Girls in Tears (5 page)

when they quarrel with their friends

I sniff fiercely, not wanting to wipe my eyes while Nadine and Magda can still see me.

Nadine and Magda. There’s no sound of footsteps behind me, no arm round my waist, no word in my ear. Magda’s chosen to stay with Nadine.
They’re
the best friends now. Yet Nadine’s always been my friend, back since we were in nursery school together. When we went to Anderson High School I was the one who made friends with Magda. Nadine didn’t like her much for ages. I always had to negotiate between them, piggy-in-the-middle.

Now I’m just Piggy.

Fat Piggy.

I can’t bear it. How can she be so mean? She
knows
how self-conscious I am about the way I look. She knows I was almost anorexic last term. Does she want me to regress right back and start dieting obsessively all over again?

I’m not going to let her get to me. I’m not going to take it to heart.

But as I sit stiffly by myself all afternoon at school I feel as if Nadine has written FAT in big block capitals all over my back. It hurts so. Literally. I have to keep rubbing it. And my stomach starts hurting too. It’s bigger than ever, a hateful huge watermelon stretching my skirt. I pummel it under my desk. The pain is getting worse. It’s grimly familiar now, that sick squeezing feeling. I’m starting my period.

I need to charge home the second the bell goes for the end of school. I hesitate just for a moment, wondering whether Nadine might look in my direction. She’s been studiedly ignoring me ever since lunch, even though we sit so near each other. But she’s calmly packing her bag, chatting to Magda. Magda glances round at me, looking anxious. She smiles at me—but she stays by Nadine’s side.

Well, I’m not going to hang around hoping they’ll make friends with me. I can’t, anyway. I need to get to the bathroom at home to sort myself out. I give the back of my skirt one quick check and rush off.

“Ellie? Wait!” Magda calls. And then she adds, “Don’t be so childish!”

How dare she! I’m not being childish in the slightest. I’m the one acting like a responsible grown-up. Nadine is the silly idiot, letting a total stranger send her stupid messages. He could be
anyone
. Ellis sounds a deeply suspect name for a start. Maybe he really
is
a creepy pervert.

I’m furious with Nadine, but of course I still love her to bits underneath. I don’t want her to get into serious trouble. She’s made it plain she won’t listen to me. So maybe I should tell someone? Nadine’s mum or dad? No, I
can’t
. Nadine would kill me. She and Magda would never talk to me ever again.

“Ellie! Hey, Ellie!”

Oh God, it’s Russell standing by the school gate. I very nearly walk straight past him. “Oh, Russell, sorry!”

“You were deep in thought! Thinking about me, eh?”

“Well, I was actually worrying about Nadine because—”

“Because you’re obsessed with her and Magda—I know,” says Russell irritably. “I don’t know why you bother seeing me sometimes. You’d be far happier going round in your girly threesome all the time.”

“We’ve had a row, if you must know,” I say. “Listen, I’m very worried about Nadine, she’s gone completely crazy and—”

“She
is
crazy. Look, forget her, forget Magda. Come back to my place and we’ll have a lovely time, just the two of us.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

I
can’t
tell him that I need to be in my own bathroom as soon as possible. I know you should be able to talk to your boyfriend about anything. We
do
talk about some stuff. But not that. I’d feel so embarrassed.

“I—I don’t feel very well,” I say, truthfully enough. “I just want to go home and lie down.”

“Come and lie down with me instead,” says Russell.

“Oh, sure,” I say.

“I’ll be sweet to you. I’ll massage your forehead—and your shoulders—and anywhere else we can think of. . . .”

“Leave it out!” I wish he wouldn’t be quite so insistent all the time. I love it that he cares about me and loves me, but just recently all he seems to want to do is see how far he can go with me. I love the things we do together, but sometimes I wish he’d relate more to me as Ellie the
person,
not Ellie the body.

