The Worst Girlfriend in the World (33 page)

She passed the phone over again so I could say fiercely: ‘Not getting up to anything.’ Chance would be a fine thing. ‘They’re nice boys. They’re pretty rubbish at being rock ’n’ roll.’

‘Is that so? And what time were you thinking of getting back tomorrow?’

I told him and if he wasn’t happy about me spending the night in London with the rock band, he hid it pretty well.

My bowl of ramen must have been cold by now, and even with a cashmere wool coat on I was shivering a little. I glanced down the road and saw the boys walking towards me. ‘I’ve really got to go now, Dad, but I promise I’ll be home tomorrow.’

‘I’ll see you then – and Franny, love?’

‘What?’

‘Don’t think you’re not grounded for lying to us that you were going to Manchester when you were really going to London with a bunch of long-haired layabouts. You’re
so
grounded, kid.’

I wasn’t overjoyed about that, but at the same time it was comforting to be back on familiar ground. ‘Whatever,’ I said and Dad said, ‘I’ll whatever you, young lady,’ and I hung up just as the boys reached me.

It had been such a stressful day that I was amazed that my stomach was still capable of acting like I was on the scary big rollercoaster in Blackpool. I smiled weakly, but didn’t have the guts to look directly at either Francis or Louis. I focused on Olly and the other two Desperadoes instead. ‘Hey! The girls are inside. They’ve already ordered.’

‘We’ve eaten,’ Olly said, throwing Louis a withering look. ‘Some people refuse to eat any food that isn’t battered and doesn’t come with chips.’

‘Eleven pounds fifty for haddock and chips.’ Louis sounded like he might cry. ‘The haddock was tiny.’

He held up thumb and forefinger a centimetre apart to show how small his fish had been. I tilted my head and tried to look sympathetic.

The others were already trooping inside and I would have followed them but Francis was staying back. I felt like all I’d done for the past ten hours was apologise to people. But then again, the other thing I’d been doing for the past ten hours was acting all wrong.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, as the door closed behind Olly. ‘Sorry about me and Alice having a blazing domestic in the minibus, then taking off. Alice said you were going to Soho to look for me.’ I winced. ‘You didn’t, did you?’

Francis was wearing his grey beanie so I had a clear view of the long-suffering look he gave me. The only thing capable of looking more hangdog than Francis was an actual hangdog. ‘Well, I did go to Soho but only partly to see if I could find you. I wanted to check out some record shops too.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Also, we need to swap phone numbers for next time you flounce off with no idea of where you’re going.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said again. ‘I need to be alone when I’m going through stuff. Usual angsty stuff, not having a total nervo stuff. I’m not like my mum.’

‘No one said you were.’ He smiled ever so slightly. ‘Well, Alice did and she’s what my old English teacher would call an unreliable narrator. Have you two made up?’

‘Yeah. She’s agreed to stop glomming on other girls’ boyfriends and I’m going to stop having all the feelings and save some for her,’ I told him.

Francis shook his head. ‘I understood maybe half of that sentence. Who gets Louis?’

I really didn’t want to talk about that with Francis any more. It seemed inappropriate now and I must have used up my quota of feelings for the month, so when I thought about Louis I didn’t feel much of anything. ‘We never got round to discussing that,’ I mumbled, turning to glance through the window so I wouldn’t have to see what Francis’s face was doing. There was sure to be a lot more eye-rolling involved. ‘So, um, did you eat a tiny, expensive portion of fish and chips too?’

‘No, I didn’t!’ I turned back to see Francis looking utterly offended. ‘I lived in London for a year. After the first week I stopped letting myself get ripped off by unscrupulous fast food outlets.’

But I’d only been in London for a few turbulent hours. ‘Oh, is Wagamama an unscrupulous fast food outlet?’

He shook his head and thank God, he was smiling again. ‘No, Franny. Wagamama is perfectly acceptable. Your choice?’

‘Yeah.’ I peered through the window again. When Alice saw me, she waved frantically, even though Louis was sitting next to her. ‘We should go in. I ordered a bowl of ramen ages ago.’

‘I always used to get the teriyaki salmon,’ Francis said, as he held the door open for me. ‘With the tea-stained egg, which isn’t as gross as you’d think it would be.’

