Girls Under Pressure

  “Promise. Four o’clock, John Wiltshire’s. I can’t wait!”

  But when we meet up we’re both so distracted by Magda we forget Nadine’s revelations. My weight loss goes unremarked. We are just utterly jawpunched by Magda’s appearance.

  I don’t even recognize her at first. I spot Nadine hunched at one of the twee pink-clothed tables with some mousy short-haired girl in a gray jacket. Then this same girl smiles wanly at me. I do a triple take.

  “Magda! What have you done?”

  Nadine signals to me frantically with her eyebrows.

  “You look so different, but—but it looks . . . great,” I lie desperately.

  “It looks totally crappy and so do I,” says Magda, and she bursts into tears.

  “Oh, Mags, don’t,” I say, putting my arms round her.

  I stare down at her poor shorn head. It isn’t just the new brutal haircut. It’s the color. Magda’s been a bright bottle blonde right from our first day in Year Seven when she was eleven years old. I’ve never been able to picture her any other way. But now she’s had it dyed back to what is presumably her natural pale brown. Only it doesn’t look natural on Magda. She looks like she’s taken off her own jaunty flowery sunhat and borrowed an old lady’s Rainmate by mistake.

  Nadine orders us all pots of Earl Grey and toasted teacakes. I am so distracted by Magda I munch teacake absentmindedly. It’s only when I’m licking the butter from my lips that I realize I’ve chomped my way through hundreds of unnecessary calories. Oh, God. I wonder about a quick dash to the ladies’ but the cubicles will be in full earshot of everyone, and I don’t want to miss out on anything when Magda and Nadine spill the beans.

  “Sorry about the sniveling,” says Magda, wiping her eyes. She’s not wearing any makeup either, so she looks oddly unfinished, as if someone has already wiped half her face away.

  “Your hair really looks quite . . . cute when you get used to it,” I try again.

  “That sort of gamine look is actually very hip now,” says Nadine.

  “You liars,” says Magda. “It looks awful. And the color is the end too. Not even mouse, more like molting hamster with terminal disease. I’m going to get it dyed again before school but how the hell can I grow it again in a week?” She tugs at the limp little locks in despair.

  “So—why, Magda?” says Nadine. “Did the dye go wrong so you had to cut it all off or what?”

  “Or what indeed,” said Magda. “No, it was just . . . Oh, it’s so stupid. I thought I was over that night with Mick, you know, but I went into town last Saturday—remember I phoned you and asked you to come, Nadine, but you said you were busy?”

  “Don’t!” says Nadine. “Oh, God, I wish I had come with you. Anyway. Go on.”

  “And you were still stuck in Wales, Ellie, but I thought never mind, I’ll go round the sales anyway, as I had lots of lovely Christmas lolly to spend. I went with my brother Steve because his girlfriend Lisa works at the Virgin record store so she’s tied up on Saturdays and so Steve and I had a good look round the Flowerfields Shopping Centre and I got some new shoes and he did too and we went into La Senza, you know, that nice nightie place, and I bought this cute little nightshirt with teddies on and Steve bought this cream lacy negligee for Lisa because she’d said she liked it ages ago and now it was down to half price. Anyway, we were a bit tired by this time and I was wearing my new shoes and they were making my feet ache a bit so Steve suggested we go and have a milkshake in the Soda Fountain and . . .”

  “Were Mick and his mates there?”

  “Not Mick himself, but some of those guys he hangs out with, Larry and Jamie and several others. I sat right the other side with Steve and we were just clowning around. You know what fun our Steve can be. He took Lisa’s negligee out of the carrier and held it up against himself, and I was laughing away at him when I suddenly looked up and all these boys were staring at me and then they all started mouthing Slag at me and I just about died.”

  “Oh, Magda, you mustn’t take any notice of them. They’re just pathetic scum,” I say fiercely.

  “But I just couldn’t stand the way they were looking at Steve and me. They’d obviously got completely the wrong end of the stick.”

  “You should have told your Steve.”

  “Yes, and he’d be locked up for grievous bodily harm right this minute. Anyway, I tried to work out why all these boys have got the wrong idea about me.”

