‘He just doesn’t look like the sharpest pencil in the box,’ Sage said, flicking a glance in the direction of Louis, who was attempting to balance a bottle of lager on his nose. He was wearing a pair of flashing red devil horns but even they couldn’t eclipse his beauty.
‘He has a sense of humour, what’s wrong with that?’
‘I don’t think it’s his brains that Franny’s interested in,’ Matthew said drily and then we had one of those conversations about fashion (specifically how we all agreed that Lady Gaga wasn’t a style icon because she wore costumes rather than clothes) that thrilled me until, unbelievably, the DJ put on a Velvet Underground song, ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’, and the five of us took to the dance floor.
I danced with Mattie because we were a matched pair and we danced in character. He stood there stock still with his shades on and I flailed my arms and shimmied the way I’d seen Edie dance on clips I’d found on YouTube. It wasn’t that different to how I usually danced.
It seemed as if everyone in the club were suddenly gathered round the five of us, not dancing, just staring. But the really weird thing was that I didn’t care. It wasn’t just Alice and me against the world. I had four people who had my back. I was part of a gang. I was part of a larger something. It was a relief not to have to rely on only one other person.
It was also a relief that I didn’t have to make my own fun while Alice copped off with someone she wouldn’t even acknowledge a week later.
Not that any of us were likely to cop off. Matthew and Paul could hardly start snogging; Merrycliffe wasn’t ready for that. Sage had already said that every lad in the place was a loser compared to the lads in Leeds and there was no one at all like Dora. That left me. There was only one person I wanted to cop off with and though he was no longer trying to balance a bottle of lager on his nose, Louis was hemmed in by an adoring throng of Desperadettes. They never left him alone for a minute.
‘I need to adjust my eyelashes,’ I said, when the DJ started playing Coldplay and we all decided as one to go back to our table. ‘I think one’s coming untethered.’
The Wow Ladies bathroom was its usual grotty self. The floor was wet and covered in grimy loo roll. You had to hold your breath so you didn’t breathe in the stench of toilet, twenty different body sprays and something really fetid and undead. There was a massive queue for the one loo out of three that a) flushed and b) had a lock on the door.
Mouth clenched shut, I fixed my eyelash and hurried out, gulping in huge lungfuls of air as soon as I opened the door.
‘Hey, Franny B, where’s the fire?’ Louis asked as I barrelled right into him.
‘Oh, sorry,’ I gasped. The shock and lack of oxygen became too much and I started coughing. Technically, it was more like a choking fit.
‘You all right?’ Louis patted my back with so much enthusiasm that for one terrible moment I thought I’d throw up on his pointy-toed, Cuban-heeled boots. I didn’t, but only because one of Thee Desperadettes suddenly thrust a bottle of water at me.
I was red and my mascara and liquid eyeliner were running as I glugged down the water, which always tasted of dry ice in The Wow. ‘Er, thanks.’
I didn’t know any of Thee Desperadettes’ names but she had red hair and like most of the girls in The Wow was wearing black leggings and top, cat’s ears and had painted whiskers on her face. She looked me up and down. ‘You and your mates, don’t know who you’ve come as but you look really cool.’ She was right up in my face. ‘Two pairs of eyelashes. Aces!’
‘They hurt like you wouldn’t believe,’ I confessed, because what with the itchy eyelash glue and the strain of keeping my eyes open, it was all I could do not to rip them off.
‘Kirsten, you must know Kirsten,’ she gestured towards a blonde girl at the bar. ‘The only time she wore false lashes, it turned out she was allergic to the glue and her eyes swelled up like golfballs.’
‘That sounds horrific,’ I said in alarm. Maybe the itch wasn’t due to the eyelash glue. ‘Do my eyeballs look normal-sized to you?’
She laughed. ‘They look fine. You’re Franny, right? Friend of that Alice?’
I stiffened at the mention of Alice’s name. ‘I suppose,’ I said unenthusiastically.
‘So do you think you’ll be making more of those sequinned T-shirts that you made last year? My sister got one.’
Lexy was the older sister of a girl in the year below me at school who’d asked me to spell out Hot Bitch in sequins on one of the American Apparel T’s I’d bought in a job lot on eBay. Her mum had pitched a fit and forbidden her from wearing it outside the house. I still had loads of T’s stuffed in a box so we swapped deets and Lexy said she’d think about what she wanted written on her shirt.
Lexy was doing the art foundation course at college and she casually invited me to hang with her and the other Desperadettes (though she called them ‘my mates’) during breaktime. ‘Been meaning to say hello to you at college,’ Lexy told me. Alice and I had always imagined that Thee Desperadettes were really stuck-up but Lexy wasn’t a bit like that. She looked back towards her friends and it was my lucky night because Louis was heading our way again. ‘I’d better go to the bar before I get shouted at for not getting my round in. Love your hair, by the way. Like Rihanna’s when she cut it all off.’
‘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 smil
e. 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. Fran
cis 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.