It turned out that Shuv’s wisdom wasn’t all that and a bag of Hula Hoops. While we worked our way through two huge pizzas, she told me that the boys in Merrycliffe were so emotionally stunted that I might just as well not bother.
‘But, Louis…’
Shuv rolled her eyes. She could pack the entire works of Shakespeare into one of her eye rolls. ‘If you’re intent on bagging your precious Louis, who was in the year below me at school and was a total twat even then, all you have to do is listen to him jaw on about all the stuff that Merrycliffe boys usually jaw on about and laugh at his pathetic jokes.’
‘At school the boys were obsessed with fart and knob jokes.’ I waved away the waiter and his gigantic pepper grinder. ‘I’m sure Louis isn’t like that. Also, when you are interested in someone, how do you strike a balance between being known as tight and being known as a slag?’
‘Ah, the age-old conundrum that women everywhere, forced to conform to patriarchal standards of so-called acceptable female behaviour, struggle with. Let me know if you ever figure it out,’ Shuv said tartly.
‘Don’t go all Studies in Feminism on me,’ I whimpered. ‘I need practical help, not a lecture.’
‘The only practical help I can give is to tell you to give up on boys until you move somewhere that’s not stuck in a total timewarp.’
‘When I move to London, I’ll be too busy to have time for boys. If I get to London and if I get into Central St Martin’s and if I get to be a famous fashion designer.’ It all seemed so daunting when I said it out loud. ‘Though I’d be happy just to work for a famous fashion designer.’
‘But there’s no reason why you can’t be a successful fashion designer. I’d rather buy one of your dresses than anything made by Karl Lagerfeld. How did he ever get anyone to take him seriously?’ Shuv mused. ‘Don’t give up on your dreams, Franny. You let them burn bright, you hear me?’
‘I will,’ I assured her and I saw my dreams as a glowing pile of silver and gold paillettes, then they stopped glowing and my shoulders slumped. ‘But Martin Sanderson is the only person to ever get out of Merrycliffe and achieve global success. It’s like basic probability, isn’t it, that a dump like Merrycliffe wouldn’t produce two fashion superstars?’
‘What about that designer you like, Henry Holland, and Agyness Deyn, who just happens to be a supermodel? They’ve been friends for ever and they both come from a Lancashire town even smaller than Merrycliffe.’ Since she went to university, Siobhan likes to pretend that she never used to read heat from cover to cover, but her knowledge of celebrity is still encyclopaedic. ‘Anyway, what about your precious Louis? Isn’t he destined for the big time?’ she added with a sly smile.
It was my turn to roll my eyes. ‘Not with Thee Desperadoes, but I suppose he could always go on X-Factor or get spotted and become a model. You have to admit, Shuv, he is really fit. Proper foxy.’
Siobhan would admit no such thing but she let me have a shot of Baileys in my coffee so I couldn’t hate on her too much.
‘You have to come down to Manchester for the weekend once you’ve rocked your retakes,’ she said when we were driving back to Merrycliffe. We never went into the real reason why I had to retake them, though I was sure Siobhan had figured it out. The thing with our family is that there’s stuff that we never really talk about. It was there and everyone knew it was there, but talking about it would make it real and something that had to be dealt with and so it was always left unsaid.
We left it unsaid this time too. Instead we talked about the boys in Manchester. Siobhan said that some of them even described themselves as feminists though I wasn’t really sure I wanted a boy like that.
The boy I wanted was Louis and Dora had texted me late on Saturday night to report that although there had been no grinding, there had definitely been some low-level flirting. Ur m8 tosses her hair back a lot, doesn’t she?
It was one of Alice’s signature moves, along with licking her lips and staring at a boy’s mouth like she hadn’t had a square meal in months. There was also the running of her hands down her body in this absent-minded way that drew attention to what Alice called her three B’s, ‘boobs, belly and bootie’.
How could I compete with Alice’s three B’s when the only B’s I had were my 32B’s? Now it was Sunday lunchtime and Alice hadn’t responded to any of my texts from Sunday lunch at the Brewer’s Fayre. Whenever Shuv did come home for the weekend, all of us – Mum, Dad, older sister Anna, her husband Steven, Jayden and Aiden, the nephews from hell – would gather to eat lots of meat.
Jayden and Aiden spent most of their time hitting each other over the head in the kids’ playzone, Mum kept getting out her hand sanitiser and Siobhan pulled such awful faces at me every time Anna or Steven spoke that I was worried she was going to dislocate something. Quite frankly, I’d had better Sundays.
Much better Sundays. The reason Alice had gone silent on me became obvious when I got home. There on my computer, on Twitter, were Alice and Louis flirting up a storm.
@LouisDesperado Great hanging out last night wit U :D That thing with your tongue. Rude!
@WorstGirlfriendInTheWorld U loved it! (Ur Twitter name 2 long but is it fair warning?)
@LouisDesperado U better believe it hun! U man enough to take me on?
@WorstGirlfriendInTheWorld Babe, can write backwards on windows with my tongue. Can easily handle U!
I was appalled! Fucking appalled. The war was already won and I was yet to fight a single battle. God, I was thinking in war lingo again.
