The boys that come to the lay-by are so laddy – they can barely have normal conversations when there are girls around. I find that a lot with boys – they can’t be themselves around girls, but together they have completely different relationships. I guess it’s the same with girls. I’m not like I am with Flo with anyone else. And that’s another thing that makes me wonder why the hell we are supposed to get together with a person of the opposite sex, when men and women clearly have to force themselves to get on. Even Nana and Pop, who were married for sixty years, had to take a deep breath every time they started a conversation. When Pop died last summer, and Aunty Jo told Nana he had gone, Nana did this really long exhalation and then smiled. The next thing she said was, ‘After lunch I’ll make the horse fire up the escalator.’ A totally random statement that means absolutely nothing. There are no escalators on Guernsey, and Nana has only ever been on one once at Gatwick airport.
It is odd how the mind of someone with dementia works. It’s so random. Nana’s seemed to go full throttle as soon as Pop got diagnosed with cancer last year. Three months later he had gone, and now she is so many million miles away from reality that I think she might oddly be the happiest she has ever been. There is a horrid time with dementia where people who have it still half know what is going on and half don’t. So they go in and out of their new madness and get embarrassed and frustrated. I hated that part with Nana. I never knew what to say and I kept having to leave her on her own so I could go and cry. It all happened so fast. If she ever saw me cry she would cry too, and then ask me why we were crying. How could I tell her it was because she was losing her mind and that she would never get it back? But it’s different now, because Nana hasn’t a clue about reality; she’s mad as a box of frogs and says the funniest things, like that thing about the escalator. It’s strange, Nana never seemed happy. But then how could you if you were married to someone like Pop? He c
ontrolled her completely. Now she smiles all the time. Wherever her mind has taken her, she likes it more than she did when she was here.
It is here in the lay-by that we smoke loads of Marlboro Red and eat crisps and sausage rolls from the canteen. A few people bring their cars round from the car park so we can squeeze in when it’s cold, and occasionally the boys play chicken, which terrifies the life out of me. Chicken is when two drivers race towards each other in their cars and at the last minute someone pulls to the side so they don’t have a full-on collision. I am sure the boys must be having us on with how dangerous it actually is – surely they have a secret nod that says who will turn and who will keep driving straight? They must do, otherwise they would all be dead by now. I can’t even watch – my imagination can’t control itself in moments like that.
I find that I am quite brave when it comes to emotional stuff. Well, that’s what Aunty Jo tells me anyway. She says I am brave in the way I think about Mum dying, and brave in how I coped with moving schools. But I am not brave when it comes to anything involving physical danger.
I used to be – I used to jump off high walls into the cold sea – but the older I get the more aware I feel of how mortal I am. I can barely ride a bike without being terrified these days, and even when I drive along the really thin lanes in Guernsey I hold my breath every time a car comes in the opposite direction and play out the entire accident in my head. I have had two really close people to me die and I’m only eighteen. It’s hardly surprising I’ve developed such a strong sense that I am not invincible. So I refuse to do things where I might get killed. Emotionally and socially, however, I am just as ridiculous as I always was. I haven’t learned much in the way of self-control.
As I squish my foot over my second cigarette, Meg Lloyd, a regular in the lay-by, asks me for one. For fear of looking uncool I light another, even though my lungs retract at the thought of it.
I really like Meg. She seems pretty cool. Because her entire social life is outside of school she doesn’t have that same bitchy air about her that so many of the other girls in our year do. She has her own thing going on. She is – I think – always slightly off her head, but she’s a straight-A student. I am in awe of her, to be honest. One of those genius types who looks like a bit of a tramp but whose mind is so sharp she knows about everything. She’s in my English class and whenever our teacher, Mr Frankel, mentions a book, Meg has always read it. Somehow she manages to read everything and know everything well in advance of us learning it in class. I like her because she seems so independent.
‘What are your plans for the summer then?’ she asks me, casually.
‘Oh, not sure yet. I’ll have to get a job, I suppose. Need to save up for uni.’ I feel like a geek for saying that, but I feel like I need to conform. ‘Are you going to go away?’
‘I don’t think so. I’ll just stick around here, get a job and a place of my own. That’s all I’m aiming for,’ she says. I feel instantly annoyed with myself for saying what I thought I should say rather than how I really feel. It would have been so much cooler to have said I didn’t really want to go to university.
‘We’d better get back,’ I say, looking at my watch and stubbing out my cigarette.
‘Yeah, not me,’ says Meg. ‘It’s only General Studies this afternoon, so I’m going to give it a miss. See you in English tomorrow.’
‘See ya,’ I say as I watch her walk away, wishing I could follow her and spy on her all afternoon. Meg’s got that couldn’t-care-less attitude I wish I had but I can’t carry off because I care too much about what people think. She fascinates me.
Flo
‘So, what news from the lay-by of layabouts?’ I ask Renée as I pass her a plate of beans on toast piled high with cheese.
Mum’s voice comes booming up the stairs.
‘Flo! Flo, are you two eating dinner in your bedroom again? If you spill beans on your duvet you can wash it yourself, all right?’
‘I wash my duvet myself anyway,’ I mutter as I shut my bedroom door and pretend that didn’t happen. ‘What were we saying?’
‘Will she ever give you a break?’ Renée asks.
‘Probably not. But at least she doesn’t expect me to bring up Abi for her any more. She is single at the moment too. It’s always easier when she doesn’t have a man making her even crazier.’
