It turned out to be a pretty good lunch break in the end. After, I hurried back to the studio to wait for Francis but he was nowhere to be seen and he’d taken the overlocker away because apparently Sandra had bodged it up so badly that it needed to be mended off-site.
‘Will I have to pay for the repairs?’ she asked us. ‘Maybe I could wipe off the debt if I agreed to give Amir a blowie round the back of the bins?’
‘Oh God, can we all pretend you never said that out loud?’ Mattie begged and so of course she spent the rest of the afternoon describing all the ways she was going to work off the money for the overlocker repairs. I spent most of the afternoon bent double with laughter – when she described something particularly wretched involving the student chaplain and an oven glove, I really thought I was going to wet myself.
I was still quite shaky and giggly as I left college and just as I walked past the Staff Only door, Francis came through it.
‘There you are!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’ve wanted to talk to you all day. I was beginning to wonder if you were avoiding me. I’m so glad you’re back.’
‘Are you?’ he said in that old flat way of his.
‘Well, of course I am!’ I frowned. ‘Why wouldn’t I be? Come on!’
Francis shook back his hair so for once it wasn’t falling into his eyes and I could get the full glory of his furious face. Eyes narrowed, nostrils flared. Lips pinched. Not a sneer. I’d have welcomed a sneer. ‘Because now you haven’t got an excuse to talk to Louis. Jesus, just how low can you go?’
Wow! And no! And oh my goodness! ‘It wasn’t like that at all. I was worried when you suddenly weren’t around and —’
‘Why would you be worried about me?’ Francis demanded, like all the time we’d spent together recently meant nothing – that we weren’t really friends. Not that I wanted to be friends with Francis now. Not if he actually thought that I was the kind of person who’d use his dad’s illness as a great way to get my flirt on with Louis. Which I so hadn’t done.
‘I asked you to put in a good word for me with Louis but that was weeks ago,’ I reminded him. ‘I didn’t know you then and you didn’t know me and it’s clear you still don’t know anything about me, not if you think that’s the crappy way I roll.’
I could see him weighing up my words. Testing the heft of them. ‘I don’t like being used. That’s all.’
Francis was going through something terrible but that still didn’t give him the right to take it out on me. I was sick of people taking things out on me. ‘Yeah? And I don’t like people thinking the worst of me when I was just trying to be nice. I thought you were my mate. I told you about my mum.’ I hissed the last sentence at him and he took a step back because I think there was spittle involved. ‘Do you think I did that so you’d trust me enough to get me in good with Louis? Do you?’
‘Well, no, but…’
His hair was falling in his face again but from the sound of his voice, uncertain and stammery, Francis knew he’d made a big mistake, but he still wasn’t rushing to apologise.
‘Oh, just get over yourself,’ I snapped and I turned sharply enough that I clonked him hard with my bag, though that was a genuine accident, and stomped off as much as anyone can stomp when they’re wearing kitten heels and a very tight pencil skirt.
I seethed about it at work as I let out the seams on Mrs Ayers’s black party frock because she’d quit Weight Watchers yet again. I was still seething when I got home even though there was a mahoosive jar of chocolate pralines on my bedside table and when I tried to give Dad a tenner for them, he smacked my hand away.
Even having the good pizza for dinner couldn’t turn my ferocious frown upside down. ‘You’ll get stuck looking like that, kid,’ Dad said to me. ‘Come on, cheer up, it might never happen.’
That was the singularly most irritating thing you could say to someone who was already in a bad mood. ‘It has already happened,’ I said glumly. I had no appetite for even the good pizza and Mum was picking all the cheese off her slice with a look of barely concealed disgust and Dad sighed and said that he wasn’t going to waste money on the good pizza again if Mum and I weren’t going to eat it.
21
By the next morning, I’d devised a brilliant plan to avoid Francis until I was calm enough not to start shouting at him as soon as I saw him, and he’d seen the extreme error of his ways. It involved making sure I removed myself from any place where Francis was lurking. This meant that I wouldn’t be going to The Wow on Saturday night, but that didn’t seem like such a tragedy. Not when I also couldn’t bear to see Alice, whether or not she was all up on Louis.
My plan worked beautifully. I did see Francis talking to the Desperadettes outside the newsagent at Friday lunchtime but he didn’t see me – probably because I crossed over the road and hid behind a postbox until he’d gone. But as I was leaving college later I bumped into Lexy and Kirsten, who was with the other Desperadette.
‘This is the famous Franny B. She’s not at all stuck-up when you get to know her,’ Kirsten said as she introduced me. I’d never thought of myself as stuck-up but that was the problem when you tried to work a cool look; sometimes it backfired. ‘This is Bethany.’
Bethany looked doubtful but not unwelcoming. ‘So, word is that you’re not hanging out with that Alice girl any more?’
I shook my head. ‘Nope. I’m pretty much Alice-free these days,’ I said lightly. The more times I said it, the less it would feel like a betrayal.
‘Well, we have to go now but we’ll see you at The Wow tomorrow night,’ Lexy said firmly, like saying no wasn’t an option.