I didn’t even follow Louis on Twitter (though I Twitter stalked him) and the Facebook friend request had been traumatic enough, but I leapt straight in without even looking to see where I was going to land.
@LouisDesperado @WorstGirlfriendInTheWorld That’s nothing. I can make my elbows go back to front.
Inevitably, there was silence. I’d killed the conversation stone dead. At least I’d managed that, but maybe they’d moved to direct messaging instead. Arranging to meet. Exchanging rude pics. Even though the rules clearly stated that private messages were forbidden. Oh God…
@FrannyB Yo! Franny! Where U at last nite? Hope U weren’t seeing another band??!!!!!!!
I genuinely had to shove my head between my knees because I thought I was going to pass out. Louis had just tweeted me. Like he knew me. And not only did he know who I was but he’d noticed that I wasn’t at The Wow. OK, he used a lot of unnecessary exclamation marks but like that was a dealbreaker.
@LouisDesperado Went to dinner in Lytham with my sister. (That didn’t sound cool, even though Siobhan was one of Merrycliffe’s coolest exports. I thought for a second.) Shuv says hi by the way.
Just as I was known as Franny B, it was Siobhan’s lot in life to be called Shuv by everyone who knew her.
Louis had just replied (@FrannyB OMFG every1 @ skool was in luv wit Shuv. She still hot?) when Alice rang.
‘That is really rude,’ she said as soon as I answered. ‘Like, to just take over someone else’s Twitter conversation.’
‘I tweeted both of you and it’s a public forum,’ I said defensively. ‘Anyway, so how was it last night?’
‘Oh, it was fine. It was The Wow. Nothing new to report.’
Nothing new except Alice flirting up a storm with Louis. ‘Right, so did you… I mean, how… You didn’t hook up with him, did you?’
‘No! I just hung out with him a little bit.’ I heard her sigh. ‘There wasn’t really anyone else to hang out with, apart from your friend Cora…’
‘Dora.’
‘Yeah, whatevs. Anyway, I hung out with Louis for fifteen minutes tops, then Thee Desperadettes descended and your namesake, that Francis boy, said that it was time that Louis finally got a round in and he went to the bar and that was the last I saw of him.’ Alice sighed again. ‘I missed you. There was no one I could laugh about Mark the mad dancer with.’
I felt better on so many counts. ‘Promise I won’t be a no-show next week. Then the week a
fter that it’s the Halloween party. I wouldn’t miss that for the world.’
‘No way! Highlight of the Merrycliffe social season. Actually I wanted to talk to you about that… about my costume.’
‘Right. Well, I got some slinky silver material for my dress; it’s almost rubbery and I’ve done a Google Image Search and I was thinking I’d make you a floor-length black dress with a slit up the side like —’
‘Well, yeah, that’s the thing, I’m not really sure that I want to go as Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, it’s kind of random.’
‘No, it’s not! It’s an iconic look with the beehive and the two blonde streaks and I’m going to make you a long cigarette holder,’ I reminded her. ‘We agreed this ages ago. We were dressing up as two sixties superstars; you as Audrey Hepburn, me as Edie Sedgwick.’
‘Look, Franny, I get your whole Edie thing but nobody knows who she is and nobody knows who Audrey Hepburn is either. I only know who she is because you’ve made me watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s about a gazillion times. Besides, that dress is going to be really difficult to dance in…’
‘I just said that it would have a slit in it!’
‘… I could have someone’s eye out with a cigarette holder. I know you’re busy with college and stuff so I’ll sort out my costume.’ Alice finished in a breathless rush like she’d been steeling herself to have this conversation with me. Like I was going to take it badly.
‘For God’s sakes, Ally! We always do a themed double act for Halloween. Always!’
‘When we were six and thought it was cool to dress up as Elizabeth the first and Queen Victoria, but we’re not six any more. I’ll wear something slinky and black, buy one of those hair bands with ears attached, paint whiskers on my face and go as a cat. A sexy cat. Job done.’
‘You know how I feel about those non-costumes that are just an excuse to look sexy.’
‘That’s how you feel, Franny,’ Alice sniffed. ‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong with looking sexy.’
‘Well, I’m not going to go as Edie then,’ I said, though every fibre of my being yearned to go as Edie. ‘One sixties superstar on her own is just going to look weird.’
‘Oh, you should totally go as Edie – or go as Twiggy. More people know who she is. Oooh! A zombie Twiggy!’ Alice suggested. ‘Let me make this up to you by cutting your hair. You’ve been talking about having an urchin crop for ages and it would look wicked with your cheekbones.’
‘I don’t think I’m ready for such a drastic step,’ I protested, craning my neck to see my hair in my dressing-table mirror. It wasn’t doing anything much – just sitting on my head in a limp kind of way. Cutting it would be edgy and hipster-ish. Might even make some people realise that I was different to all the other girls. ‘You know what? I’ll think about it.’
Normally Alice and I hung out on a Sunday afternoon to watch one of the six films we always watched and work our way through a mound of crisps and chocolate. But I’d had a big lunch and Alice said that she still had an essay to finish, so I wound up on my own late Sunday afternoon with that back-to-school feeling even though I didn’t go to school any more.
