The Worst Girlfriend in the World

  ‘Was it something I did? Or I didn’t do?’ Louis looked heartbroken. ‘Do you not fancy me?’

  ‘It’s not that. You’re really fit,’ I said, because he was and Louis was always looking at his reflection in shop windows and ripping his top off on stage so he obviously knew he was all kinds of hot. ‘But now we’ve got to know each other, well, we’re more mates than anything else. So, I think we should forget the kissing and carry on being mates, all right?’

  I’ve never been more relieved to get to the end of a speech. Even more relieved than the time I’d had to confess to killing the class goldfish by overfeeding it.

  I knew I was bright red. I think Louis was too. ‘If that’s what you want but I do really like you… Y’know, I get this all the time,’ he told me in a pouty voice. ‘All the girls say that we should just be mates. I don’t understand it. I’ve got the moves.’

  ‘You have. You’ve got mad moves,’ I said, which reminded me of something. I looked down. ‘Um, Louis, your hand’s still on my…’

  ‘Aaaarrggghh! Sorry!’ He snatched his hand away from my boob like it had just given him an electric shock.

  ‘We should find the others,’ I said and because I did feel guilty and Louis was looking so forlorn, I took his hand and led him out of the market.

  I was sad that my crush was dead and that I’d no longer get a contact high from catching a glimpse of Louis on some darker day than usual but friends was good. You couldn’t have too many friends, I realised that now.

  ‘Franny? You know I said that Francis always takes us to the same place on the Chalk Farm Road?’ Louis piped up as we started walking along Camden High Street again. ‘Well, I’m not sure I can remember exactly where it is now.’

  Oh, Louis. No, he was never going to make my heart feel like it was about to cave in, not ever again. ‘Do you think if we run really fast we might be able to catch them up?’

  I looked at Louis and he looked at me and then we grinned at each other and started to run. Scattering passers-by like skittles and shrieking loudly, just like I did with Alice.

  28

  We caught up with the others just as they were joining the end of a long queue to get into a club, which looked a lot like a pub to me. A pub that cost five quid on the door.

  ‘Five quid!’ Lexy and Alice said to me, when Louis and I arrived red-faced and breathless from our sprint. ‘Is the bar gold-plated or something?’

  ‘I wanted to go to the Hawley Arms,’ Bethany whined. ‘Where Amy Winehouse used to hang out.’

  ‘I still don’t see why we couldn’t have gone to the Underworld,’ Kirsten said to Francis, who looked like he wanted to pull down his grey beanie over his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see everyone’s mardy faces.

  ‘Any more backchat and we’re going straight back to the bus so we can go home,’ he snapped. He cast a look at me, then Louis. It wasn’t a particularly friendly look.

  Maybe Francis thought I’d snogged Louis and that we were on and now that I’d got what I wanted I didn’t need Francis any more, which was crap. Francis and I were friends now. End of. But not in the way that I was mates with Louis. It was way different from…

  ‘So, like, Franny totally wouldn’t snog me!’ I heard Louis tell the other two Desperadoes. ‘I just got the tiniest bit of touch and then we stopped. What’s wrong with me?’

  There was going to be so much wrong with Louis once I’d finished smacking him, I thought as three separate hands suddenly shot out in front of me.

  ‘Welcome to the gang, Franny,’ Bethany said, then she, Lexy and Kirsten all slapped my hand.

  ‘What gang?’ I hissed because we were in a queue, all huddled together for warmth and there was no such thing as a private conversation.

  ‘The Let’s Not Actually Snog Louis gang,’ Lexy said and they all giggled and I giggled too because it explained so much, especially the way they all treated Louis like a much-loved but very annoying little brother, and then I glanced at Alice. She wasn’t giggling but staring down at her shoes.

  She’d been in her six-inch heels all day. Her feet had to be killing her. Five hours was about all her pain threshold could handle. ‘Did you bring your Converse with you, Ally?’

  ‘I am queuing to get into a club in London. There is no way I’m putting on my Converse,’ she said. ‘No bloody way.’

  I looked up and down the queue. I couldn’t see anything higher than a two-inch Cuban heel. Most of the girls were wearing clumpy boots or sneakers. ‘Put on your Converse,’ I begged. ‘Remember that time when you wore your heels for too long and the next day your foot went into a cramp spasm for twenty-four hours.’

  Alice was wavering, I could tell. ‘But my heels make me look taller.’ She leaned in close so only I could hear. ‘And slimmer.’

  ‘Hello! Did you suddenly forget how gorgeous you are?’ I asked, because even pain from her shoes couldn’t wither her beauty.

  Louis had offered me a sympathy snog, but he must want to proper snog Alice. How could he not when she was so pretty? Also, they seemed to get on really well, were always hanging out together, just the two of them. Maybe they were already snogging regularly and when she found out he’d had his hand on my boob and there’d been licking, we’d be bitter enemies once more. I couldn’t go through all that again. Alice and I needed to chat the Louis thing out.

