The Worst Girlfriend in the World (19 page)

‘Yeah, Franny B, thought there was something different about you,’ Louis said, looking at me closely as if he could see all the way down into the depths of my soul. ‘Your hair! Dude, it’s really short. It looks like that haircut that Gazza and all those footballers had. You know, the one that Roman emperors had too.’

I thought I might burst into tears. ‘
What?
’

‘Oh, don’t worry, Franny, you can pull it off,’ Louis told me, like it was a good thing that I could pull off a haircut that loads of naff old footballers had had in the freaking nineties when I’d hardly been born. ‘You look like a really pretty boy. Like, Justin Bieber or something.’

Everything he said was a hundred times worse than the last thing he’d said. ‘Stop talking, Louis,’ said a voice because even Francis thought he was out of order. ‘Please stop making words come out of your mouth.’

Louis held up his hands in protest. ‘I was saying that you look fit, Franny,’ he protested. My heart, which had been somewhere around my ankles, did perk up a little as I waited for him to clarify that statement, but his attention was fixed on something or someone on the other side of the room. ‘Right, yeah… Were we done ’cause I need to…’

He didn’t even finish his sentence, but loped off and left me looking like Justin Bieber with a Julius Ceasar haircut. I didn’t want to but I turned round to face Francis.

His hair
was
long and messy in front, like mine was supposed to have been, but I could still see his poleaxed expression as he took in the brand new me. ‘Wow!’ he said. He was so shocked he couldn’t even muster a sneer. ‘That’s quite the reinvention.’

I folded my arms. ‘It wasn’t meant to be quite so much of a reinvention.’

He walked round me slowly. If it had been anyone but Francis, I would have wondered if they were checking me out. Even so, I went hot and cold at the thought of him, of anyone, seeing the bald spot. ‘Oh? What made you change your mind?’

‘I didn’t. I let Alice loose with a pair of scissors and she did her absolute worst,’ I said, even though I didn’t want to be one of those girls who badmouthed other girls in front of boys. But I wasn’t badmouthing Alice to make myself seem better by comparison. In order to explain my hair, I had to badmouth Alice. I couldn’t bear it if Francis thought that I’d
wanted
to look like this.

‘It’s not so bad,’ he said. He was rubbish at sounding like he meant it. ‘And you’re very silver so that’s good.’ Now it was his turn to peer intently at me. ‘You remind me of someone, can’t think who.’

I stood there, arms still folded, and stared at Francis as he stared at me. Sage was right. He wasn’t unattractive, not when his face was softened by a slight smile. He’d made no concession to the Halloween-ness of the night and was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, unbuttoned just enough that I could make out a T-shirt underneath. That whole grunge revival thing was very YSL but he was still ridiculously underdressed, hadn’t even made an effort, whereas the more Francis stared, the more I felt that I was ridiculously overdressed.

‘Well?’ I prompted. ‘Who do I remind you of, then?’

Francis screwed up his face like he was in pain. ‘John Seeber!’ he said triumphantly. ‘That’s who! John Seeber in Ah Boo the Souffle.’

I didn’t know what Ah Boo the Souffle was but it was obviously some dreadful noisenik band, and I knew that John was a boy’s name. Francis and, even worse, Louis both thought that I looked like a boy because Alice had destroyed my hair and, unlike Alice, I didn’t have any tits that I could shove in people’s faces so they’d know I was a girl.

‘Thanks! Thanks a lot,’ I snarled.

‘What? What did I say?’ He looked genuinely perturbed, like he’d expected me to be pleased to be compared to some noise-making boy that I’d never heard of. ‘It’s not a line. You really do look like John See —’

‘Oh, just piss off.’ I shoved past him so hard he rocked back on his feet.

‘I’m going home,’ I announced when I got back to our table and immediately dropped to my knees to find my bag, which had my woolly hat stuffed in it. I say announced, but it was closer to actual shouting. ‘I’m not staying here to be insulted by
people
.’

‘What people?’ Mattie looked worried. ‘Do I have to fight them for you?’

