The Worst Girlfriend in the World (7 page)

‘Her name’s Dora and she’s not a goth, she’s Steampunk. Whole different vibe, apparently,’ I pointed out, which was the wrong thing to say.

‘Oh my God, do
not
stick up for her,’ Alice had said in her really scary, really quiet voice and I’d changed the subject to something way less controversial, like if Alice had found anyone fresh and new to snog after I’d left.

‘Not anyone. I think I’ve pretty much snogged every snoggable boy in Merrycliffe,’ she said sadly. ‘But enough about that, how was your mum when you got home?’

I’d have much preferred to listen to Alice’s snog woes. As it was, I couldn’t bring myself to tell even Alice what my mum had said to me. ‘She’s having a blue period’ was what I did say.

‘Oh, no! Not
another
one of those! That sucks!’

I hadn’t been able to crowbar Mum out of her bedroom since Saturday night. I sometimes heard her come out to go to the loo, and when I went into the kitchen in the morning I’d often find a mug and plate in the draining rack, which meant she was getting some form of sustenance.

The bottom line was she didn’t want to talk to me and I didn’t have the magic combination of words that would unlock the right bit of her brain and make everything OK. She was still better than how she’d been early last summer so I left her to get on with it.

While she was getting on with it, I went to college. I did all the reading and made lots of notes every time Barbara said something note-worthy and I went to my GCSE catch-up classes, but all the time I felt as if my head was in another place. All my go-to-get-happy fixes like fantasising about getting trapped in a small, confined place with Louis or meeting Martin Sanderson and him offering me a job on the spot weren’t working.

It felt like life would never stop sucking.

On Friday as I walked home from college, I felt a bit like taking to my bed too. And then Alice rang. ‘So, I just saw Matt from The Wow and he says that the band they’d got for tomorrow night pulled out and Thee Desperadoes are playing
again
. Do you want to get ready round mine or yours?’

There was a God and he/she was sending me an unscheduled Louis gawping session to make up for also sending me a really crappy week. ‘Do you mind coming round mine again? I’ll make sure I get some posh pesto pizzas from Sainos. They’re much nicer than Dominos.’

‘Posh pesto pizza every time. I’ll bring the booze.’ Alice paused. ‘So, um, is your mum still having a nervo?’

‘Well, if she is, it’s a quiet nervo and I got a text from my dad and he should be back home on Sunday.’

‘God, it’s about time! You shouldn’t have to deal with her having any kind of nervo. Anyway, what are you going to wear tomorrow night?’ Alice asked – she knew all about my good stuff and my bad stuff and when I was absolutely sick to death of talking about the bad stuff. ‘I just bought a pair of wedge trainers. They’re surprisingly hard to walk in. I’m going to wear them with that blue drapey dress you made me.’

‘The black and white ones in the window of Charlie Girl?’ Charlie Girl was the only place in Merrycliffe that sold anything even remotely fashionable and I use the word fashionable in the loosest possible sense so it stops having any real meaning. I hadn’t been in there since I was thirteen but as Alice said, I was a style fascist, when I reminded her of this.

The next evening Alice came round mine to get ready. I left Mum in bed with a bottle of water, a cheese and pickle sandwich and an apple hermetically sealed in a Tupperware container, so she wouldn’t starve for fear of germs. I said a cheery goodbye and got the tiniest of grunts in return and then I was free. I’d discharged all my maternal responsibilities and as Alice said as we hid round the corner from The Wow Club so we could decant our vodka and diet Coke into water bottles, ‘At least when she’s like this, you know she hasn’t got the energy to do anything stupid.’

‘Yeah, she couldn’t even summon up enough oomph to reach for the remote on her bedside table and turn on the TV.’ It had only been through a system of blinks and sighs that I’d established that she didn’t mind watching back-to-back repeats of
A Place in the Sun
. ‘You know what? I’m not going to let her ruin another Saturday night. Anyway, Dad will be back tomorrow and then she’ll snap out of it, like that!’

I clicked my fingers so fiercely that I nearly had Alice’s heavily mascaraed eye out. She wore her new wedge sneakers and the drapey blue dress I’d made her. It had come up a little small but Alice didn’t mind because she said it did awesome things to her boobs, even if she did have to wear Spanx under it, which she’d rolled down so she could manage half a pesto pizza.