It was exactly what I’d thought as I ordered it. The only person who got me like that was Alice and she hadn’t been getting me at all the last few weeks. It was a long time since I’d thought of Francis as Sneering Studio Tech – now he was a friend, but not in the way I was friends with Sage or Dora or Thee Desperadettes. I knew Francis’s hopes and dreams, his fears and the stuff that kept him awake at night. Then I remembered I still hadn’t come close to apologising properly because this little weekend in London should have been a break from all the stuff that kept Francis awake at night.

He was already way ahead, striding towards the communal table that we’d now completely taken over. ‘Francis!’ He turned. ‘I didn’t want to ruin the weekend for you. I haven’t, have I?’

‘You’ve already said sorry.’ He made a little ‘giddy-up’ gesture. ‘Come on, I’m starving and you’re in luck, the seat next to Louis is free.’

My salmon teriyaki ramen would have been stone cold if Louis hadn’t got over his loathing of weird foreign food and kindly eaten it all for me, except ‘I left you the egg, Franny. And it’s not my fault. I was starving. Eleven pounds fifty for miniature haddock and chips!’ he reminded me. It was hard to stay angry at Louis – but not impossible.

I insisted he pay for fresh, piping hot ramen for me, which he did though he moaned about me being tight.

‘She’s not being tight,’ Alice said from Louis’s other side. ‘Dude, you ate her tea.’

‘I liked it better when you two were fighting over me, instead of ganging up on me,’ Louis groused and I waited for the horror to overtake me that even Louis had figured that out, which meant that
everyone else
knew too, but the horror never came. I was immune to any more horror for the rest of the year at least. Anyway, Thee Desperadettes all fancied Louis too and none of them had managed to nab him, and they were still my new best mates, so they obviously didn’t care. Francis already knew, and Olly and the other two Desperadoes? They were nice but I wasn’t going to lose any sleep worrying about what they thought of me.

Still, Alice and I had shared a significant look that said, ‘We’ll talk about this later and in great length,’ because we were back in that place where we could say quite a lot to each other just by raising our eyebrows and wrinkling our noses.

My ramen had only just arrived when the boys left. The headline band wouldn’t let them soundcheck because they were ‘totally full of themselves for four people who sound like punk never happened’, according to Francis, but they were hopeful that they could beg five minutes to check their levels. Whatever the levels were. Who knew?

‘Don’t know why they’re bothering,’ Alice muttered to me. ‘They’re still going to sound terrible.’

‘Ssh, they’ll hear you,’ I whispered, nodding my head at Lexy, Kirsten and Bethany. ‘They must really reckon Thee Desperadoes are talented musicians to go to every gig and follow them to London.’

‘Well, they must be stupid then,’ Alice whispered back. My plan to integrate her into the new life I was creating wasn’t working so well.

Especially when Lexy wanted us to pool our booze money so we could go to Sainsbury’s and bulk buy. The only problem was that Thee Desperadettes were wine drinkers and ‘We always drink vodka and diet Coke,’ Alice insisted. ‘Or vodka and diet Red Bull. Besides, Franny thinks that white wine tastes like vinegar.’

Shuv said I had a very unsophisticated palate. While ‘Alice can’t drink red wine on account of the fact that the first time she ever did, she drank so much she hurled like no one has ever hurled before or since,’ I explained.

‘Still got the stains on my bedroom carpet,’ Alice said, but I’d caused enough upset already so I decided I would be part of the solution rather than the wine-hating part of the problem.

‘Why don’t we compromise and get some Bacardi Breezers? Or some cute little vodka cocktail things? They’re bound to be on special offer.’

I felt a lot like Mother Teresa or Princess Di, except less dead, because everyone agreed and when we got to Sainsbury’s, which was a huge desolate grey box that made me nostalgic for home, we discovered that they sold
cans
of lime vodka and Coke and even vodka and diet Coke already mixed.

Though it was freezing cold, we all went and sat by the lock to get mildly tipsy, except we were pestered by old drunk men who kept asking us for money and young drunk men who kept asking to see our tits. We decided to head for the Dublin Castle, where the boys were playing, but first we had to hide our spare cans.