  “It’s simple, you nutcase. You look a million dollars!”

  Used to look a million dollars. Now it’s down to thousands. Hundreds. Several dollars.

  Magda reads my expression. “Exactly. It was my blond hair and the makeup and the showy clothes. So I thought, Right, I’ll stop being blond, so I went to this hairdresser with the rest of my Christmas dosh and said I wanted it all cut off and dyed back to its original color. They didn’t think it a very good idea, but I insisted. Oh, God, why am I such a fool? Look at it!” She runs her hands through her hair.

  “It’ll grow,” says Nadine. “Give it another month or so and it’ll look great, you’ll see. And maybe you can go back to being blond again. I can’t quite get used to you as a brunette, Magda.”

  “And what’s with this old gray jacket? You’ve got a red fur coat to die for,” I say. “Honestly, Magda, I think you’ve had half your brain cut off as well as all your hair. How can you possibly let a sad little bunch of schoolboy prats affect the way you look?”

  “Hello?” says Nadine. “Do you hear what you’re saying, Ellie? Just one kid calls you fat at that Spicy mag do and you go totally anorexic overnight.”

  “That’s nonsense,” I say, blushing hotly. I didn’t realize Nadine actually heard. “And I’m not anorexic. Look, I’ve just eaten a huge great buttery teacake. I bet that’s four hundred calories gobbled up already.”

  “You’re proving my case,” says Nadine. “And look at yourself, Ellie. You really are getting much thinner.” She flattens my sweater against my stomach. “Look, Mags. The incredible shrinking girl.”

  “Oh, Ellie. You’re mad too. It doesn’t suit you going all skinny,” says Magda.

  Skinny! Ow wow. SKINNY! I’m not, of course. I’ve still got a long long long way to go before I could possibly be called skinny. But still . . .

  “You’ve no idea how scary this is,” says Nadine. “It’s like my two best friends have been taken over by aliens. The X-Files have got nothing on this.”

  “You looked different the day you went to the Spicy girl heat.”

  “Don’t remind me,” says Nadine, and she flicks her last piece of teacake in my face.

  “So anyway, what’s with you, Nad? What was this seriously awful thing that happened to you?”

  “Oh, God,” said Nadine. “Do I have to?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, it’s just . . . last Saturday, when I couldn’t see you, Magda, it was because I went up to town to this place.”

  “What place?”

  “A studio.”

  “Oh, no! A photographer’s studio? You went to see that creepy guy who gave you his card, didn’t you? Oh, Nadine, you nutcase. What did he try to do? Did he want to take sleazy glamour shots?”

  “No, he didn’t, Ms. Clever. He took entirely respectable totally fully clothed photos,” says Nadine. “I’ve got a proper portfolio. And he did only charge me half price. Though I hadn’t realized quite how much it would be. It used up all my Christmas present money.”

  “So what’s the big deal?” says Magda. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the good part. The bad part—the truly infuriating awful part—was that my mum and my horrible little showy-offy sister came with me. Mum caught me sneaking off on Saturday morning, see, and wanted to know where I was going and asked why did I deliberately make myself look a sight wearing all the black and the goth makeup and stuff, I looked a total laughingstock. She was being really irritating, totally getting at me and trying to put me down, so I found myself telling her I’
d been invited to this special fashion photo session. It was just to shut her up, which was crazy because as soon as I’d got her convinced she started insisting she had to come too. She jumped to just the same sort of conclusions as you two. She said she had to be like a chaperone and said I couldn’t go at all if I didn’t let her come along too. So I had to give in—but that meant Natasha tagging along as well because my dad had this boring old golf match––”

  “So did Natasha show off and start her Shirley Temple stuff and embarrass you at the studio?”

  “Worse. Far worse,” says Nadine. “She was feeling sick from the bus journey when we first got there so she just lolled against Mum and said nothing at all, like she was all sweet and shy. She kept staring at me with her beady little eyes. I felt so weird standing there under all the hot lights. And all my makeup started running too. I’d really gone a bit mad with it, you should have seen the eye makeup, but that was a big mistake too. He said I’d maybe overdone the goth look.”

