‘Oh God, it’s Saturday night, the last thing I want to talk about is school!’ Alice glanced over at me as if to say, who are these freaks, then turned her attention back to Dora. ‘I hope you’ve been nice to my girl, Franny, otherwise we’re going to be having words.’
‘Alice…’ I hissed, because she was coming on really strong, like she was confronting a playground bully. Which, not even, but it was good to know that Alice would always have my back. ‘Sorry, we’re a bit pissed. We’ve already had way too much vodka and diet Red Bull.’
‘I could never drink anything that sweet,’ Dora said loftily, like she only drank decades-old malt whisky or red wine with a cheeky bouquet, when actually she was clutching a pint of cider and black, so she was no better than us. ‘Do you come here every Saturday?’
‘Not every Saturday,’ Alice replied truthfully, because some Saturdays we were broke and during winter we sometimes stayed in to watch X-Factor instead. ‘We often go into Blackpool.’
We had gone into Blackpool on a Saturday night twice. Once was to see Little Mix but that was two years ago and so in no way could impact on how cool we were now. The other time was for Alice’s cousin’s birthday and we’d gone to a really tacky nightclub that was like Kudos on steroids, and Alice had pulled a seventeen-year-old who turned out to be married and I’d fallen over on the dance floor and split my skirt.
‘Yeah? Well, I go to Manchester a lot,’ Dora said defensively, like we were handing out cool points. ‘Like all the time. We only moved to Merrycliffe because my dad’s in logistics.’
I didn’t know what logistics were but they didn’t seem like a good enough reason to move to Merrycliffe, but that wasn’t important. Not when there was a commotion to my left and I saw Louis walking towards me.
Well, I suppose he was really walking towards the backstage but he had to walk past me to get there so technically he was walking towards me. I was probably the only person who would describe Louis walking as a commotion but his long-limbed stride played havoc with my soul.
It wasn’t just me. Everyone turned to look at Louis as he walked past. It was as if he came with built-in back-lighting and a wind machine. He also had an entourage, which consisted of Thee Desperadettes; three girls who thought they were it even though one was wearing shiny, metallic black leggings with a white shirt, which didn’t even work as a look, and the three other guys who were in Thee Desperadoes. I never really paid much attention to Louis’s backing band but now I noticed that —’
‘Isn’t that the studio technician who glared at us all the way through our thrilling sewing machine tutorial?’ Paul asked me. I squinted at the guy’s back.
‘I think it is.’ I worked my brain really hard. ‘Hang on… maybe he was in Thee Desperadoes last year and then he wasn’t. He might have played the guitar or the bass guitar. Anyway, they had this other guy with glasses for a while but this one has been back for the last few shows. Hey! Do you think he’s so moody because he has to wear those blue overalls with Merrycliffe Technical College stamped on the back?’
‘I’d be in a bad mood if I had to wear them,’ Matthew decided, then Dora said that it would be really easy to customise them and make them look a lot less like a prison uniform and I said that you really had to be a girl to work a boiler suit and maybe do some retro Rosie the Riveter thing with it. By then Louis had finished his progress through the club, which took a long time because he knew everybody and had to stop and chat to people, and had gone backstage and I hadn’t had a chance to smile at him and hope he’d notice me.
Sometimes my crush on Louis felt almost debilitating. Like, going out and having a good time didn’t count unless I’d had some acknowledgement from Louis that he was aware of my existence. Still, the night was young.
‘… yeah, well, I wouldn’t be seen dead in a crappy boiler suit,’ Alice was saying forcefully. ‘What would be the point unless you were painting a house or something? Like, if you’re a girl and that’s what you want to wear then it’s because you can’t handle having girl parts.’ Alice looked at Dora, who was wearing some complicated Victorian-style get-up that was verging on goth, then down at herself and her girl parts, which were shown to their best advantage in clinging black Lycra. ‘I’m sure you get where I’m coming from.’
‘Yeah, everyone knows where you’re coming from,’ Dora sneered and Alice turned to me with a look that said clearly, ‘I hate this Steampunk saddo. If you ever become mates with her, we are so over.’
Alice never had to worry that anyone, especially not Dora, could come between us.
‘So, yeah, Alice, how about that thing that happened yesterday?’ I asked.
Alice didn’t miss a beat. ‘Yeah,’ she breathed, eyes wide. ‘That thing. I doubt the stains will ever come out in the wash. I mean, how could they?’
I nodded my head. ‘Right. Yeah. I know.’
Dora took the hint and turned to talk to Matthew and Paul, probably about how much she hated not just Alice but me too. That she hated me by association. I was, like, hate adjacent.
But I couldn’t worry about that now. I’d worry about it on Monday when I was having a pity party about my lack of college friends. Right now, there was a flurry of activity, people coming and going out of the backstage door. I craned my neck to get another glimpse of dirty blond hair…
‘Way to make it obvious, Franny,’ Alice snapped. ‘Be cool.’
I tried to be cool and I tried to listen as Alice told me about the Facetime chat she’d had with some guy who worked in the garage up the road but every time the door opened, my heart did this weird dive-y thing. I was practically vibrating.
It took a little while before I realised that I wasn’t practically vibrating and that it was my phone. I’d had five text messages from Mum’s mopey friend Linda, who was meant to be working her way through Mum’s perfectly balanced snack bowls at that very moment.
Franny. Had 2 cancel @ last min. Car battery flat. Mum v. upset. Not answering phone. Pls check on her.
I sighed long and deep. The four other texts all said the same thing but with increasing panic.
I sighed even longer and deeper. Then I texted Mum. R U OK? Heard Linda bailed. Text me. F x
Now my attention was torn between the door that led through to the tiny dressing room, which was opening and closing every few seconds, and my phone, which wasn’t doing anything. Meanwhile, Alice was still talking to me about the guy from the garage.
