The next day I have a private word with Magda.
‘She’s totally mental,’ says Magda.
‘I know. But there’s no way I can get through to her,’ I say.
‘I’ll have a go,’ says Magda.
‘Well. Do be ever so tactful. And don’t let out that I said anything, eh?’ I say, but Magda isn’t listening to me.
‘Nadine! Come over here! Ellie says you’re going to do it with Liam, you silly cow.’
Practically every girl in the playground looks up and gawps.
‘Magda! You and your big mouth!’ I say.
‘I think it’s you and your big mouth, Ellie,’ says Nadine. ‘Thanks a bunch.’
‘Hey, don’t be like that,’ says Magda, rushing over to her and putting her arm round her neck.
‘Get off me, Magda!’
‘I just want to talk to you, Nadine.’
‘Yeah, but I don’t want to talk about it, OK?’
‘We’re mates, aren’t we?’
‘But this isn’t about you and me and Ellie. It’s just to do with me and Liam. So you keep your nose out of it, OK? And you too, Ellie,’ says Nadine, and she stalks off by herself.
‘Shall we go after her?’ says Magda.
‘We’ll be wasting our time,’ I say miserably.
I know Nadine too well. She’ll never listen to either of us now. I feel I’ve really blown it. I’ve betrayed Nadine’s confidence – and I haven’t helped her in the slightest.
She barely talks to either of us all day. When school is over she goes rushing off to meet up with Liam, who’s waiting for her by the wall.
‘So let’s have a word with him, eh?’ says Magda.
‘No! You can’t! And Nadine would kill us,’ I say.
We don’t get the chance anyway, because Nadine and Liam hurry away. It’s cold, so Liam is wearing this incredible black leather jacket.
‘That is a seriously sexy jacket,’ Magda says wistfully. ‘He might be a pig but he sure looks good. Why can’t Greg wear a leather jacket? He’s got this naff zippy thing that is practically an anorak.’
‘How’s it going with Greg, anyway?’ I ask.
‘Well . . .’ says Magda, and sighs.
‘He doesn’t want you to . . .?’
‘Per-lease!’ says Magda. ‘Greg??? No, he’s OK, he’s quite sweet actually, but all we seem to do is talk homework and hang out at McDonald’s. Ah! Which reminds me. One of Greg’s mates, Adam, is having a party this Saturday. His parents are away for the weekend so they’re planning a serious rave-up. Want to come?’
I stare at her, heart beating.
She mistakes my hesitation. ‘Look, I know you and Dan are an item and the last thing you want is to meet someone new at a party. I mean, you’ve got a boyfriend.’
Oh, Magda! If you only knew. A party. I’ve never ever been to a party before. Well, of course I’ve been to parties – the little-girly balloons-and-birthday-cake kind. But I’ve never been to a party with boys.
‘Please come, Ellie. It should be a laugh, if nothing else. Maybe I’ll meet a new boyfriend. Greg is OK, but he’s seriously lacking when it comes to street cred. His mates might have more potential.’
I don’t know what to say, what to do. A serious rave-up. No parents. And boys, boys, boys.
It sounds incredible.
It sounds incredibly scary. I think drink. I think drugs. I think bedrooms.
I want to go. Maybe I’ll meet a real boyfriend. One of Greg’s mates. Although perhaps they’ll have girls already.
‘Are you sure it won’t be just a couple party?’ I say.
‘No, that’s the point. This Adam is inviting along half Year Eleven at Andersons, and most of them are totally uncoupled. They’re desperate for more girls. Greg practically begged me to ask some along. I was thinking – who else shall we ask, eh?’
There doesn’t seem much point in asking Nadine. Magda asks Chrissie, but she’s already going to a party that night. She asks Jess but she says it’s not her kind of thing, thanks. She asks Amna who says she’d give anything to go but her dad would go bananas.
‘Maybe my dad won’t let me,’ I mumble.
‘Rubbish. Your dad seems really cool to me,’ says Magda.
Dad always makes a fuss of Magda when she comes round to our house.
‘I’ll ask him for you if you like,’ says Magda. ‘OK?’
I don’t really want her to. I don’t know if I really want to go to this party. What will I wear? What will I say? What am I expected to do?’
‘What’s up?’ says Magda. ‘He knows you’re going out with Dan so you won’t let any other boy try it on at the party – so he can’t object, can he?’