My body is letting me down big-time. My stomach squeezes. I feel an alarming dampness. “I’m sorry, Russell, I really have to go home
now,
” I say, and I start running.

I’m in a right state when I eventually make it home. Anna’s left a note to say she’s gone up to town to see the buyer of a big chain store who’s interested in some special bargain children’s knitwear, designed by Anna but produced on a massive scale.

“It’ll mean heaps more work if it comes off, so I’m not sure I’ll say yes,” Anna’s scribbled to me. “You know what the Dad situation is like.”

“Definitely say yes, Anna,” I mutter. “Never you mind Dad.”

I read on. Oh God. Eggs has gone to tea with Natasha, Nadine’s little sister.

“I hope to be back around sixish, but if I’m delayed can you be an angel and go and collect Eggs, Ellie?” Anna writes.

Let’s hope she’s
not
delayed. I don’t want to go anywhere near Nadine’s, not now.

It’s lovely to have the house to myself just for once. I have a long hot bath, lying back under the bubbles and stroking my poor sore swollen tummy.

FAT.

No!
I’m not going to think about Nadine. Or Magda. Or Dad. Or Anna and Eggs. Or even Russell. I’m going to think about me.

I towel myself dry, put on my comfy old dungarees and a stripy sweatshirt and then sit cross-legged on my bed drawing Myrtle Mouse. She has any number of scary adventures. She even runs away to London and becomes an Underground mouse, lurking in train tunnels and diving for cover every time the terrifying tube roars past. Her beautiful blue fur turns sooty black and she loses the tip of her tail when she only just manages to scamper clear of a maintenance man’s big boot.

I make sure she has a happy ending, though. A little girl bribes her up onto the platform with a cheese sandwich, wraps her grimy little body in a tissue and then pops her in her pocket. Myrtle is taken home and tenderly cleaned up and cared for and given a splendid new home. It’s another doll’s house, but this time it’s her very own Myrtle Mansion, with color-coordinated blue willow–pattern wallpaper in the kitchen and blue roses in the living room and midnight blue with tiny silver stars in the bedroom.

When I finish I gently stroke little Myrtle’s crayon head as she snuggles under her dark blue duvet in the very last picture. Then I find a big envelope and address it. I write a note explaining that I don’t have a competition form and I know I’m a bit late entering anyway, but can they please have a look at the enclosed all the same.

Anna isn’t back by six. There’s no sign of Dad, either. So I have to be the responsible big sister.

I post my Myrtle drawings on my way round to Nadine’s. I feel stupidly nervous as I walk up the neat gravel path to her front door. My footsteps go crunch crunch crunch. My stomach goes clench clench clench.

Nadine’s mum answers the door, looking a little distracted. There are shrieks of laughter coming from the kitchen—very youthful high-pitched laughter.

“Oh, it’s you, Eleanor. Come in, dear. I was expecting your mother.”

“Yes, sorry, she’s tied up with some work thing.”

“Well, I do hope you’ve come to collect your brother, dear. He’s getting a little overexcited. Not really a good idea so near bedtime. He tipped his orange juice all down himself so I had to change his clothes. I was going to dress him in Natasha’s jeans and a jersey but I’m afraid he had other ideas.”

Right on cue Eggs dashes out of the kitchen, chased by Natasha.
She
is wearing her jeans, with her long hair crammed under a baseball cap. She’s wearing Eggs’s clompy boys’ shoes. Oh God. Eggs is wearing Natasha’s flounciest pink party frock. He’s got various pink slides stuck in his short hair, bangles up and down his arms, and he’s shuffling in high heels with diamanté bows.

“Hi, Ellie-Belly! I’m your sister Eggerina, and this is my boyfriend, Nat,” Eggs squeaks in a silly falsetto voice.

My brother, mini-transvestite.

“Get that dress off this minute, Eggs. You’ll muck it up,” I say. “Come on, we’ve got to go home.”

