London Belongs to Us

by Sarra Manning

  ‘I don’t know who died and made you the boss of the whole world,’ I tell Emmeline.

  ‘Yeah. You’re so aggro,’ Flick says, but I’m not ready to bond with her over how bossy my best friend is so I stare at her, trying not to blink, until Emmeline nudges me.

  ‘So, the thing is that Martha, who really needs to keep her nose out of other people’s business, wasn’t implying shit. Mark is Sunny’s boyfriend, not your mate Tabitha’s,’ Emmeline says reasonably even though there is no reason here. ‘You’ve been going out since last Christmas, right?’

  ‘Since bonfire night, actually.’ Because that was the night we’d first kissed. Lit up by sparklers and Catherine wheels and Roman candles. And afterwards my lips were sore and my throat ached from the woody smoke of the bonfire. But mostly I remember kissing and Mark tugging off my woolly gloves so he could take my hand in his as he walked me home. We’d kissed again on the corner of my road and then we’d made a definite date to see each other, instead of me spending my spare time hanging around places where I thought that Mark might be.

  Funny that there didn’t seem anything wrong or desperate about that plan of action back then – after all, it had worked, but now I cringe at what a sap I’d been.

  ‘Really?’ Flick sounds like she doesn’t believe a word of it. ‘’Cause Tab’s been going out with him since Easter and they hooked up loads before that. I’m not making this up!’ she adds hotly when I roll my eyes. ‘It even says that they’re in a relationship on his Facebook.’

  ‘Well, that’s funny because his Facebook says he’s in a relationship with me.’

  I pull out my phone and she pulls out her phone and her mates and Emmeline gather round us and I think oh God, if Mark has changed his relationship status tonight because he knows I’m onto him and he wants to get in there first and that skank and her mardy friend Flick and her other posh friends all think I’m a delusional saddo who’s stalking Mark, I will cry. Then I’ll lock myself in the toilet and never leave.

  I wait for Facebook to load. I can hardly swallow – all the moisture has suddenly disappeared from my mouth and I don’t think I can speak as I see the familiar blue header. Then, with fumbling fingers because all the moisture that was in my mouth has migrated to my fingertips and the sweat is making it hard to operate a touchscreen, I call up Mark’s profile.

  The relief nearly makes my legs give way. ‘There!’ I say and I shove my phone at Flick’s face. ‘In a relationship with Sunshine Williams. Satisfied!’

  ‘No, I’m not satisfied,’ she says and she thrusts her phone in my face. ‘That’s not Mark’s Facebook page. This is Mark’s Facebook page.’

  I don’t cry, which is a miracle. Actually I kind of want to laugh but all that comes out is this weird noise like a death rattle. My worst fears, the ones I’d been ducking away from all evening, were all true and I was sad again. So sad. So fucking sad. And also I think I might puke.

  My face falls, collapses, and Flick puts her arm round me and then her two friends say that they never liked Mark anyway.

  ‘There’s just something about Mark, isn’t there? Something not quite right. He’s always been a bit shifty and we’ve known him since prep school.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I say, eyes smarting. The words don’t really want to come out. ‘I’m such a twat. All this time …’

  Emmeline pushes Flick off me because she’s my best friend and she has prior claim on putting an arm round me. Such is the gravity of the situation that even Emmeline, who doesn’t do hugging, is doing hugging. ‘Sunny, don’t you dare blame yourself.’

  ‘Yeah! You’re not a twat. It’s him! It’s Mark!’ Flick says. She looks down at my lager-splattered T-shirt. ‘Look, dude, I’m really, really sorry about throwing a drink over you. I was just standing up for my friend.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I say, because that bit of it is. It’s the Mark stuff that is never going to be right, not until I fix it. ‘And I’m sorry I kept calling your friend a skank. God, I really have to stop calling people skanks.’

  ‘I’m going to text Tab,’ Flick decides. ‘Tell her what’s really going on. You know she’s actually with Mark right now, even though she loves Duckie. Mark said that they were just shouty girl music and she cried off.’

  She shares an exasperated, long-suffering look with her two friends, Chessie and Santa. ‘Since she’s been seeing Mark, Tab’s become really, really not fun.’