Mum. Pls text me! F x
I left it two minutes, in case Mum was in the loo, and then I stood up.
‘I need to call my mum,’ I told Alice, who sighed almost as long and deep as I had. ‘I’m going to the foyer. It’s quieter.’
‘Oh, Franny, no! She was fine when we left. I’m sure she’s all right.’ Her words lacked conviction and when I shook my head she gnawed on her lip anxiously.
As I clambered over Paul’s legs, the door opened again and one by one the four Desperadoes walked out, Louis last, his pace a lazy saunter like heading towards the stage was no big deal. My body strained in his direction, but my legs went in another.
‘Shall I come with you, Franny?’ Alice asked.
‘No. I’ll be back in five,’ I told her. ‘Make sure you get our usual spot.’
Our usual spot was almost down the front but to the right, so we didn’t look like totally tragic Desperadoes fans and also because Louis usually favoured the right side of the stage when he was strutting about.
‘You’re not going to miss anything,’ Alice said at the same moment that the music was replaced with an expectant hum from the PA system. ‘It’s not like they suddenly got good since we last saw them three weeks ago.’
‘Yeah. They’re awful aren’t they?’ Dora exclaimed. ‘I saw them at this all-dayer in Leeds and they pretty much got booed off stage.’
Alice clapped her hands together in delight. ‘How hilaire! I bet the boos just slid off Louis’s ego.’
I was desperate to call Mum, but I
still had time to glare at both of them. I could handle them not liking each other but I could not handle them bonding over how crap Thee Desperadoes were.
OK, they were terrible; everyone knew that. There was no need to go on about it.
‘Hello, Merrycliffe! Do you feel all right?’ The double doors swung shut on Louis’s enthusiastic greeting. It was really rather endearing the way he acted like playing The Wow at ten o’clock on a Saturday night was like playing Manchester Arena, I thought as I crouched down in the little gap between the cloakroom and the manager’s office and called Mum’s mobile. She didn’t pick up, so I called the landline.
I got stuck on an awful loop of mobile and landline, then worrying that she was trying to get through while I was blocking the line. I must have called both numbers ten times but she still didn’t pick up.
Then again, Mum wasn’t me. She wasn’t surgically attached to her mobile so sometimes she left it downstairs when she went to bed. And she often unplugged the phone in her room so it wouldn’t wake her up. Also, it wasn’t unprecedented for her to be in bed this early. In fact, it was entirely precedented but, but, but, but… she’d been so much better today.
I could hear Thee Desperadoes churning their way through their ‘ironic’ cover of Justin Bieber’s ‘Boyfriend’ and the easiest thing to do was to go back into the club, find Alice and nudge each other and delight in how awful the band were. The harder thing to do was to admit to myself that maybe Mum hadn’t been better today, I’d just wanted her to be, so I could go out.
All that OCD crap with her snack bowls… oh God, not again.
Have 2 go home, I texted Alice. Sorry. Luv U.
It took me seven minutes to run home. Seven more attempts to call Mum, who still wasn’t picking up. As I unlatched the gate and hurried up the path, I saw that the house was shrouded in darkness, which wasn’t that unusual but now, with Mum maintaining phone silence for no good reason, the darkness and even the long shadows I made as I fished for my keys filled me with an ominous dread.
Though really, was there any other kind of dread?
‘Mum!’ I called out as soon as I was through the door. There was no reply.
I raced up the stairs. Mum’s bedroom door was shut. I tapped on it gently. ‘It’s me! Can I come in?’
Still no reply. She could be asleep and if she was I didn’t want to wake her, but there was no way I could move until I knew she was all right.
‘Mum!’ This time my knocking was a little more enthusiastic, not that it did any good.
The softly, softly approach wasn’t working. I opened the door and switched on the main light.
There was a lump underneath the duvet and there was her phone on the nightstand. ‘Mum! Jesus! You could have answered your phone! I mean, even if you had it on silent, it must have been vibrating like crazy with all my calls that you didn’t take.’
I could cope with the misery. I could keep with the manic moods, but when she went silent it scared the breath right out of me.
‘Please tell me you’re all right.’
I approached the bed tentatively. My skin felt cold and clammy like it could creep right off my bones. I circled the bed, stretched out my hand, then snatched it back, unsure of where to touch her, what I might find.
And then I reached out and before I could retreat I was prodding a bit of her, a hipbone, I think. ‘Mum? Mum?’
It was absolutely terrifying but also a huge relief when she suddenly flung back the duvet. ‘What? What do you want?’ She sounded flat and empty, like every word was a superhuman effort.
‘Linda texted me and told me she’d cancelled and you hadn’t taken it very well. And then when I tried to contact you, you’d disappeared. We talked about this! I said… I told you that it wasn’t cool, that it made me feel like…’
Mum held up a hand as if she couldn’t take any more, though she didn’t say a word in her defence. Like, that was any surprise, but then she stirred herself into a sitting position so I could see that she’d gone to bed in the clothes she’d been wearing earlier. She looked at me but didn’t look at me, as if focusing her eyes would have taken too much out of her, then she sank back down with a bone-weary sigh.
‘Oh, just fuck off, Franny,’ she said in a tiny voice that cut like the sharpest razor.
7
I wasn’t surprised that Alice was in a mood with me about me bailing on Saturday night.
Not a huge mood, but on Sunday morning when we were having our usual post-Wow debrief, she said, ‘I’m really sorry that your mum is back to being menty but you have to promise never to leave me alone with that Cora girl ever again. She’s got a hell of a lot to say for someone who’s just a sad old goth.’
‘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 remi
nded 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!’