Eggs takes no notice whatsoever. He barges past with a joyous whoop and starts doing a can-can, staggering in his high heels. Natasha shrieks with laughter as he shows all of us he’s even appropriated her frilly knickers.

“Leave him to me,” says Nadine’s mother wearily. “You go and talk to Nadine. She’s in the study working on the computer. She’s finding the Internet so useful for her homework nowadays.”

I’ll bet. I don’t want to go and see her but neither do I want to let her mum know we’re not speaking. I shuffle toward the study. Nadine is crouched in front of the computer screen, smirking at some e-mail message. She jumps in alarm when I come into the room, quickly closing down everything on the screen—and then she sees it’s just me. We look at each other. We both go pink.

“Ellie?”

“Nadine?”

There’s a little pause. What’s the matter with us? We’re best friends, always have been, always will be.

“It’s your little fat friend,” I say shakily.

“Oh, El, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” I say.

We both rush at each other and hug.

“We are such nuts,” I say.

“I know, I know. Ellie, I didn’t
mean
it.”

“And I didn’t mean to come on all pious and po-faced about—you know. . . .” I wave at the blank computer screen.

“I know it’s a bit risky. I know you do get some nuts online. But Ellis is so different, Ellie. He’s just . . . oh, like the guy of my dreams. He says such amazing things. And he wants to know all about me. He doesn’t go on and on about himself the way Liam did. He doesn’t try to kid me he’s Mr. Cool. He confides all sorts of stuff about himself, how he’s shy and scared of all kinds of things. He says if we ever met he’d probably be struck dumb and unable to think of a thing to say.”

“You’re not
going
to meet him, are you?” I ask, alarm bells ringing.

“No, no, of course not,” Nadine says quickly. “Don’t look so worried, Ellie, He’s lovely, he really is. Look, I’ll show you.”

She switches her computer back on and finds me some of his early messages. And he does sound lovely. He chats for ages about
Xanadu
and what fantasy means to him and how he’s read
The Lord of the
Rings
five whole times but it’s such a
boy
book, and how
Xanadu
is great because it’s all about girls and he loves girls. He goes on about how he’d always had this dream girl in his head from when he was about twelve, a strange, shy gothic girl he could share everything with. He doesn’t want to be forward or rush things but he feels Nadine is the girl, only better, because she’s so beautiful, much prettier than the actress who plays Xanadu in the TV series. . . .

“Then he goes into some really personal stuff. I’m not showing you, Ellie. I haven’t even shown Magda some of it.”

“Oh come
on,
Nad, please!”

So she shows me. I read it, my heart thumping. There’s a part of me that still thinks this is crazy. There’s a complete stranger writing all sorts of intimate things to Nadine when she’s only fourteen, for God’s sake. But he
does
write beautifully. It’s not sleazy at all, it’s tender and exciting and romantic. It’s the sort of things I wish wish wish Russell would say to me.

when their boyfriends don’t understand

Oh, Ellie, I love you.”

Kisses.

“Oh, Ellie, I love you.”

More kisses.

“Oh, Ellie, I love you. Please.”

More than kisses.

“Oh, Ellie, I love you. Please, please, please.” Struggles. Sulks. Another kiss. Sometimes it’s a kiss goodnight. Sometimes we start the whole routine all over again. It’s starting to get a bit . . . boring.

No it’s not! What’s the matter with me? I
love
Russell. He’s the only boy in the world for me. I wear his ring all the time. It’s just that we’ve got into this same little routine every time we see each other. Russell always always always says the same things.

I can’t help wishing he’d be as inventive as Nadine’s Ellis. I make up an entire alternative scenario in my head, with Russell saying and indeed doing the most delightful and unexpected things. Our own undignified little snogging sessions seem so pathetic by comparison. No, not
pathetic
. There I go again, picking holes, being so fussy. It’s not as if
I’m
all that great at being romantic and making things wonderful for Russell. There’s one thing he keeps begging me to do and I
nearly
do it, but then I can’t help getting a fit of the giggles. Russell gets really annoyed with me, which only makes me splutter more.