  ‘I’m not saying anything. Not a word,’ Emmeline says, but then she gives me an exasperated look too. ‘It’s just that when you’re with Mark, you’re not a fraction, a smidgeon, a mere bloody soupçon as much fun as when you’re not with him. He sucks all the fun out of you.’

  ‘Yeah. He’s such a fun-sucker,’ Flick breathes and then she says that she’ll buy me a T-shirt from the merch stand so I don’t have to spend the rest of the night in a lager-stained top.

  We troop out of the Ladies and even though Duckie have long finished playing, people are throwing themselves about the dancefloor in all kinds of gay abandon as the DJ plays something loud and fast and screechy.

  It takes all of five seconds to establish that there’s no merch stand.

  ‘I’m wearing a cami underneath so, like, I can totally give you my top,’ Flick says earnestly (now that she’s not being mardy, she’s being very sincere and very earnest). ‘Honestly, it’s no biggie.’

  Flick is wearing a little drapey black top that probably cost a lot of money from somewhere really fancy. Also she’s tiny and elfin, like she only eats quails’ eggs and caviar, so I’m not even sure that I could get my head in the neckhole, never mind the rest of me. ‘No, you’re all right,’ I say, but I look down at my ruined T-shirt and for some stupid reason I feel like crying again.

  It makes no sense. And then I see Jeane bearing down on us and that makes me feel like crying too.

  ‘There you are!’ she shouts, like she’s been looking for us for hours. ‘Emmeline, love your hair. When did you cut a fringe in? Flick, Santa, Chessie, still working that whole Downton Abbey meets Riot Grrrl aesthetic, I see.’

  Not only does Jeane really know everyone, she also has strong opinions on what they’re wearing. ‘And Sunny, the girl of the hour! Honestly, how long does it take to have a wee? What were you all doing in there? And you’ve still got your broom.’

  ‘Well, we were doing stuff. It turns out that Mark and –’

  ‘Oh, whatevs! I can’t bear to hear another word about him. He’s so dull. What did you two actually talk about anyway?’

  Jeane doesn’t even wait to hear my reply (for the record, Mark and I talked about plenty of things, though admittedly in the last few weeks it was mostly about when I might be ready to have sex with him) but grabs my hand and drags me across the club, the others following in our wake. Considering she’s small, she’s also very strong, like a sturdy little pit pony. She has my wrist in a vice-like grip as she pulls me past the makeshift bar and into a little alcove with a sofa where Jean-Luc, Vic and two other girls are staring at an iPad.

  ‘Sunny! You’ve gone viral’ Vic’s gaze quickly glides over me, then comes to a halt on someone obviously far more pleasing to his eyes. ‘Emmeline, you’re looking even lovelier than you did before. Are you still gay?’

  ‘I’m actually even gayer.’ Emmeline’s glee makes her words bubble. ‘I don’t think my gay levels have ever been this high.’

  We’re getting way off message here. ‘Never mind that. I’ve gone what?’

  ‘Viral!’

  The iPad is handed over. It’s paused on a YouTube video. A freeze-framed blur on the screen. I press a finger to the play arrow and the blur becomes a girl dancing down the aisle of a convenience store; legs snapping and kicking, feet tapping and sliding, arms freewheeling. There’s even jazz hands, but if you’re dancing the Charleston then jazz hands are allowed. They’re kind of mandatory.

  ‘Jeez, Sunny, you never used to dance like that at dance classes,’ Emmeline says. ‘You barely
scraped through your level-three tap.’

  It’s like I’m watching a girl who looks like me, dresses like me, but unlike me she has the confidence to launch herself in the air and land where she damn well pleases, then carries on dancing, a huge grin on her face.

  This is a girl who’s got it going on.

  Nobody would dare mess with a girl like this.

  And I am this girl and I am done with being messed around.

  Tonight I am going to rule the streets.

  Tonight I’m taking chances and no prisoners.

  Tonight I am going to lay waste to evil, two-faced, two-timing boyfriends.

  ‘Serious moves,’ Flick says. ‘I didn’t know you were a dancer.’

  ‘I’m not …’ I still can’t tear my eyes away from this other Sunny and it’s only when she stops dancing and melts back into the crowd that I look up and glare at Jeane, who takes one look at my face, then hides behind Jean-Luc. ‘So who gave you permission to film it, Jeane, ’cause it sure as hell wasn’t me?’

