The Fall Girl (28 page)

‘But –'

‘Stop it, will you?' she snaps.

Someone starts talking outside in the corridor and then there's a knock on the door. She walks out from behind her desk to answer it.

‘Thanks for coming, Missus Kelly,' she says, going out to talk to Lesley's mother.

All I manage to pick up from their conversation is that Lesley is taking the rest of the day off. When she comes back into the office, PMT tells me that I must learn to control these urges I'm having.

‘They're not natural,' she says; ‘they're sinful.'

She's going to transfer me from all the classes I share with Lesley. I must keep my distance from her and never engage her in conversation again. If I try to communicate with her by any means, I'll be suspended.

‘Do I make myself crystal clear, Frances?'

‘Yes, Sister.'

I've just posted the letter to my father. I swing from feeling angry with him one day to feeling sorry for him the next. Today I just miss him.

My father will have received his post by now. Whatever he decides to do, he won't make a spur of the moment decision. He likes to weigh things up, consider the consequences. My mother will be his biggest deterrent. He won't want to let her down; the way I let her down.

The truth about what happened between myself and Lesley doesn't stand a chance. Everyone wants to hear
her
version of events. The morning after, I watch them flock around her at the school gates, in the cloakroom, in the mall. Even girls she wouldn't normally bid the time of day to are hovering around her with timid faces, twiddling their earrings and waiting for her to acknowledge their presence, which she does because she wants to turn everyone against me. They pay for her attention with their loyalty. Afterwards, I hear two of them talking in the toilets as if they're her long-lost friends.

‘Did you hear about poor Lesley?'

‘Yeah, I was chatting to her this morning. She told me the whole story.'

‘I've just been talking to her myself. She's in bits over it.'

‘Would you blame her? Imagine finding out that your best friend was trying to get into your knickers. Jaysus, I'd run a mile.'

‘She says she still can't believe it, that she never suspected a thing, but that now, looking back on it, she should have seen it coming.'

‘Sure, it's not her fault. She shouldn't be blaming herself, poor thing.'

‘I know; that's what I said to her.'

‘And what did she say?'

‘She thanked me; told me I made her feel a whole lot better.'

‘Ah, she's really nice, isn't she?'

‘Yeah, she's dead on.'

‘I'll tell you one thing: I'll be keeping my distance from Frances Fall. Even the thought of her gives me the creeps.'

I swallow the truth and the sadness.

During class I avoid eye contact with my classmates in case any of them gets the wrong idea. I don't want to be caught looking at their legs or boobs so, as far as I can, I keep my nose in my books.

On the Wednesday afternoon, I find a mousetrap in my schoolbag. Later, on the school bus, I put my hand in my gabardine pocket and pull out a page torn from a porn magazine of two naked women kissing. During Maths class, the next day, I come across a note between the pages of my textbook. It's done out in letters cut from a newspaper, reading
Watch your back
. As I'm walking down the avenue on Friday, a girl from second year, whom I know to be a neighbour of Lesley's, catches up with me and asks me if I realize that the short for Frances is Fanny. When I tell her to get stuffed, she skips away laughing. Even though I manage not to cry, inside I'm crumbling.

It's not enough for my mother that I'm staying in over the weekend, and apparently studying; she wants to know why. Or, more to the point, why now.

‘You've taken a fierce sudden interest in your schoolbooks
this past couple of weeks,' she says, putting my dinner on the table. ‘Though it's a bit late in the day, as far as I'm concerned.'

‘Aye, well, better late than never,' my father says, winking at me. ‘It's good to see you knuckling down.'

‘Thanks, Daddy.'

‘So, why the sudden change of heart?' my mother asks, managing to pour her gravy without taking her eye off me.

‘I don't want to fail, do I?'

‘Mmm.' She swallows a mouthful of food and pats both sides of her mouth with her napkin. ‘So, it's nothing to do with the fact that the phone hasn't rung once for you in nearly two weeks?'

‘No!'

‘There's no need to snap.'

‘I didn't.'

‘Yes you did, didn't she, Joe?'