I was wearing cropped trousers with my black lace-up brogues, a skinny-fit white T-shirt and a black jacket that looked like an iconic Chanel jacket if the lighting was dim and you squinted really hard. We didn’t really have anywhere on our bodies to hide our alcoholic contraband.

‘We have to organise ourselves better,’ Alice said crossly, after I’d tried to force the bottles down my tight trouser legs. It looked like I had some kind of gross disease like elephantiasis. ‘We can’t both do body-hugging.’

‘Would it kill you to wear an A-line dress just once in your life?’

Alice nodded frantically. ‘Yes, yes it would.’

I surveyed our assorted limbs. ‘We’ll just have to neck it before we go in.’

‘You know I can’t ingest a large volume of liquid in a short amount of time.’ Alice was close to tears. ‘I’m not physically capable of drinking that fast.’

It was true. Alice had once taken four hours to get through an iced coffee when we went to Leeds for the day. ‘I could always drink both bottles.’ I smiled brightly. ‘If it would help.’

‘No, it wouldn’t help.’ Alice stamped one wedge-sneakered foot. ‘Why did you have to wear a jacket with sleeves that don’t reach your wrists?’

‘I like it. It looks a bit Chanel. Kind of.’ We looked round to see Dora standing there. Actually, she looked more as if she were floating than standing because she was wearing a huge, voluminous black dress. And I mean huge. Crinoline huge. ‘You going to The Wow?’

She was talking to me, not Alice, which wasn’t a surprise given how totally they’d not got on last Saturday. ‘We are, except we’re having, um, issues.’

Dora took a step closer. She had old-fashioned aviator goggles perched artfully on top of her huge pink beehive. I had to admire her for going all out in pursuit of her look. ‘What kind of issues?’

I came to a decision then. I was going to be on the same course as Dora for two years and I’d rather spend those two years on friendly terms. So, she and me and Alice were going to have to find some common ground, which admittedly might be difficult, but now was as good a time as any.

‘Alcohol issues,’ I told Dora, even though Alice clicked her teeth and shoved me in the ribs. ‘We have nowhere on our persons where we can hide two half-litre bottles of vodka and diet Coke.’

‘That is a problem,’ Dora said. ‘Have you come up with a solution?’

‘Does it look like we have?’ Alice asked with a snarl and another stamp of her foot. ‘I am not paying for drinks in The Wow. No way.’

‘I would never pay for drinks in a club either,’ Dora said. ‘I’m always broke. It costs a lot of money being a full-time Steampunk.’

I could feel Alice thrumming next to me like she was working on some devastating comeback to that little insight into Dora’s lifestyle choices. I gave her a warning prod. ‘It’s not that. It’s a matter of principle. They water down all the drinks and they won’t serve you unless you pretty much rest your boobs on the bar to get the staff’s attention.’

‘And Franny has no boobs to rest anywhere,’ Alice said tartly.

Dora didn’t say anything. Then she slowly lifted her skirt and I saw that I’d been right. She’d made a crinoline cage out of what looked like old coat hangers. I was quite curious to see how she’d done it, but that wasn’t the most interesting thing under her skirts. No, that would be the carrier bag from the off-licence that was dangling from one of the hangers. ‘A bottle of red wine and one of my rings doubles up as a corkscrew,’ she said proudly.

‘Oh my God.’ Even Alice was impressed. ‘You’re my hero.’

We gave Dora our bottles and followed behind her as she glided into The Wow. Well, until her crinoline got stuck in the doorway and we had to give her a good shove, to the amusement of Scary Bob, the doorman, who was too busy laughing to even check if we were smuggling in alcoholic beverages. We sat at our usual table, which I guessed was going to be Dora’s usual table too because she was on her own (apparently Matthew and Paul had gone to a sci-fi convention in Oldham, which must be secret gay code for something far more exciting) and she’d helped us in our hour of need. It would have been rude to make her sit somewhere else.

It turned out all right because Alice and Dora could talk to each other about make-up and how hard Dora found it to maintain the right kind of pinkiness to her hair, while I kept my gaze riveted on the door that led to the backstage. But, like, subtly riveted.