Oh help. I’ll have to keep Magda away from Dad at all costs. Dad thinks it hilariously funny that I write so much to the real Dan. He’ll talk about him to Magda and she’ll twig what he’s really like.
‘No, leave Dad to me, I’ll handle him,’ I say firmly. ‘OK, I’ll go to the party with you, Magda.’
‘You won’t regret it, I promise,’ says Magda.
I regret agreeing almost immediately. I tell Dad about the party, practically hoping he’ll say no way. Anna is very doubtful, and asks straight away if the parents are going to be there and what about the drink/drugs situation and suppose there are gatecrashers?
‘Look, I don’t want to be rude, but I wasn’t asking you, Anna, I was asking Dad,’ I say. Though I’m secretly glad she’s pointed out all these objections.
I hope Dad will take them all on board and agree it’s out of the question.
But he doesn’t. ‘Come off it, Anna, you’re sounding positively middle-aged,’ he says. ‘This is just some tame little party at a schoolboy’s house. Why shouldn’t Ellie go? And she’ll be fine if Magda’s going too. That kid knows what she’s doing all right.’
‘I don’t give a damn about Magda. It’s Ellie. Does she know what she’s doing?’ says Anna.
‘We’ve got to credit her with some sense. You know enough not to do anything stupid, right, Ellie? You go to your party and have fun.’
‘I don’t think you’re being a very responsible parent,’ says Anna. ‘But then you’re not famed for your responsibility, are you?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ says Dad.
‘I think you know,’ says Anna.
‘I don’t have a clue,’ says Dad.
I don’t have a clue either but I leave them to have a row while I go up to my room. I get out all my clothes and try on every single item. I look a mess in everything. Fat. Babyish. So utterly uncool that I despair.
I’m still despairing on Saturday evening, even though Magda arrives early and gives me advice.
‘Dress down. You’ll look as if you’re trying too hard if you dress up. Wear your jeans. Not the cruddy ripped ones. The black.’
OK. So that’s my black jeans, even though they’re so tight I shall be cut in two if I sit down.
‘You won’t be sitting down, babe. You’ll be dancing,’ says Magda. She looks at my boots. ‘Well, lumbering.’ She sees my face. ‘Joke, Ellie!’
I don’t feel like laughing. I feel so fat I select my biggest baggiest T-shirt to wear with the jeans.
‘No no no,’ says Magda. ‘Dress down but also dress sexy.’
‘But I’m not.’
‘You don’t have to be it. Just look it. Something little and tight on top. For God’s sake, Ellie, yours are Wonders without the bra. So if you’ve got it, flaunt it.’
I’ve never felt less like flaunting in my entire life. But I do as I’m told and put on an old purple T-shirt I wore when I was practically a little kid. It strains across my embarrassing chest. I look as if I’m wearing a giant rubber band but Magda insists I look fine. She makes me up with purple shadowed eyes to match the T-shirt and fusses that we haven’t got deep purple nail varnish too.
Dad is giving us a lift to this Adam’s house. (Magda is meeting Greg there.) Dad winks approvingly at Magda, who
is looking ultra-cute in a little black skirt and a black-and-white top so short she shows her tiny waist whenever she moves. Dad stops winking and blinks when he sees me. ‘Ellie!’ he says.
‘What?’ I say, trying to sound surly and defiant – but my voice cracks.
‘Mmm. Well. You look very . . .’ He looks over at Anna. ‘Maybe this party isn’t such a good idea after all,’ he says. ‘I didn’t realize it was going to be so . . . grown up.’
Anna raises her eyebrows. Eggs jumps up onto the armchair. ‘Look at me! See how tall I am! I’m a grown-up. I want to go to the party.’ He jumps up onto the arm and slips.
Anna is kept busy quelling his yells and rubbing his sore bits. Dad sighs and offers us an arm each. ‘Allow me to escort you, ladies,’ he says.
He fusses in the car, grilling Magda about Greg and the other boys. He asks all Anna’s questions about parents and drink and drugs and insists that he will be waiting outside at twelve to take us home.
‘Like Cinderella. Only ball gowns aren’t what they used to be,’ he says, giving my T-shirt another nervous glance.
He looks a little reassured when we draw up outside Adam’s house, one of those cosy mock-Tudor jobs with a little goldfish pond and a garden gnome in a little red plaster cap and matching bootees. There’s a car parked in the drive.