After I’d said goodbye to Shuv who was getting a lift to the station from Dad, I could have worked on my Halloween costume but my heart wasn’t in it now. Without Alice at my side to gee me up, I wasn’t sure I had the guts to walk into The Wow dressed as Edie. Not when it involved spraying my hair silver and wearing a dress that was really a T-shirt.
Gloom was settling around me like a bad smell as I checked Twitter to see if Alice and Louis had gone back to flirting with each other so my misery would know no bounds, and then I saw that Louis was now following me.
He was following me. I wasn’t following him.
Repeat, Louis was following me.
I quickly followed him back and before I knew it, Sunday evening flew by as I LOL’ed his tweets and then when Louis tweeted a pic of a cat wearing sunglasses, I spent long minutes searching for the perfect picture of another cat wearing sunglasses so I could tweet it to him.
@FrannyB Yeaahhhhh! Nice 1, he tweeted back and I should have been pleased at Louis’s acknowledgement of my mad Google-fu skillz, but I was still too pissed off with Alice to care that much.
14
I was the only fashion student in on Monday mornings as I had a Maths catch-up lesson at nine-thirty, which was cruel and unnecessary.
At least my tutor said that short of not turning up for the retake or completely forgetting about Pythagoras and his freaking theorem, I was guaranteed a grade C or higher.
By eleven-thirty, I was done with Pythagoras but instead of hanging out in the canteen by myself, I slipped into the workroom to spend a couple of hours on my grey leather dress.
I had my pattern pieces laid out but before I cut into my leather, which I didn’t have enough of to make any mistakes, I wanted to do a test run using muslin first – what we fashion peeps called a toile.
As soon as my pinking shears cut into the fabric with a satisfying crunchy sound, nothing else mattered. I was calm. I was centred. I knew exactly what I was doing. Any problems were technical problems I could figure out by poking around on internet dressmaking forums.
Time slipped away. It was only when I looked up from my sewing machine and stretched my hunched muscles that I realised it was lunchtime. Just as I thought it, I saw someone hurry past the half-open door.
It seemed much easier in films to follow people but at least Francis had his head down as he hurried through the college grounds. Once we were out on the street, he kept to the same fast pace and didn’t even pause to check out the fashions in the really hideous gentlemen’s outfitters, which hadn’t changed its window display since God was a boy, or the attractive array of plastic crap outside the newly opened 59p shop.
Francis stopped outside the Chicken Hut, the closest Merrycliffe will ever come to having a Nando’s, and I blessed the gut instinct that had made me follow him because there was Louis slumped over one of the tables. Francis tapped on the window. Louis sat up, grinned and waved.
I felt as calm as I had when I was cutting out my muslin. This felt right. If it felt right, then it couldn’t be wrong. Francis was now inside the Chicken Hut and before I could talk myself out of it, I took a huge breath and didn’t let it out until I’d walked the ten metres to the door and opened it.
Louis was eating barbecue wings. He looked foxy even with a little barbecue sauce round his mouth. It was the incentive I needed to walk over to them with a look of feigned surprise that I was sure Francis wasn’t buying for a second. His top lip was starting to curl again.
I should have thought this out better because all I could think of to say was, ‘Fancy meeting you here,’ but before I could get the words out, Louis looked up, caught my eye and smiled. ‘Hey! Franny B! Never seen you in the Hut before,’ he said.
That was because I’d shunned the Hut since the time Siobhan had come here in Year 11 and spent the rest of the week with either food poisoning or the vomiting bug. We’d never known which. ‘Oh, I was just passing,’ I said vaguely. ‘Thought I’d pop in and say hello.’
‘Hello,’ Francis said flatly. He folded his arms. I didn’t know him very well but I did know that sneering and folding his arms were two of his favourite things in the world.
I decided it was best to ignore him, but not in a hostile way because he was still Louis’s mate. So I smiled briefly at him and turned my attention to Louis, who was wiping the barbecue sauce from around his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Sit down. Have a fry,’ he said. I gingerly took a small fry from the bag he was offering and held it near my mouth to show willing. ‘Weird, isn’t it? Like we hardly ever talk, then we’re Twittering it up yesterday. Now it’s like we’ve known each other for ever.’
‘Yeah, it’s strange, but like good strange.’ Of course, I already knew loads of things about Louis from years of admiring him from afar – it was hard to admire someone
from afar and not get a bit stalker-y – but I couldn’t tell him that because he’d take out a restraining order. And really, he didn’t know that much about me, except he thought that I liked pictures of cats wearing sunglasses when I wasn’t that much of a cat person.
Francis had gone to the counter to order some chicken dish that probably came with a side of salmonella and Louis seemed quite happy for me to stay, so I perched uncomfortably on the edge of the plastic chair. I didn’t want to make myself too comfortable because as soon as I sensed that I’d outstayed my welcome, I’d need to make a speedy getaway.
But it turned out that Louis was really easy to talk to. He kept up a constant stream of chatter and when Francis came back to the table with a chicken burger, Louis was listing all the really gross things in a Chicken Hut chicken burger.