  “But he told you to stick to your own style.”

  “Yes, but he said I’d taken him a bit too literally and that anyway, fashions were changing. The little junkie weirdo look had been big in magazines but now the buzzword is wholesome. So, you can imagine how I felt, and, of course, I couldn’t whip all the makeup and clothes off and start all over again. He said it didn’t matter, I still looked ever so striking, and he started taking my photo but it didn’t really work. ‘Give me some oomph, babe,’ he kept saying.”

  “What a berk.”

  “No, I knew what he meant, that sort of special sparkly look like a lightbulb has suddenly been switched on inside your head, but mine seemed to have gone phut. I mean, how can you slink about and smile sexily in front of your mother and your kid sister? You just feel stupid. Especially as I looked all wrong. I think these photos are going to be a total disaster.”

  “Then that’s his fault,” I insist.

  “No. Wait. At the end, when he could see we really weren’t getting anywhere, he said we might as well call it a day, and he said he had a few photos left at the end of the reel. He asked my mum if she’d like several family shots thrown in as a little extra or maybe a couple of the little girl, seeing as she’d been so good.”

  “Uh oh,” I said. “I can guess what’s coming next.”

  “That’s it. You’ve got it. Natasha stood up in front of the camera and it wasn’t just a lightbulb switching on. She blazed like a beacon with fireworks fizzing out of her ears. She smiled and she pouted and she wiggled and she giggled and the photographer suddenly went crazy. He forgot all about me. He started an entire new reel of film and he took endless photos of Natasha and burbled away at her and didn’t once have to tell her to give him some oomph. She had so much of it she blasted me right out of the studio.”

  “Oh, Nad. I’m sure your photos will be just as good. Better.”

  “Rubbish, Ellie. Of course Mum was over the moon at all this and happily forked out for Natasha’s portfolio even though she isn’t paying a penny of mine, which seems horribly mean to me. The photographer guy says he knows this woman who runs a kids’ modeling agency and he’s going to drop off some contact prints to her and he’s pretty sure she’ll be very interested in Natasha.”

  “Oh, yuck.”

  “Double triple quadruple yuck,” says Nadine.

  “Hey, don’t be so mean to poor little Natasha, you guys,” says Magda.

  We both elbow her indignantly. Magda has always had this annoying blind spot where Natasha and Eggs are concerned. She can’t seem to see how irritating it is to have little pests for kid sisters and brothers. She thinks they’re cute.

  “You know what else he said? He said it was not only great to discover such a natural little beauty as Natasha—natural, Mum puts her hair up into little kinks each night just so she can flounce those awful ringlet curls around during the day—but he also said she was so unspoilt and ultra-well-behaved that he thought any modeling agency would welcome her onto their books.”

  “And he didn’t say anything about getting you into any agency, Nad?”

  “Did he hell. So, my career seems to have fizzled out before I’ve even got started.”

  “We haven’t had a fun time this Christmas, any of us,” I say. “Magda’s had too much attention from boys and so now she’s trying to look like one––”

  “That’s not true!” says Magda. “Anyway, Ellie, you maybe haven’t had enough attention so you’re starving yourself to death to get everyone to take notice of you.”

  “Oh, don’t you start on the psychological tack. Anna’s been bad enough coming up with all these weird and wonderful reasons why she thinks I’m doing it. She can’t seem to understand that I just want to lose a bit of weight. That’s all. Why does it have to be such a big deal?”

  To my horror Dad suddenly goes all psychological on me too. He buys this paperback about teenage eating disorders and he sits with his nose buried in it, getting gloomier and gloomier as he turns the pages. Every now and then he gives a little groan.

  I do my best to ignore him but he comes over to me, looking anguished.

  “Ellie, can we have a little chat?”

  “Oh, Dad, don’t start again, please! Look, I ate a huge tea, a vast plate of scrambled eggs on toast, so quit nagging me.”

  “You ate about three forkfuls. And you left both slices of toast on your plate.”

  “Well, they went soggy and you know I can’t stand soggy toast.”

  “You’ve always got an answer for everything, haven’t you? That’s exactly what this book says.”

  “Oh, Dad. Why do you have to take any notice of that stupid old book?”