It was though. Sage was in Leeds with her dad. Dora and Mattie were doing something Steampunk-y, and Paul had already told me that he was never going to The Wow again because they played terrible music and after the Halloween party he’d got disco dirt on his leather jacket that he couldn’t shift.
‘There’s no law that I have to go to The Wow Club on a Saturday night anyway,’ I said to Raj the next day when he’d come into the shop to do the afternoon shift. ‘Lots of people don’t go to The Wow on a Saturday night. You don’t. What do you do instead?’
‘Oh, I be out with my honeys,’ he muttered vaguely.
‘No, seriously, what do you do on a Saturday night? You don’t have a crew and I can’t see your dad letting you borrow the van so you can go out with your alleged honeys.’ Raj was the only person I knew whose life was more boring than mine.
‘Just drop it, Franny. I will totally bust a cap in your ass for realz this time,’ he warned me.
‘Yeah, yeah. Like, you’re really packing heat.’ I looked up from the skirt I was working on. ‘You stay in, don’t you? No big deal. I’m going to stay in tonight too. Like I said, The Wow is so over.’
‘You’re only saying The Wow is over because you don’t want to turn up on your own and have Alice think that you’re lame and friendless without her,’ Raj summed up smugly, and he was half right. I also didn’t want to turn up on my own and have Francis think the same thing.
‘Well, it’s not like Alice has a whole bunch of brand new friends,’ I muttered. ‘She hasn’t even got a new boyfriend so she’s just as lame and friendless as me.’
I could have sworn Raj’s ears pricked up. ‘Bitch be single, then?’
‘Yes, Alice is currently between partners.’ I could hear Shuv’s disapproving voice in my head. ‘Don’t call girls bitches. It’s demeaning.’
Raj pretended to choke. ‘Yo! You’ve called her a bitch yourself. Heard it with my own ears.’
I gave him a pitying look. ‘That’s because she was being a bitch. It’s completely different.’
‘Girl, you be knowing shit about sexual politics.’
I had no comeback and a sneaking suspicion that Raj might be right, so I threw my pincushion at him. He laughed, caught it with one hand and promptly stabbed himself with a pin, which made me laugh.
It was a regular laughfest.
I went back to my hemm
ing and Raj went back to being a human beatbox, which was really irritating until he suddenly stopped.
‘So, if you wanted to go to The Wow, I’ll come with you. Not on a date,’ he added hurriedly, as I put down the skirt to stare at him in surprise. ‘As mates. So you don’t have to stay at home on your own on Saturday night.’
And so it was that Raj came to my house to pick me up later that evening. It was weird. I’ve known Raj for ever. We go back as far as me and Alice go back. I know pretty much everything about him. God, he even farts in front of me and I’ve blown my nose in front of him when I’ve had a cold and my snot was loud and really green.
Raj was Raj but when I heard him ring the doorbell, my stomach hurled itself from one side of my body to the other and I had to do a complete high-speed circuit of the kitchen until I felt calm enough to open the door.
‘You ready then?’ he grunted at me, though normally he told me that I was looking fly or super fine or sick.
I think he was trying to establish that we were not going on a date and that to tell me that I looked nice in my sixties-inspired Op Art-print minidress would be really date-like. ‘I’m ready,’ I said, grabbing the leather jacket I’d borrowed off Mattie for the weekend.
Mum and Dad had gone out on what they did call a date, though I couldn’t see anything romantic about sitting in the Dockers’ Arms watching middle-aged men with huge bellies play darts, so I didn’t have any grief about the shortness of my skirt or what time my curfew was. They also weren’t here to see Raj pick me up so they could spend the rest of the week trying to find out if he was my boyfriend.
Up until now they’d been quite relieved I hadn’t shown any interest in boys. (Like I would ever admit it to them anyway.) I wanted to keep it that way.
As we set off along the seafront, I was also hugely grateful that Raj was wearing an outfit that wasn’t too likely to show me up: sand-coloured drop-crotch skinnies, a large white, long-sleeved T-shirt and an unbuttoned grey short-sleeved shirt over that with Nike high-tops and, thank God, no baseball cap. I’d seen him look a lot worse. ‘So, shall we head to the offy first?’
‘Not for me.’ Raj was such a pussy. ‘I have to write a really long essay tomorrow so I can’t have any alcohol.’
‘But you don’t mind if I have some?’
Raj said he didn’t and he gallantly turned his back when we came to the seclusion of a wind shelter and I hiked up my dress so I could shove a quarter bottle of off-brand vodka down my tights. He didn’t say a word but he looked rather scared.
‘I’m not going to get drunk and jump you,’ I told him as we joined the back of the very short queue outside The Wow. ‘Mates, remember? Mates don’t jump their mates. Urgh. It would be like snogging… actually I don’t even want to think about what snogging you would be like.’
‘Right back at you,’ Raj snapped. ‘Anyway, I don’t snog drunk girls. I want my honeys to remember every touch they get from the Rajmeister.’
‘The Rajmeister!’ I snorted happily and we were back in the friendzone, where we spent most of the time insulting each other.