  ‘Alice, if you’ve got your Converse in your bag, then bloody well put them on,’ Francis suddenly said in the same tone of voice he used when Krystal with a K had bodged up the overlocker and refused to fess up. ‘If you fall over and break an ankle, we’re not sticking around in A&E for hours, all right?’

  She was already dragging her sneakers out of her huge tote bag. ‘Right,’ she agreed. ‘Keep your hat on.’

  I really needed to get me a stern voice too. I glanced over at Francis, sure that his face would match his voice, but when he caught my eye, he winked at me. ‘Won’t be much longer,’ he said about the queue, which suddenly gave a surge forward, so we were almost at the door.

  Another five minutes and we were inside. It was hotter than the very bowels of hell. A humid, sweaty kind of heat that made your hair go frizzy and your make-up slide down your face within microseconds.

  Upstairs there was a dance floor with a DJ booth at one end and once we’d organised a bar run and found a little spot to dump our stuff, we all clustered together to look at the fancy London folk getting down. I don’t know what I expected – something cool and intimidating – but it was just a bunch of beered-up indie kids having a good time. Not unlike a Saturday night at The Wow really.

  Louis licked his lips, eyes wide. ‘So many sexy ladies,’ he cried then he was gone, diving into the dancing masses.

  Then it was just me and the boys on the sidelines as Thee Desperadettes and Alice took to the floor. In my experience, boys who weren’t Louis didn’t dance and I could only dance to tunes that had some kind of beat. These tunes didn’t.

  I stood there, sipping a lukewarm drink, suddenly shy and conscious of Francis standing behind me where he must have a bird’s-eye view of how even the neckline of my leather dress was curling up and my hair, which now reached the back of my neck, was damp and curling up too.

  ‘Franny B! Get your arse over here!’ Alice shouted over a loud, thuddy bassline and a hundred voices chattering, then she and Bethany yanked me on to the dance floor.

  There’s that split-second change when you suddenly and seamlessly move from shifting your weight from one foot to the other, arms pinned to your sides in a self-conscious, uncoordinated series of movements, to dancing wildly and beautifully to a beat that exactly matches the rhythm of your heart. That’s what happened when the DJ began to play an old Beastie Boys track. Alice and I both screamed, then Bethany, Lexy and Kirsten screamed too and the five of us danced like our lives depended on it. Danced like everyone was watching us. Danced like it was a new religion.

  For an hour the DJ played old-skool hip hop and sixties soul and that h
our was like medicine for me. I didn’t have to think or worry, even when Louis kept shouting, ‘Merrycliffe represent!’ Merrycliffe representing involved Thee Desperadettes taking the piss out of Alice doing her dirty, hoochie dancing by executing a perfectly synchronised triple slut-drop. For one terrifying moment I thought Alice was going to storm off in a monumental huff but then she laughed.

  ‘Really shaky on the dismount, ladies,’ she snarked, and showed them how it was done. After that the four of them stopped dancing in favour of trying to outgrind each other.

  Alice had said ages ago that she was going to go older and now I could see that having older girl mates would work much better for her. And as I watched Alice bumping hips with Kirsten and laughing, I thought that maybe Alice was coming to the same conclusion. Thee Desperadettes weren’t as boy-obsessed as she was and they didn’t take any nonsense from anyone, whether it was Alice or some random lad who tried to cop a feel of Lexy’s arse when she busted out her best Beyoncé moves.

  Becoming the fourth and fifth member of Thee Desperadettes was what our friendship needed to stop it going stale and sliding back into bad old habits. Sage and Dora might be a harder sell but they deserved to have Alice in their lives because when she didn’t have all her boy phasers set to stun she was ace. Like now, as she danced behind some guy and totally impersonated the weird thing he did with his pelvis.

  I was a hot, sweaty mess by the time the music went crap again. I also needed to clear my head a little. So much had happened today and I needed five minutes on my own to process it all.

  I fought my way down the stairs and out into the street to stand a little further downwind from the gaggle of smokers congregated outside the entrance. I pulled out my phone.

  There was a text message from Mum. Just wanted to let you know that I love you, Franny. Thought it went without saying but I was wrong. Be safe. See you tomorrow, Mum xxx (You’re still grounded.)

  I decided then that ‘I love you’ was better than sorry. It didn’t make everything OK, but it helped. A lot. As long as there were ‘I love you’s then you could get through stuff. Love had that effect.

  There was so much to think about but it was too cold outside, even without the bitter bite of the sea air that I was used to. But before I could finish my first shiver, someone put a jacket round my shoulders.

  ‘Please don’t die of hypothermia before we make it home,’ Francis said.

  I looked down at his thick plaid flannel jacket. ‘Won’t you be cold?’

  ‘I’m OK for a bit.’

  There was so much I wanted to tell him, but I didn’t know where to start. I found myself gazing up at the inky blackness of the sky for inspiration. ‘How weird. There are, like, no stars. Is that a London thing?’

  ‘Yeah. I think it’s something to do with the pollution.’ Francis took my arm. ‘Shall we sit there?’ he asked, gesturing at a doorstep.

  We sat down, so our thighs were pressed together – that made me shiver too. ‘You know, I still haven’t properly apologised for taking off like that this afternoon. You shouldn’t have had to waste time trying to find me. You deserved to have a really good day and I screwed that up.’