  “It’s worrying me, Ellie. You really do have all the classic signs of an anorexic personality. You’re clever, you’re a perfectionist, you’re very determined, you can lie like crazy, you’ve had a traumatic childhood . . . you know, losing your mother so young.” Dad’s voice has gone wobbly. He’ll never talk about my mum, even now.

  There’s something else bothering him too.

  “Ellie, would you say we get on OK, you and me?” he asks gruffly.

  “No! We’re always arguing,” I say.

  His face crumples. I suddenly feel awful.

  “Oh, Dad. Don’t look like that. I didn’t really mean it. Look, all teenage girls argue with their dads. But we get on fine most of the time, I suppose.”

  “Would you say I was very authoritarian? You couldn’t possibly, could you? I mean, I’m usually quite a hip sort of dad, right? I don’t boss you around that much, do I? Ellie? Oh, for goodness’ sake, put those chalks down and look at me! I’m not authoritarian, am I?”

  “Listen to yourself, Dad!”

  “Oh, come on, give me a break,” says Dad. He’s still not finished. He clears his throat. “Ellie . . .”

  “Mm?”

  “Ellie . . . it says in this book that anorexia can also be a response to abuse.”

  “What?”

  “Some poor girls have horrible abusing fathers.”

  “Oh, Dad. You’re not a horrible abusing father! Don’t be so daft!”

  “Remember that time when Eggs was just starting to toddle and I saw you push him over so that he bumped his head? I smacked your bottom then. You howled and howled, remember, and I felt terrible because I’d never laid a finger on you before.”

  “Dad, that was years and years ago! Look, just because I’m on a diet it’s got nothing at all to do with you—or anyone else for that matter.”

  “But this isn’t just a simple diet, Ellie. How much weight have you lost since you started to get obsessed?”

  “I’m not obsessed. And anyway, it’s only a few pounds.”

  “I had a word with Dr. Wentworth––”

  “Dad! I told you, I’m not going to see her. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “She asked if you’d lost ten percent of your body weight—and I don’t know.”

  “Well, I do,” I say firmly. “I
haven’t lost that much weight, Dad, honestly.”

  I’m being anything but honest. I really seem to have got the knack of dieting now. I’m still starving hungry all the time and my tummy aches badly and I keep having to pee a lot and whenever I get up quickly or rush round I feel faint and most of the time I’ve got a headache and I feel a bit sick and I’ve got a filthy taste in my mouth and my hair’s gone all floppy and I’ve got spots all over my face and on my back, too—but it’s worth it to lose weight. Isn’t it? I’m not anorexic. Not like Zoë.

  I wonder how she’s getting on? I bet her dad’s nagging her, too!

  I can’t wait to see Zoë on the first day back at school. Will she have put on any weight or will she be even thinner?

  Lots of the girls in my class notice that I’ve lost weight.

  “Wow, Ellie! You’re looking so different!”

  “Look at the waistband of your skirt. It’s hanging off you!”

  “Have you been ill or something, Ellie?”

  “What’s the matter with you, Ellie?”

  “Nothing’s the matter. I’ve just been on this diet, that’s all.”

  “A diet? Over Christmas? You must be mad.”

  “Catch me going on a diet! We went to my nan’s and she does all this home baking. Oh, her Christmas cake! And her mince pies—I ate five in one day.”

  They burble on about food and I find it so irritating I open up my desk and start rearranging all my school books, trying to ignore them.

  There’s a sudden shriek—a scream—an entire operatic chorus.

  “Magda!”

  “Look at Magda.”

  “Magda, your hair!”

  Oh, God, poor Magda. No wonder they’re all going berserk. Maybe the newly shorn mousy Magda won’t be able to shut them up. I bob up from my desk, ready to spring to Magda’s defense.

  I spot Magda.

  I squeal.

  She’s not the old bouncy blond. She’s not the new subdued mouse. She’s an utterly new sizzling scarlet Magda!

  Her hair’s a wonderful vibrant electric bright red, the exact shade of her beautiful fur jacket. It’s been cut even shorter, but in brilliant elfin-punk layers like flaming feathers.