  Jeane peeks out from behind Jean-Luc’s shoulder. He wriggles said shoulders. ‘I didn’t film it. Frank filmed it.’

  ‘It’s on your YouTube channel! I didn’t sign any photo release forms.’

  ‘I’m only giving the public what they want,’ Jeane says. ‘It’s been up an hour and it’s already had over a thousand views.’

  I don’t know how I feel about that. Mostly nauseous, I think. A thousand people I don’t know looking at me. Seeing how my thighs jiggle when I quickstep. Making judgements about me.

  I scroll down to the comments. ‘I’d hit that!’ ‘Urgh! What a show-off!’ ‘Damn! Baby’s got back!’ I am going to have to shut this shit right down.

  Except, Jeane refuses to cooperate. She embarks on a loud rant, with a lot of dramatic hand gestures, about public domain and how in a media age everyone has to expect to see their image plastered all over the interweb. And besides, everyone secretly, deep down, longed to be famous. ‘The law is on my side,’ Jeane finishes at last. ‘Anyway, why wouldn’t you want your dance-off on You Tube? There is nothing about it that’s any less than amazing.’

  ‘So amazing,’ Flick breathes in my ear.

  So much for ruling the streets. ‘At least disable the comments.’

  ‘First rule of life, Sunny: never read the bottom half of the internet,’ Jeane says grandly.

  ‘I’m not having a whole load of pervs perving on me. Disable the comments right now,’ I growl and something in my throat pings when I do. ‘I’m not just some inanimate girl-shaped blob that people can do whatever they like to, regardless of my feelings.’

  ‘I suppose you’re talking about that Mark again.’ Jeane sighs. ‘Fine, I’ll disable the comments.’ She snatches back her iPad like she doesn’t trust me to drop it from a great height. ‘Happy, now?’

  No. Not happy. Not even a little bit. All that joy at seeing Duckie had washed away as soon as the lager hit my face and everything that has happened since then, well, it just …

  ‘Aw, Sunny, tu es si triste. Qu’est ce qui s’est passé?’ I’m standing close enough to Jean-Luc that he can reach out and tip up my chin with a careful finger. ‘You look like you’ve been crying. This isn’t just about the video, non?’

  ‘Non,’ I agree. My eyes smart again and I try to open them really wide but that doesn’t work.

  Emmeline gives me another reluctant side-hug. ‘Sunny, he’s not worth a single tear.’

  ‘I know.’ I toss my head back, the threat of tears banished. ‘I am done crying over that loser. He’s going to be the one crying by the time I’m finished with him. And then I’m going to drink his tears and steal away all his power.’

  She stares at me. ‘You all right, Sun?’

  ‘Never better,’ I tell her and when I smile it’s all teeth, and Emmeline backs away and Flick shoots me a fearful look. No one has ever given me a fearful look before, apart from the one time when I had the aforementioned norovirus and I’d been sent home from school and was seconds away from exploding out of both ends and Mum couldn’t find her doorkeys. Good times, man.

  ‘I really am sorry I threw my drink over you,’ Flick says. Then she hits the highlights all over again for the benefit of Jeane and the two girls she’s with.

  Meanwhile Vic gives me a sip of his water and tells me that he, Vic, would never cheat on a girl. ‘I might not be good at staying in touch, but I don’t cheat,’ he says and I scoff and Jean-Luc gives one of his trademark snorts and Flick is still going on about the two Facebook pages and, ‘I texted Tab, didn’t want to ring her in case she was still with Mark, but she hasn’t replied and I think we’re going to have to do an intervention on her. Also, Molly, don’t suppose you have a spare Duckie T-shirt – I’ll pay, but Sunny’s top is looking rather gross and, God, I’d be totally mortified if I were wearing a gross T-shirt, well, in front of you guys. Big fan. Big, big fan.’

  I was just about to inform Vic that I now have a zero-tolerance policy on boys who treat girls badly, but that can wait. I whirl round so fast I almost get whiplash so I can get a proper look at the two girls that Vic and Jean-Luc and Jeane have been hanging out with.

  I glance over at Emmeline to see if she’s noticed and she has, because her mouth is hanging open and she’s got this dumbstruck look on her face like when she’s spent a solid hour watching videos of kittens dressed up in outfits on the internet. ‘I’m too scared to look,’ she whispers and Emmeline isn’t scared of anything. She plays roller derby, for God’s sake.