  ‘It wasn’t that screwed up and I reckon the day isn’t over until we hit the M6, so it’s still got time to improve,’ Francis said and he looked so serious and I just wanted him to smile. He didn’t smile enough.

  ‘I’ll totally buy you some overpriced London chips as we’re walking back to the bus,’ I promised. ‘Might even throw in a can of Coke if you’re —’

  ‘So, you didn’t kiss Louis then?’

  I frowned. Where had that come from? And I could tell from the way Francis had gone completely still that he wanted to take the question back. Pretend it had never happened. But it had.

  I ducked my head and I knew I was reddening up. I also thought I might giggle because now I was thinking about Louis with a handful of breast as he rooted about in the crook of my neck.

  ‘No,’ I managed to say but I could feel a gurgle of laughter bubbling up and I had to press my lips tightly together so it didn’t leak out. ‘No kiss.’

  ‘Have you postponed the kissing to a later date?’ Francis wasn’t looking at me but staring straight ahead at a bollard, like he’d never seen a bollard before in his life.

  I swallowed down the giggles again. ‘Not postponed. Cancelled.’ Now Francis was looking at me like I was even more fascinating than the bollard. ‘Turns out that I love Louis like a mate but I don’t love love him.’ All of a sudden it seemed very important to be honest, no matter how embarrassing being honest might be. ‘Pity I didn’t realise that until after Louis held my boob for a good five minutes and licked my face like it was covered in a secret blend of herbs and spices, but whatevs.’

  ‘Good,’ Francis said decisively.

  ‘Good that he held my boob for five minutes?’

  ‘No! I mean, good that you don’t fancy him and good that you didn’t throw away your first kiss on someone you didn’t fancy.’ Francis turned to me and I got it now. I didn’t need anyone else to explain to me that Francis was really quite cute in his own low-key, lo-fi way, especially when he was smiling at me like I was the only girl in the world. Or the only girl in his world. ‘You should save your first kiss for someone special.’

  ‘I plan to,’ I said, and when I thought back to all those years pining over Louis and being scared of what might happen if I had the nerve to say hello to him, it was a waste. I couldn’t spend my life being scared. That wasn’t the kind of life I wanted to live.

  Somehow at some point when I was falling out of lust with Louis and becoming his friend, I’d stopped thinking of Francis as just a friend. He was something more than that. Something that was undefined. Something that made me feel good when he was near and smiling at me. Something kind of beautiful. How could I have been so blind that I couldn’t see what was right in front of me?

  It was easy after that. The easiest thing in the world to lean in when we were so close together anyway, and brush my lips against Francis’s. I knew one crippling second of fear and rejection, then he was kissing me back, his hand creeping up to tenderly cup the back of my head where the ends of my hair were ragged and damp.

  That kiss, that first kiss, felt nothing like it did when I used to practise kissing my pillow or my forearm. I was kissing another living, breathing person. I was kissing Francis and his lips were firm and gentle on mine and then they weren’t quite so gentle any more, but I liked that better. I didn’t worry about what to do with my tongue or panic when we clashed teeth; that stuff didn’t matter. It was just me and Francis and nothing bad could come of anything that was just me and Francis.

  When Francis pulled away after quite a while, I could have sworn that maybe there were a few stars in the sky after all. But when I turned to look at him, he wasn’t smiling any more.

  ‘See, as soon as you said you didn’t fancy Louis, I was working on asking you out on a date,’ he said heavily. ‘But that might lead to another date and then we’re dating and that wouldn’t be fair on you, Franny.’

  ‘Why not?’ That familiar feeling of dread was back. He already had a girlfriend, some hipster in London who’d promised to wait for him, or maybe Francis was like every other guy in Merrycliffe and it was Alice he really wanted.

  ‘Because this year… it’s going to get messy,’ he said. ‘Really messy.’

  Then I remembered about his dad. This was going to be the worst year of Francis’s life, which wasn’t any reason why we couldn’t, like, date. ‘I know about messy,’ I reminded him softly. ‘I’m used to dealing with messy. I don’t always deal with it well, but I’m getting better at it so I’d be a really good person to have around. Anyways, I want to be there for you.’

  Francis stiffened again. ‘You don’t have to go out with me just because you feel sorry for me.’

  ‘I do feel sorry for you because of the thing with your dad, it’s horrible and it’s unfair but also I want to go
out with you ’cause, well, I like you. Like, I really like you.’ I did but it had taken me a long time to figure it out because Louis had always got in the way, blocked my view. ‘You can mend sewing machines and we’ve got hundreds of sixties films that we haven’t seen yet and the kissing didn’t suck.’ I had to mumble the last bit and I wasn’t sure if Francis had heard until he grinned.

  ‘It can suck next time if you want,’ he said and I did.

  I don’t know how long we sat on the doorstep and kissed. Long enough for my arse to grow completely numb with cold and for at least five people to walk past and tell us to get a room and after the kissing my lips were sore and I had a crick in my neck. It was worth it though.