‘Ah. At least his parents are at home,’ says Dad.
‘Cool subterfuge,’ Magda breathes in my ear.
But guess what? It’s not subterfuge at all. Adam’s mum comes to the door, in a pastel sweater and leggings, holding one of those big plastic plates with little sections for nuts and crisps and twiglets. ‘Ah! You two are . . .?’
‘I’m Magda and she’s Ellie,’ says Magda faintly.
‘And you’re friends of Adam’s?’
‘Well, I’m a friend of Greg. And he’s a friend of Adam,’ says Magda. ‘And Ellie’s my friend.’
I don’t feel like being Magda’s friend, not after tonight!
This is not a rave-up. This is a terrible embarrassing non-event. Adam is a boy who looks almost as young as Dan even though he’s in Year Eleven. He’s a little weedy whats it with an extremely protruberant Adam’s apple (appropriate), which bobs up and down when he talks.
For a long terrible while it’s just Adam and Magda and me in the living room, with Adam’s mum bustling in and out offering us party nibbles and some ghastly punch that’s got about one tot of red wine to every gallon of fruit juice. Damp shreds of maraschino cherry and tinned mandarin lodge against my teeth whenever I try to take a drink.
Adam hisses that his parents decided against their weekend break because his dad has a shocking cold. We hear frequent explosive sneezing from upstairs. I don’t think there are going to be any heavy bedroom sessions tonight somehow.
Greg turns up eventually. Magda gives him a hard time, whispering furiously in his crimson ear.
One more boy arrives half an hour later. He’s clutching a can of lager and boasts that he’s had a few already. He keeps belching. Adam finds this funny and swigs from the can too when his mum is out of the room.
I would sooner go out with Dan than these two.
I would sooner go out with Eggs.
Why doesn’t anyone else come???
After endless awful ages there’s another knock and it sounds as if there’s a whole crowd of boys outside but when Adam’s mum goes to the door there’s a whole load of spluttering and mumbled excuses and someone says they’ve come to the wrong house and they all charge off.
So we are left. Five of us. We are the party. And I don’t drink and I don’t take drugs and I don’t dance and I don’t go up to a bedroom with a boy. I don’t even talk to a boy.
I just sit there at the first and worst party of my life.
Dear Dan,
I went to a great party on Saturday night. A real rave-up.
I danced.
I drank.
I socialized.
I didn’t get home till dawn.
Dear Dan,
I am a liar. You should see my tongue. We always used to say when we were little that you got black spots on your tongue if you told a lie. Mine is black as coal all over. It was a truly terrible party if you really want to know. So mind-boggingly awful that I phoned my dad to come and get me early.
I felt so STUPID. There are all these long fussing articles in the papers about the teenagers of today and how they’re all into drink and drugs and snogging everything in sight. Well, I am leading the most dull dreary demure life imaginable. And it’s dead boring.
I feel sort of OUT of things. Like I don’t belong anywhere. Do you ever get that feeling? Of course you don’t. You’re a boy, you obviously don’t know what it’s like. You don’t ever have to worry about how you look and what you wear and whether you’re popular.
I don’t know why I’m writing all this rubbish. It’s just it’s late at night and I can’t sleep and I’m feeling so fed up and there’s no-one I can really talk to, so hard luck, Dan, I’m rabbiting on to you. I’ve always had my two best friends, Magda and Nadine, to talk to – but it’s sort of different now. I’m still friends with Magda but she’s such a jokey lively fun sort of girl she doesn’t always understand if I’m feeling depressed. And she’s got this boyfriend Greg who she’s seeing quite a lot of. She’s not THAT keen on him – but he’s OK. They were at this awful party but it was all right for them because they could just sit in a corner by themselves and snog. Magda initiated the embrace. She just pounced and Greg was powerless. But he didn’t seem to mind. Well, he wouldn’t. Magda is a pretty stunning girl.