“Do you always have to be so giggly, Ellie?” he asks, exasperated.

“Well, I’m a girl. All girls giggle. It goes with the territory.”

“Yeah, but some girls know when it’s appropriate to be a bit
serious,
” says Russell.

“Then why don’t you go off with some of these girls, then?” I say, starting to get in a huff.

“You know you’re the only girl in the whole world for me,” Russell says.

I calm down and kiss him lovingly. He can still be so sweet a lot of the time. It’s just that I wish he wasn’t
always
trying to push me into doing stuff I don’t want to. Well, sometimes I want to do it as much as him, of course I do, but I don’t somehow feel
ready
for that kind of relationship.

“Jeff’s girlfriend, Julie, lets him. And Jamie and Big Mac have done it with heaps of girls.”

“So they say,” I sigh irritably. “Do you discuss
our
love life with all your mates in Year Eleven?”

“No!” says Russell, though he’s gone a little pink. “Anyway, I know for a fact you tell Magda and Nadine everything so don’t be such a hypocrite.”

“I don’t tell them. Well, not much,” I say. “Nowhere near as much as they tell me. You should hear some of the things Nadine’s Ellis says to her!”

“What about Magda? Who’s she seeing at the moment?”

“Well, no one really. She was wondering whether to get back with Greg, but now she thinks he’s insensitive. Her hamster had this terribly traumatic terminal accident and Greg wanted to give her little new baby hamsters Toffee and Mallow straightaway, but Magda says she’s still mourning and she can’t bear to get involved with any other hamsters at the moment. She doesn’t really want to get involved with Greg
either
.”

“Oh, great,” says Russell. “Because Big Mac’s having a big do for his birthday and most of the guys in my class are coming, right, but there’s a distinct shortage of girls.”

“Magda’s not
that
sort of girl,” I say fiercely. “I know what your mate Big Mac is like.”

“No no, this is a proper party, dead respectable, parents in the background, I swear. I promised Big Mac we’d go. That’s OK, isn’t it?”

“Well, you could have asked first. You never tell me things, Russell. Like that art competition—”

“Don’t nag, Ellie! OK, OK, point taken. I’m sorry, I should have told you sooner. Still, there’ll be heaps more competitions.”

“But you’re not to appropriate my Ellie Elephant ever again,” I say, tapping him on the nose.

“She’s not
your
elephant. Anyone can draw a flipping elephant.”

“Not a cute girl one with a twisty trunk and painted toenails. She’s Ellie Elephant. My invention.” I tap a little harder.

“Ouch! Stop it, missy,” says Russell, grabbing me by the wrists.

We play at wrestling, mucking about at first— but then Russell starts to get serious again.

“Oh, Ellie, I love you. Please.”

“Russell! You’ve got a one-track mind.”

“Look, if I win the competition I’ll share the prize with you, seeing as you insist you invented the silly little elephant.”

This is sweet and generous of him. Though I still find it annoying. And I don’t want this wrestling match to develop.

“Stop it, Russell. I’ve got to go now. I’ve got to get to the shops before they shut.”

“You’d sooner go boring old shopping than be with me?” Russell says, sounding peeved.

“I’m not shopping for me. It’s food shopping for all the family.”

I told Anna at breakfast I’d go to Waitrose for her as she was tied up with so much work. I said it pointedly in front of Dad. I knew it would get to him.

“Look, we’ll all go on Sunday,” Dad said. “Stop looking at me like that, Ellie. You don’t have to play the martyr.”

It wouldn’t work if we all went shopping on Sunday as a family. We’re not
acting
like a family now. Dad and Anna are barely speaking. Dad stays out late most evenings. Anna works solidly. She has a permanent little worry frown on her forehead and dark circles under her eyes. Eggs is forever whining, even though Anna keeps buying him little treats to keep him happy. He’s started to cling to Anna like a baby. I know Anna’s really worried about him. I don’t want her to have to worry about me, too.