The door opened. I held my breath, but it was only the sneering studio tech from college. He glanced over at us as he walked past and then Dora actually said, ‘Hi’, to him, like it was no big deal.

‘Hi,’ he said and even his voice sounded like a sneer, as if he couldn’t believe that she would dare to address him when he was in Thee Desperadoes and could talk to Louis any time he wanted and also when he was a studio tech and she was an annoying first-year fashion student who thought it was OK to touch college equipment with her grubby fingers. That was what he managed to evoke with his ‘Hi’.

‘Rude, much?’ Dora said loud enough for him to hear, even over the sounds of some really bad moperock, and then she turned back to talk to Alice about the merits of Manic Panic over Crazy Colour Hair Dye and though I didn’t want to miss anything, I was dying for a wee and it was better to go now than when Thee Desperadoes were on stage.

I could also feel one of my false eyelashes making a bid for freedom and was just trying to do a repair job in front of the mirror, when someone dug me in the ribs.

‘Franny B!’

‘Jesus Christ!’ I almost jabbed my finger right through cornea, retina and all the other bits that make up an eye. I didn’t, but it was pretty close. I looked behind me in the mirror to see two uncertain faces waiting to find out if they’d blinded me. ‘Oh, hey! Hi! How are you?’

It was Ashleigh and Vicky from school. If Alice was the hottest girl at St Anne’s, then Vicky was the prettiest. She always looked dewy like she’d just stepped from the pages of a magazine where she was advertising a flowery fragrance, but she wasn’t at all stuck-up about the way she looked. Ashleigh was her best mate and she was scary-smart. She’d done half her GCSEs a year early and it was a little embarrassing to see her again knowing that she must know that I’d ballsed some of mine right up.

Maybe that was why she gave me such an enthusiastic hug. ‘I said to Vicks that you’d probably be here tonight,’ she said, eyeing my cropped trousers and inspired-by-Chanel jacket. ‘God, you look so cool.’

‘Yeah, like you should be on one of those street-style blogs,’ Vicky added, looking anxiously down at her own outfit.

Vicky and Ash were wearing vests, unbuttoned plaid shirts, cut-off jean shorts, black tights and Uggs. It was what the Merrycliffe indie girls wore.

‘You both look great too,’ I said, because there was something, though not much, to be said for comfy instead of chic. ‘I envy your Uggs. I can’t wear tights with cropped trousers but my brogues are really pinching and my ankles are going to freeze on the walk home.’

‘So, like, how’s college? What have you made? Are there any fit boys? Parminder said that there are loads of hot, older art students.’

We talked about college for a bit and then Ash, who was scary organised as well as scary smart, wanted to know if I’d thought about my costume for The Wow’s Halloween party (last year Alice and I had come as eighties Madonna and nineties Madonna, but it had been wasted on the masses) and if I was going to make T-shirts with sequinned slogans on them for Christmas again.

It was ages since I’d had a really good chat with Ash and Vicky. Probably long before I’d left school because they’d never talk to me when I was hanging out with Alice. Not many girls would. Which reminded me…

‘We should totally hang out one evening,’ I said, as I put away my make-up bag, because we’d been yammering for ages and I didn’t want to miss Thee Desperadoes. ‘Maybe at half-term or something.’

They agreed that it would be amazing and then I nudged Vicky on the arm because she was a softer touch than Ash. ‘I hate to think that Alice has to fly solo at school now,’ I said softly. ‘Don’t suppose you could ask her to eat lunch with you —’

‘You mean when she’s not getting lunch with some boy that she stole from another girl?’ Ash interrupted, eyes blazing, because there was history there. There was always history when it came to Alice and other girls. ‘If Alice hasn’t got anyone to go around with at school then it’s her own fault.’

‘Please.’ I gave Ash my most imploring look, which involved knitting my brows so hard that it hurt. ‘I’m not asking you to become best mates, but try to include her. Honestly, she is such a laugh when she’s not —’

‘Slutting around like a total slut.’

I actually hadn’t missed the way Ash continually interrupted whatever anyone was saying.

‘That’s a really denigrating thing to say about another girl,’ I said, which was what Siobhan said to me when I was commenting on other girls’ extreme sluttishness. ‘I thought you were a feminist.’