Usually if I’m feeling low I confide in my other friend Nadine, who is a naturally gloomy sort of girl. Nadine and I have been best friends ever since we were tiny tots. We even used to dress alike and pretend we were twins (which was a little dopey as I’ve always been small and round with frizzy hair and Nadine is tall and thin with dead-straight hair, but we never let that deter US.) But now . . . she’s got this boyfriend Liam and he’s much older and Nadine thinks he’s so cool and yet I think he’s a creep because of the way he treats her, expecting her to do all sorts of stuff – well, YOU know – and Nadine told me all this and I told Magda and Magda told Nadine she was an idiot and Nadine stopped talking to us and she still won’t make it up and I’m dead worried about her. And I’m worried about my dad and my stepmother because right this minute they’re having an argument in their bedroom. I can hear them even though they’re whispering. I don’t know why they’re having all these rows. They used to get on so well together. In fact when Anna first came to live with us I used to hope they WOULD fight, I used to do my best to wind Anna up and kept telling tales on her to Dad. Not because I absolutely hated her. In fact, she’s OK, really. Well, most of the time. But she’s my stepmother and I never wanted any kind of substitute mum, because mine was the best in the world.
I’m not going to write about my mum because it might make me cry. ANYWAY, I’ve sort of got used to Anna now, it’s like we’re friends. Not GREAT friends, just OK, ordinary friends. She’s always been so calm and quiet and happy which is just as well because I can get ever so stroppy and moody sometimes and my little brother Eggs is a right pain most of the time as you know only too well and my dad is the worst of us all for going ballistic but Anna’s always known how to handle him, she’s always calmed him down. It’s always been like he’s this great growly dog and she knows just the way to give him a firm word and then a pat so he drools all over her like a puppy. But she’s lost the trick now. Or maybe she’s got fed up playing that game, I don’t know. She seems to want to be her own person more, especially now Eggs has started school. She’s tried to get back into doing design work, only there aren’t any jobs going at the moment, which is a bit depressing for her, and then she started this evening class and last Tuesday there was a great ding-dong because I was going round to Magda’s and Dad had promised to be home to look after Eggs so Anna could go to the class only something cropped up at m
y dad’s college and he didn’t get back in time and Anna couldn’t go to her class and when I got back I could see Anna had been crying. I can’t see why going to this evening class should matter so much to her. It’s Italian conversation and we’re never ever going to GO to Italy, just boring old wet Wales. (Do you REALLY like it ???) Mind you, I’d give anything to go to Italy because I want to see all the Art, and Magda says the ice-creams are mega-fantastic. And Italian guys are meant to be the sexiest guys in the world. I suppose Anna likes Art because she did go to Art School but she won’t touch ice-creams, she’s far too fussed about keeping her figure. And Anna isn’t into sexy Italian guys because she’s got Dad. Unless . . .
Oh, God, I’ve suddenly thought of something. Maybe Anna’s got another bloke. A sexy Italian. Or is she just using the evening class as an excuse, and she’s off meeting some mystery boyfriend somewhere? I’ve always wondered what on earth she sees in my dad as he’s so much older than her, and she’s pretty stunning to look at, and Dad’s got this pot belly though he sucks in his stomach whenever he looks in the mirror and insists all his flab is solid muscle, and he wears jeans and denim jackets like he’s young only he isn’t, and then there’s his awful beard and his long hair and those terrible sandals he wears in the summer. And it’s not as if he’s got the easiest personality—
I’ll say! Dad just got up to go to the bathroom and he spotted my light on and he said, What on earth are you up to, Ellie? and he’s switched my light off so I expect my writing’s going up and down all over the place and you won’t be able to read a thing but anyway it doesn’t really matter because I don’t think I’ll be sending you this letter anyway as it’s just a load of rambling rubbish and you’ll think I’ve gone completely nuts.
Love, Ellie
Dear Ellie
You’re not nuts at all. I’m so glad you sent your letter. It was the best letter I’ve ever had. It was as if I’ve seen through a little window right into your head. I’ve read it over and over. I carry it about with me. Well hidden, naturally.
I was just so amazed and bowled over to realize you can get so bothered and fed up and stuff. Me too, me too, me too! You are entirely WRONG about boys not knowing what it’s like, though. I don’t EVER feel like I belong anywhere. I feel as if I’ve been zapped here from my own special Planet Dan and now I’m plodding around totally alien territory and all the Earthlings are laughing at me. Absolutely wetting themselves. And even more now, because I’m reacting to alien air by erupting into loathsome pimples all over the place, yuck yuck yuck, and even though I anoint my spots with all sorts of junk Mum buys in Boots it doesn’t help much. My entire body seems to be going berserk. I am not going into details but girls have NO IDEA AT ALL how embarrassing it can be. I wish I could hide inside a speical spaceman suit with a fishbowl helmet and not have to make contact with anyone else ever. Except you.