It’s true, my relationship with Mum is better than it ever was, but what I have learned is that people can improve their relationship without actually having to change. She is still as moody as she ever was, I just handle it better. She acknowledges my existence now, and her default setting isn’t to put me down, so that makes things easier. But we will never be friends, not like Renée and her Aunty Jo are – but then they don’t have years of mutual resentment between them. Mum and I would have to talk for three years straight to iron out the issues in our relationship, so I’ll settle for the occasional pleasantry and short but civil conversations about school.
‘So come on, what’s the gossip?’ I ask Renée again. I love hearing about what goes on in the lay-by, because I am way too scared to go there myself. If you don’t smoke there is no point, and even if I did smoke I don’t think I would hang out there. It’s mostly boys or the coolest girls. I went once and all the boys were asking the girls questions about what sex they had the weekend before. I was so terrified they would ask me in front of everyone that I pretended to feel sick and ran back into school.
‘Just the usual. Boys cracking jokes and the girls standing around laughing at them,’ says Renée, between huge mouthfuls of beans. ‘It’s weird, isn’t it? The idea that this time next year we just won’t be going to school any more? It feels like everything is about to change and even if we wanted it to stay the same we couldn’t make that happen. That’s it – school is done. We will be on our own.’
I know deep down that when it comes to Renée, I should take what she says with a pinch of salt and know that she loves me more than anyone, and that when she says ‘on our own’ she doesn’t mean that our friendship will be over. But I can’t. My head doesn’t work that way. I go to the worst-case scenario straight away and right now my head is obsessed with the idea that when school is over, Renée and I will move to different places and our friendship will just be a lovely story we tell people about at dinner parties when we are mums. She doesn’t seem bothered about it at all.
‘I’m thinking about doing a life-saving course,’ I say, after a long silence.
Renée seems to find this absolutely hilarious. She almost chokes on her food.
‘Oh my God, I think I laughed so hard a baked bean went up my nostril. A life-saving course? Why?’ she eventually manages to say.
I explain that I need a distraction from the things I find stressful, that I worry too much, that I panic about the exams, but she can’t see the logic in taking another thing on to add to my load. Her brain doesn’t work that way – she just thinks the fewer things you have going on the better.
‘Life-saving lessons are pointless,’ says Renée. ‘If you ever actually have to save someone’s life you won’t remember the lessons, you’ll just want to grab them round the neck and drag them out of the water. That’s all there is to it. It’s just another one of your fads, Flo,’ she tells me, having dislodged the baked bean. ‘Like when you decided to take up tapestry last year. That was so weird. You were all like, “I’m going to make the biggest ever tapestry of Guernsey.” Jesus, it was so random.’ She is now on her back with her arms crossed over her stomach choking, or maybe she’s laughing. Yup, she’s laughing.
And though it pisses me off that she finds it all so funny, I must admit it was a bit bizarre. I mean, tapestry? What was I thinking?
Renée
‘Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou knowest this cannot be said
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two;
And this, alas, is more than we would do.’
As Mr Frankel finishes reading the first verse of John Donne’s ‘The Flea’ to our English class, he puts his book slowly onto his desk and says, ‘So, who can tell me what Donne is talking about in this poem?’
There is silence as everyone thinks before Meg pipes up and confidently says, ‘Sex, sir. He is trying to persuade whoever he is with to sleep with him.’
‘That’s right, Meg. Thank you,’ confirms Mr Frankel. The rest of us read over the poem and make ‘Oh yeah’ and ‘Of course’ type noises. It’s always Meg that works stuff out first.
‘And what do you all think now you see that?’ Mr Frankel asks.
‘I think he sounds like a bit of a sleazebag,’ offers Maggie Torrode. We all laugh. He really does, when you realise what he is up to.
I love English. We all do. Mr Frankel is cool, I really like him. He’s kind of geeky, and wears trousers with large checks on them, quite tight shirts and colourful ties and big thick-rimmed glasses. He is tall and skinny, but sexy, I suppose, in a nerdy kind of way. He is a great teacher because he doesn’t act like a teacher, he just acts like a person who knows way more about English literature than us, but rather than be pretentious with that, he genuinely wants us to know as much as he does.
He has character, which is more than can be said about most teachers. I bet Mr Frankel has a fun social life too, and a girlfriend who does something interesting for a job. He’s no ‘spring chicken’, though, as Nana used to say. I think he’s probably about forty, but possibly one of those people who looks a lot younger than they are. He’s just fun and quirky, which makes a nice change, because a lot of people in their forties in Guernsey seem quite dull.
There’s just the eight of us in Mr Frankel’s class and there’s a real mix of characters. There is Meg, the cool, stoned brainbox who’s read every book on the planet. Penny Mayor – she’s head girl – Phillipa Jeffries and Paula Young (best friends and quite geeky) and Martha Hemsworth, the one I am most nervous of; in the Lower Sixth I snogged her boyfriend and she has never forgiven me for it. There is also Maggie Torrode, who speaks with a really strong Guernsey accent. The local Guernsey accent sounds like something between cockney and South African and it mainly involves going up in pitch towards the end of every sentence and saying ‘Eh?’ at the end of everything. Maggie is funny because she has no filter and just says everything she thinks, but I am terrified of her because she is the kind of person who would punch you in the face if she thought you dissed her. She is surprisingly clever, though. And even though she words things a little differently from how Mr Frankel would probably like, she is usually right.
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