‘They’re not worth it,’ I assured him, as I found my bag and dug out my hat. ‘First Louis compares my hair to Gazza and a Roman emperor
and
says that I look like Justin Bieber and then Francis…’

I paused because Paul didn’t know who Francis was, then Dora and Sage had another discussion about whether he was fit or not. They still reckoned he’d be a lot fitter if he did something with his clothes and hair.

‘What did Francis say then?’ Sage finally asked.

‘He said that I looked like John Seeper or Seeber or Seeburgh who’s in some band called Ah Boo the Souffle.’ The unfairness of it struck me anew. ‘Like, if you’re going to diss me to my face at least compare me to someone that I know, instead of some bloke in an obscure band. Did he think I was going to find it funny? Did he? Because it’s not…’

‘Oh my God, how can you be obsessed with Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol and sixties fashion trends and not know who John Seeber is?’ Sage’s voice dripped with contempt. ‘I’m rethinking the whole new best friend thing.’

Sage thought that we were new best friends? That made me feel a bit better. Then it made me feel worse because, despite everything, I kind of maybe missed my old best friend. I hardened my heart and got back to more important matters.

‘Please, will someone just tell me who he is?’ I said plaintively.

‘Not he,
she
. She’s French. Jean Seberg.’ When Sage said it with an exaggerated French accent, it didn’t sound like a bloke’s name at all. ‘And she was in a film called
A Bout de Souffle
. In English it’s called
Breathless
. You know, yeah, Francis is right, you
do
look like her.’

I was already on my BlackBerry, squinting at the screen in the dim light to pull up pictures of Jean Seberg. From what I could see, I could only hope to look a fraction as cool and sophisticated and generally awesome as the girl walking down a Parisian street with a lanky man in suit and hat while she wore cropped black trousers, ballet slippers and a white sleeveless T-shirt that bore the logo of the
New York Herald Tribune.

I scrolled on until I found a head shot and she did have my hair! My pixie cut, my urchin crop, my butchered sixties do. She even had the tufty bit at the crown, which had been bothering me almost as much as the bald spot, and she was rocking it hard. My heart would be forever Edie’s but I could feel a new girl crush brewing.

I’d also been unspeakably rude to Francis when he’d been paying me one hell of a compliment. I looked round for him but he was nowhere to be seen, though Louis waved like it didn’t matter that he’d said awful things to me. I wasn’t proud of myself but I waved back and then I noticed that Matthew and Dora were kissing and that took priority over everything.

‘Hang on! So is Mattie bi then?’ I asked Paul, who didn’t seem too bothered that his boyfriend was now, ewwww, sucking face with Dora.

‘Not that I know of,’ he said, staring over my shoulder at my BlackBerry. ‘Look! Jean Seberg has a stripy T-shirt just like yours! It’s like you were separated at birth or something.’

‘But… what… you and Matt…’ I looked to Sage for help. She raised her eyebrows like she didn’t know what I was talking about. ‘I thought you and Mattie were, you know, together.’

Even though Paul was still wearing his Lou Reed dark glasses, he managed to look confused. ‘Best mates but nothing else.’ He pushed his sunglasses down his nose so he could glare at me. ‘Do we have to have the conversation when I explain that just because I’m gay it doesn’t mean that I fancy
all
boys? Anyway, Mattie does that whole fop-in-a-suit look, which does nothing for me.’

‘I’m not being homophobic.’ I was horrified at the accusation. ‘I got a very gay vibe off Mattie and you two are always together. My gaydar has never malfunctioned before.’ Though, to be fair, my gaydar had never really been tested before either.

I was never going to make it in fashion if my gaydar was wonky, although as Sage pointed out, ‘Mattie does act very camp. I did wonder for a couple of days until I saw him holding hands with Dora at the bus stop.’

I’d never seen Mattie and Dora holding hands and she’d never said anything to me. ‘But you
are
gay?’ I asked Paul.

He sighed. ‘I’m the only gay in Merrycliffe. It’s my own cross to bear.’

‘You’re not the only gay in Merrycliffe. The bloke who manages the old people’s home next to our house is gay and the lady that runs the Royal Legion Social Club has been with her girlfriend since they were at school together.’