Thee Desperadettes were skilled in the art of hiding alcohol. They shoved their cans to the bottom of their bags and made sure a box of tampons was highly visible when the bag was opened and shown to the security guard on the door, who shied away from the sight of sanitary protection products.

Soon we’d fought our way through the crowded pub, had our names ticked off on the three-pound guest list (playing third on the bill didn’t qualify the band to put any names on the proper free guest list) and found ourselves in a dark back room. It might have been small by London standards – two girls behind me referred to the place as ‘a dump’ – but it was about the same size as The Wow Club, although there were very few tables and chairs. Probably people in London were too cool to sit down.

There was also no way to subtly hang about near the backstage area, but then I didn’t really need to do that any more. I could look at Louis any time I wanted. Talk to him. Touch and be touched by him. Not in a sexy-times way but just in the way that he was a boy that I hung out with now. Which was weird because I’d always imagined that I’d either worship Louis from afar or somehow convince him that we were made for each other – there’d been no middle ground in my fantasies.

I wasn’t really sure how I felt about the middle ground. It was something that Alice and I needed to talk about but she was more interested in running her eyes over every guy in the room.

‘Seen anything you like?’ I asked her.

Alice stuck her tongue out at me. ‘Not really. London boys look very unwashed. Anyway, I have more important things to do like mocking Thee Desperadoes,’ she said, grabbing my hand to tug me forward. I resisted her efforts. ‘Franny! It’s been ages since we’ve mocked Thee Desperadoes. Watching them solo was one of the most excruciating half-hours of my life.’

‘We can’t,’ I said. ‘Look!’ Thee Desperadettes were already gathered down the front. ‘We’ll have to mock from a distance.’

‘I can’t believe you want to be friends with girls who think Thee Desperadoes are any good.’ Alice was incapable of keeping her voice to anything other than a muted roar. ‘What losers.’

‘They’re not losers!’

Before we could start bickering, even though we’d only been made up for a couple of hours, the band appeared. In fact, Louis rushed past us so he could take a flying leap on to the stage, grab the microphone and bellow, ‘Hello, Camden. Are you ready to rock?’

Camden really wasn’t. When Francis straightened up after fiddling with his effect pedals and saw the empty room, he looked beleaguered, like Alice’s dog when she was having a wee and caught anyone looking at her.

I let Alice pull me down the front, but now I was with the band rather than gawping at the band I vowed not to laugh. The only smile on my face would be an encouraging smile, I told myself sternly. Then there was an ear-splitting caterwaul of feedback and, with perfectly synchronised movements, Alice and I were digging into our bags for our earplugs.

It was marginally better, though we could still hear Louis screeching away about offering someone a ride on his love rocket, while Francis and the bassist stood stock still, both of them staring fixedly at the floor like they really, really hoped it might suddenly open up and swallow them whole. I was in a thousand agonies as now my hair wasn’t long enough to hide behind so I could have a good laugh.

Alice was hugging herself and lurching from foot to foot. ‘If I don’t laugh soon I’ll burst,’ she shouted, but I was painfully aware of Lexy and Kirsten staring up at the stage, eyes rapt, Bethany taking pictures. I gave Alice a warning shove.

Three songs in and Louis suddenly whipped off his T-shirt. He whirled it round his head for a bit, then tossed it into the non-existent crowd where it landed on Kirsten’s head. She yanked it off with a revolted expression and it was too much.

A great ugly snort of laughter burst out of me, along with a tiny bit of snot. The dam broke. As soon as I started laughing, Alice laughed too and it wasn’t very long, probably only ten seconds, before we were clutching at each other and howling as Louis strutted his stuff on top of one of the speakers and ran a hand down his sweaty chest.

I didn’t even care what Lexy and the others might think but as I was having a choked, gaspy breather between guffaws, I heard her shout, ‘Oh, put it away, Louis! We’ve seen it all before.’

‘Do you kiss your mum with that mouth?’ Bethany added as Louis yowled about ‘sexing you up till you can’t be sexed no more’. She turned to us and rolled her eyes long and hard. ‘Jesus, you’d think after all this time they might have one decent song, but that’s obviously asking too much.’