  ‘You need to close your mouth,’ I whisper back and I can’t believe this is happening.

  But it is. It really is. It’s Molly and Jane from Duckie, both wearing dresses made out of silver material with little red rocket-ships all over it. Molly’s brown hair is plaited, twisted and pinned in two Princess Leia coils above her ears and Jane has platinum-blond hair, way platinum-er and blonder than Emmeline’s, in a wispy pixie cut. They look amazing. They also look a little weary because Flick’s still talking in her deadpan, earnest, posh voice. Boy, can that girl talk.

  ‘… and I was like totally pissed off about having to go to Paris for Mummy’s birthday but then I found out that Duckie was playing at this club in Saint-Germain-des-Prés and so I skipped out on her birthday dinner to see you play. She was furious but it wasn’t like it was an important birthday. She was only forty-seven or forty-eight or something, so, like, whatever. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Mark. Poor Sunny. When my sister broke up with her boyfriend, Mummy sent her to a grief counsellor. I could get his number for you.’

  Flick pauses for breath and I have to make her stop or condemn us all to yet more earnest, posh fangirling. Also, I’ll have this encounter to look back on for years to come and when I am a grizzled old lady I don’t want to say to my grandchildren, ‘So, did I ever tell you about the time I met Jane and Molly from Duckie and all anyone could talk about was how my first ever boyfriend had been cheating on me?’

  ‘I’m so over Mark,’ I say quickly because Flick opens her mouth again like she’s got her second wind. ‘So over thinking that I’m less and that it’s OK for other people to think that too. Not any more. I am powerful and strong and I believe in myself.’ I shut my mouth, because Emmeline is doing a weird flickery thing with her eyes like she knows if she doesn’t stop me right there, I’m going to ramble on and on.

  It’s too late. ‘It’s like RuPaul says, if you can’t love yourself, then how the hell you gonna love someone else?’

  Emmeline grips my hand. ‘Oh God,’ she whimpers at me. ‘First Flick and now you. Please stop talking.’

  ‘Can I get an Amen up in here?’ Molly Montgomery out of Duckie says in a really crap impersonation of RuPaul and then Jane, Emmeline and I all raise our hands and shout, ‘Amen!’ because how can we not?

  And if anyone knows a better way to make the acquaintance of your number-one girl crush then I’d like to hear it.

  ‘You’re definitely better off without this Mark,�
� Molly says and she flashes me a toothy grin. ‘And if you need a quick way to get over him, I find writing really shouty songs about toxic boyfriends particularly cathartic.’

  ‘Yeah! Dick rhymes with all sorts of handy things,’ Jane adds. ‘Once we even rhymed it with guitar pick.’

  ‘Or “You make me absolutely sick”,’ I suggest. ‘Sorry, I’m feeling quite stabby.’

  ‘Honestly, Sunny, girls should never apologise for owning their feelings,’ Jeane says, and she should know because Jeane’s never apologised for anything in her life. ‘Even if your feelings are about Mark.’

  I’m saved from having to come up with a snappy reply that doesn’t make me seem like a total bitch in front of Jane and Molly by Flick getting a text from Tab.

  ‘It’s a lot of emoji.’ She squints at her screen. ‘Three angry faces. Gun. Bomb. Hammer. I don’t think she’s taking it that well.’

  Flick’s phone beeps again. ‘Tab again,’ she murmurs, glancing down at the screen. ‘Oh. Oh! Oh goodness, how bloody dare he? She says Mark denied everything, then dumped her.’

  She holds up her phone and I squint and see the word. Dumped. Six letters that hit me right in my solar plexus. If my solar plexus is right in the middle of my gut, which I‘m pretty sure it is.

  All night I’d been treating this Tabitha as an anonymous skank in short shorts when really we were sisters under the skin. Related by betrayal. Connected because we’d both known the touch of Mark’s hands, his lips, listened to him tell us that we were the only girl in the world.

  ‘No way!’ I gasp. ‘He better not have. He doesn’t get to dump her. Not when he’s been cheating on her. On us. We’re the ones that get to do the dumping. That’s basic good manners. Oh God, I am going to dump his sorry arse like it’s never been dumped before. Mark is going down!’

  ‘Attagirl!’ Jane claps her hands. ‘You find this so-called Mark and make him regret the day he was ever born.’