‘Ah, I'm sure she didn't mean –'

‘It's OK, Daddy, I know she's only trying to rise me.'

‘By asking you a simple question,' my mother sneers. ‘It doesn't take much so, unless of course I've hit a nerve.'

‘Just leave me alone, will you?'

As I push away my plate, my knife and fork slip off the table, clattering on the tiled floor. When I bend down to pick them up, I'm tempted to dig the fork into my mother's leg. Straightening up, I bang my head on the table.

‘Fuck it,' I shout, flinging the cutlery into the sink.

‘Oh, that's lovely language,' my mother says as I storm out the door.

In the privacy of my bedroom, I call her every crude name I can think of, before kneeling down and praying for her death.

As soon as I wake up on the Monday morning, I need to
dash to the loo. I've been having bouts of diarrhoea for several days now and my body feels drained. I don't know how I'm going to face another day at school.

On the school bus, I end up sitting beside the wildest of the lads from the village. When he asks me if the rumour is true about me being a lesbian, I tell him it's not.

‘Prove it,' he says, grabbing my hand and putting it on his crotch.

‘Would you ever fuck off,' I shout, pulling back my hand.

‘If you don't like that,' he says, ‘you are a lezzie.'

‘Shag off, you bollocks.'

‘Jaysus, I'd give anything to see two girls snogging. I'm getting a fucking horn just thinking about it.'

Everyone starts laughing. Don't cry, I think, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry. I tell myself that they're laughing at him, and not me. He's the joke, he's the fool. Go away, tears. I start to count the oncoming cars: one, two, three, four – they're still laughing – five, six – how could you do this to me, Lesley? – seven, eight – stop thinking about her – nine, ten, eleven – they've stopped.

When I don't see Lesley, Jackie or Orla hanging around the school gates, I assume that the town bus is running late and I hurry up the avenue alone, hoping to be away from the cloakroom before they get there.

‘Lock up your cheese sandwiches, girls,' Jackie shouts as I walk in the door. ‘There's a mangy mouse on the loose.'

‘Ah Jaysus,' some girl yelps, climbing up on to a bench.

‘You mean, lock up your fannies,' Lesley roars.

Even the first years are sniggering into their hands.

‘Don't cry, Frances,' Jackie says, slapping my back, ‘we're only slagging you.'

Everyone I meet as I walk down the corridor and up the
stairs to my new classroom is looking at me and giggling. I can't take much more. On my way to the science lab after the eleven o'clock break, someone touches my sleeve. When I look round, the third-year girl whom Lesley had teased a few weeks earlier about her prominent teeth hands me a piece of paper.

‘This was stuck to your back,' she says. ‘That's what they're all laughing at.'

It reads:
FANNY FALL FANCIES YOU ALL (Told you to watch your back)

I look at the girl through glazed eyes. ‘It's not true what they're saying about me, you know.'

‘I know.'

‘Thanks.'

She smiles and walks away.

On the Friday afternoon, the word spreads like wildfire: Lesley has been expelled. She was standing at the lectern in the convent chapel giving a sacrilegious sermon to a handful of naive first years who were trying to fit in the Stations of the Cross during their break, a chalice full of wine in one hand, a lit fag in the other. Jackie and Orla were trying to coax her away when PMT came flapping up the centre aisle in a rage.

I should be relieved, but I'm not. I'm heartbroken.

Living without Lesley is like living without a cause. Everything seems pointless. I fall asleep crying and wake up in a black hole. I skip breakfast, feed my lunch to the birds and struggle over a bowl of soup at dinnertime. Nancy says I look like the divil and that maybe a good tonic would help. She knows a pharmacist who makes up his own special concoction. Anyone who's taken it swears by it. She brings it round the following
day. Before I get the spoon to my mouth, I start gagging, spilling the medicine all over the floor.

‘This time, just hold your nose and knock it back,' Nancy says, pouring another spoonful. ‘It'll do you a power of good.'

It feels like warm blood trickling down my throat. I gag again, but manage to keep it down.