‘Yeah, but that’s not the kind of gay I choose to associate myself with,’ Paul sniffed, and he was just telling me what kinds of gay he did associate with when the music stopped and the lights went up and The Wow Halloween party was over.

Normally on a Saturday night Sean came to pick us up after we’d been to the Market Diner, and now I faced a cold, dark walk home and it was already midnight, my curfew when Dad was home to enforce it.

But I wanted Sage to get the full Merrycliffe Saturday night experience, which meant going to the Market Diner for chips. Even if Dad did ground me, he probably wouldn’t stick around long enough to make sure that I was obeying his orders.

We piled out of the club, shrieking as the wind tugged at our clothes, and walked along the seafront. It didn’t take long before the paltry tourist attractions – a chippy, a run-down amusement arcade, a boarded-up shop that sold sticks of rock, rude postcards and novelty items in high season and the fifties milk bar – gave way to the bleak industrial estate that housed the companies that used Merrycliffe’s port.

Whenever I walked past it, I felt a part of myself shrivelling away. I could also feel another part of me quaking in terror that I might end up working in one of those offices like most other people in Merrycliffe.

It was a relief to see the bright lights of the Market Diner twinkling in the near distance. And it was heavenly to open the door and smell bacon and other pork-based products sizzling on the griddle and be part of the sheer exuberance of the crowd who groaned at the familiar cry of ‘Ten minutes for chips!’

We joined the end of the long line and it wasn’t until we’d finally got our chips and Sage had admitted that they were better than anything she’d had in Leeds that I saw Francis. He was sitting at Thee Desperadoes’ usual table and there was no point in putting this off, even though I didn’t want to do it in front of Louis.

‘I’ll just be a minute,’ I told the others and my luck was in. Francis was getting up to visit the condiment station.

He looked at me warily when I walked over. ‘Are you still angry at me for some weird reason that I don’t understand?’

It was easier when he’d just been a sneering studio tech instead of having, like,
layers
. ‘No! I wanted to apologise for being angry and hopefully you’ll think it’s a really funny story or else you’ll just think that I’m a bit of a twat.’

Francis pushed his hair back so for a second I saw a glint in his hazel eyes that might have been amusement. The glint sort of suited him. ‘OK, this had better be good. You’ve got one minute on the clock, starting now.’

I deserved that, even if I didn’t like it, but then I explained how Jean Seberg had got lost in translation ‘because you didn’t even attempt a French accent’, and when I got to the bit about the obscure noise band called Ah Boo the Souffle, Francis laughed so hard that he bent in two, hands resting on his knees so he didn’t topple over.

It was a long while, with everyone turning to look at us, before Francis could straighten up. He was a little breathless and pink-faced like maybe he didn’t do a lot of laughing and was out of practice.

‘So, I’m sorry for getting mad and telling you to piss off,’ I concluded. ‘But after talking to Louis, then another person coming over to tell me that I looked like a boy… well, it was just too much.’

Francis nodded. ‘I get that and, for the record, I don’t think you’re a twat. Or that you look like a boy, for that matter.’

When Francis said it, I believed him, in a way that I hadn’t when everyone else was telling me that I still looked girl-shaped. There was something quiet and calm about Francis that made me trust him.

I offered him one of my chips and Francis followed me back to where Sage and the others were hovering at the end of the counter, because there were no tables spare.

Then, half an hour later when there were still no spare tables and I knew that I was in danger of violating my curfew like it had never been violated before, Francis offered to walk me home.

Not like he was waiting to lunge and pull me into a darkened doorway, but everyone else lived in the opposite direction to me and there was this Merrycliffe urban myth that girls could be abducted and within minutes be locked in the hold of a ship en route to somewhere very far away. It had never happened but that’s what our parents always told us. That’s what Francis told me too, and it was past one in the morning and it would just be my luck to get kidnapped by some vile pervert who wanted to sex-traffic me to the Far East, so I agreed.

‘Where do you live anyway?’ Francis asked, as we waved goodbye to the others. ‘You don’t live miles away, do you?’