Despite his rubbish gangsta routine, there had been a time when Raj had come to The Wow every week and he knew the routine. He went to the bar to get me a pint of diet Coke so I could pour my vodka into it and I headed for my usual table, safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t on my own like a total loser but waiting for my friend to come back from the bar.
But when I got to my table, there was Alice on her own like a total loser. My body gave this quick jerk, like it was pleased to see her. After all it had been over two weeks since I’d last seen Alice and that was the longest we’d ever been apart, unless you counted the summer holidays when the Jenkinses went to Ibiza for three weeks.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. She looked at me nervously like she wasn’t sure whether I was going to smack her.
I wasn’t but I was having trouble with the sight of Alice in front of me looking as blonde and beautiful as ever, when in my head she’d become a blowsy, brassy tart with an evil glint in her eyes.
I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to her so I stood there with my arms folded and put on my most epic bitchface like I wasn’t even going to waste any words on her.
‘So your hair’s looking good,’ she said desperately, then shuddered when she remembered that she didn’t get to pass judgement on my hair. I was learning to love my hair; I’d resigned myself to having a Jean Seberg cut rather than a messy Edie do, but that didn’t make what Alice did all right.
‘I get the table,’ I said, sitting down. ‘You were here last week, even though you were meant to be grounded, and you trashed my hair, so I get the table.’
‘Look, Franny, we’re too good together to not be mates,’ Alice said earnestly, shifting round on the seat to look at me. ‘I miss you.’
‘You miss me because I was your one friend and without me, you’ve no one. You don’t miss me for me,’ I pointed out. I thought I was over this. Anyway, I was fine without her, I had new friends, but I could hear the throb in my throat before I even felt it. ‘You’re just used to having me around. You don’t value me otherwise you wouldn’t have done what you did…’
‘I’ve apologised a hundred times. Well, maybe not a hundred, but I will if you want me to,’ Alice said. ‘I’m friends with you because you’re you. You’re part of who I am, Franny, even if you can be a really moody bitch.’ I stiffened again and she sighed. ‘You’re still too angry for me to get away with calling you a moody bitch, right?’
‘Right,’ I agreed, but my heart wasn’t in it. It was exhausting being this angry with her when she was sitting there wearing her stretchy tight black Lipsy dress, which she always put on when she needed some extra oomph because she was feeling a bit crap. ‘It just feels like I couldn’t have been that important to you; that you didn’t mind throwing me away if it meant that it got you Louis.’
When Alice took my hand I didn’t stiffen. ‘Oh, Louis,’ she said with an eyeroll. ‘Look, it’s dumb to let him come between us and I’d rather have you than have hi —’
‘Yo, Franny B, why you holding hands with someone who isn’t me?’ I looked up to see Raj standing there with my pint of diet Coke. ‘And why are you holding hands with her when we both agreed she is no good?’
I loved Raj but the Rajmeister really was a dick. ‘Alice and I are in the middle of maybe, just maybe, becoming friends again, so why don’t you sit down and then this would be a great time for you and Alice to become friends again too,’ I said. I felt better than I had done in days because finally all the pieces were slotting together.
‘No, we’re not,’ Alice spat, snatching her hand away from mine so suddenly that she scratched me. ‘You and I are not becoming friends again, not when you’re here with him. How could you, Franny?’
‘You two broke up ages ago.’ Raj was giving Alice evils just as hard as she was giving him evils but when I spoke, they both turned to glare at me. ‘Enough time has passed now that you both need to just get over it and then the three of us can hang out like we used to.’
‘Why is everything always about you?’ Alice cried. ‘I was going to let you have Louis, but now you pull this crap on me, you can just forget it.’
‘What crap?’
‘Bringing him here. Sitting at our table with him. Rubbing my nose in it.’
‘Just ’cause you don’t want me doesn’t mean there aren’t other ladies begging me to give them some touch,’ Raj said and he did some weird thing with his hands, which I guess would have meant something if I spoke fluent ’hood. ‘Why you be jealous ’cause Franny wants to get wit’ me?’
‘Whatever.’ I turned to Alice because she couldn’t be buying this or even care because Raj was simply another one of her conquests. She got up and shoved me out of the way to make her escape, so apparently she was buying it and she did care. ‘Oh, come on, Alice. Really?’
‘No, I won’t come on. This is to get me back because of your hair, isn
’t it? I wish I’d taken the fucking clippers to it now, bitch. If you thought it was on with me and Louis before, then you don’t even know what on is.’
She was gone, slamming past me with an elbow to my shoulder, then knocking into Raj so hard that he spilt the diet Coke. ‘Bitch be tripping out,’ he muttered, sitting down. Despite all the drama, he didn’t seem that put out. He didn’t even seem to mind that he had a brown stain on his white T-shirt.
‘She doesn’t just act like a bitch, she is a bitch,’ I decided. ‘Why the hell did you say I wanted to get with you? Like that would ever, ever happen!’
Raj wriggled his shoulders like he was trying to dislodge a cat clinging to his back. ‘Yeah, but she doesn’t know that. Is time she realised she doesn’t own all the hotness. I mean, you’re not hot HOT, Franny, but I bet plenty of brothers would want to get breezy with you.’