A few weeks later, my mother arrives home after attending evening Mass with Nancy in Castleowen cathedral. My father and I are watching
The Good Life
.

‘I was talking to Kitty Devine after Mass,' she says, pulling off her gloves and warming her hands at the fire. ‘Nancy gave her a lift home.'

Kitty is the wife of Seamie Devine, a retired postman. They live in the same estate as Lesley.

‘How's Seamie keeping?' my father says.

‘No complaints, she says. He's doing a bit of taxiing at the weekends.'

‘Ah, good man, Seamie. And how's Kitty herself ?'

‘Full of news, as it happens.'

‘Aye, typical. As Seamie used to say when he'd spin a yarn in the office: that's the gossip according to Kitty.'

‘Turn that down, Frances,' my mother says, nodding at the TV.

I know rightly what's coming next.

‘You never told us your friend Lesley got expelled.'

‘Mmm.' I keep my eye on the screen.

‘My God,' my father says. ‘She didn't, did she?'

‘Yeah,' I say flatly.

‘Why?'

‘For smoking in the chapel and drinking altar wine, the
brazen so and so,' my mother tells him. ‘I always said that one was a rare piece of work.'

‘Is that right, Frances?'

‘Yeah.'

‘God, that's a terra. Such a thing to do! Has she no respect at all at all?'

‘Respect!' my mother says, throwing her eyes to heaven. ‘Obviously not, because she's expecting as well.'

The following Wednesday, I hang around the courtyard waiting for Johnny. I need to know what's going on: if he's been talking to her, if it's his, if he knows, whether or not they're still together, if she's OK. I need something, any little scrap of news. I feel cut off. I want to be her friend again. She needs me.

Around one o'clock, I hear the van coming and my heart starts galloping. I haven't seen him since the day we had sex. What if he ignores me or tells me to get lost? What if he starts flirting with me again? I look the other way as he drives past me and pulls up by the refectory door. Taking a deep breath, I start walking towards the van. I need to talk to him before Sister Bernadine comes on the scene and starts getting suspicious. The driver's door swings open and a dark-haired, moustached man in his forties jumps out.

‘Howaya?'

‘Hello,' I say, stalling for a moment, then walking on, unsure of what I should do next.

I hear the back door swing open. Feck it, I think, I'll just have to find out what I can from this man.

‘Excuse me,' I say, turning to face him.

‘Yes, love?'

‘Is Johnny off today?'

‘He is, and every other day from now on. He quit a fortnight ago.'

‘Oh.'

‘You didn't know?'

‘No.'

‘A friend of yours, is he?'

‘Not really. More a friend of a friend.'

‘Not that wee lassie he got pregnant?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Between you and me, love, I think she's better off without him. He's a bit of wanderer, the same boy.'

‘So he knows about my friend being … you know.'

‘He should do. Her brothers got in touch with the boss man, looking for his address. They were none too happy about not getting it; they wanted to knock seven bells out of him. They're hardy bucks from what I hear. Do you know them?'

‘Just a bit. Not very well.'

‘Ah, I wouldn't blame them, I suppose,' he says, stepping up into the back of the van. ‘They've every right to be annoyed. What is it about you young lassies at all? Youse always fall for the bad boys.'

My father is off on annual leave during Easter week. He doesn't like to miss the services. Over the previous year, my parents have taken to attending Mass more often in Castleowen than they do in Crosslea. My mother says she's sick of running into Mrs Jones and Mrs O'Grady, who are always talking about their sons and daughters at college and asking her what I intend studying after the Leaving.

‘They know full well,' she grumbles to my father, ‘that Frances has no intention of furthering her education. If she
was going on to do medicine, mark my words, that pair of oul doses wouldn't speak to me at all.'

On Good Friday, my father finds me in tears.

‘I thought I heard you crying,' he says, opening my bedroom door. ‘What's wrong?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Nobody cries for nothing.' He sits down beside me on the bed. ‘There must be something bothering you.'

‘No, there isn't, honest. I'm tired, that's all.'