I do all the shopping, even though it’s more boring and bothersome than I thought. I can’t find half the stuff. I have to trail round every single aisle. I stand in the checkout queue for ages. There’s just one woman in front of me now. I start getting all the stuff out of the trolley and then sneeze. I fumble in my pocket for a tissue. Oh no.
Tissues
. I forgot all about them.

I charge back for them, my trolley careering wildly on its wobbly wheels, and bash right into this tall blond guy in a white hat and overall filling up the fridge with cartons of milk. He drops a carton and we both hold our breath—but it doesn’t split or spill.

“So we don’t have to cry over spilt milk,” I say, wondering why he’s grinning at me in such a familiar way. And then I realize. He’s not just
any
tall blond guy. He’s my Mr. Dream Man, the boy I bump into on the way to school. Literally. And now I’ve done it again. “I’m so
sorry
! Honestly, I don’t always bash into people.”

“Only when I’m around!”

“I didn’t realize you worked here.”

“Well, I can’t really feel like Joe Cool in this gear,” he says, tipping his funny hygiene hat into a rakish angle. “But it’s an OK job just for now. I’m having a gap year before starting at university.”

“I’m definitely going to have a gap year too,” I say. “My girlfriends and I have got it all worked out. Six months’ work and then six months’ traveling . . .”

I want to go somewhere wonderful, like Australia. Nadine fancies somewhere more exotic, like India. Magda wants to hire a car and drive all over America—well, if she’s passed her driving test.

I tell him all this and he listens politely, but you can tell he’s really thinking, Yeah, well,
maybe
. He tells me about his month Euro-railing, staying at campsites. I don’t think much of camping. We always used to go camping in Wales before we got the cottage. It was so damp and so dreary and ants got in my sleeping bag and I’m pretty certain a mouse ran over my face in the night. It
could
just have been my own hair but I screamed my head off anyway.

I’m telling Mr. Dream Man all about it and he’s laughing. Then I look up and there’s
Russell
standing staring at us, even though we said goodbye half an hour ago.

“Russell! What are you doing here?”

“Don’t worry. Don’t let me interrupt,” he says in a surly tone.

“I’d better get back to work anyway,” Mr. Dream Man says quickly. He leans his head close to me. “Is he the boyfriend? He’s
nice
.”

Russell isn’t acting a
bit
nice. He’s marching off so quickly I have to gallop after him, my trolley veering wildly left and right so that little old ladies and mums with toddlers have to leap for their lives.

“Russell, wait, will you!” I bellow in frustration. “What are you doing here?”

“I felt mean leaving you to do all this shopping. I thought the least I could do was come and find you and help you carry it. I had no idea
why
you suddenly had this urgent desire to act like the Wonder Woman of Waitrose.”

“What?” I blink at him.

“Don’t come the wide-eyed innocent with me, Ellie! I had no idea you had a thing going with that shelf-stacker guy in the silly hat.”

I burst out laughing, which makes Russell even more furious. “Oh, Russell, listen. I hardly know him.”

“Oh yeah? The way he was looking at you made me feel sick. He obviously fancies you like mad.”

“The one thing I
do
know about him is he’s gay.” Now it’s Russell’s turn to stand with his mouth open. “What?”

“He’s gay, Russell. And if he fancies anyone, it’s you. He said he thought you looked very
nice
. He’s obviously smitten.”

Russell is going very pink. “Right. Well. That’s cool. Though I hope you made it plain you’re my girlfriend.”

“You were acting like you’re really jealous,” I say.

“Nah, of course I wasn’t. I just thought you were making a monkey out of me.”

“But I wasn’t.”

“That’s right.”

“So we’re still friends?”

“We’re more than friends, silly,” says Russell, and he takes my hand and twists the ring lovingly on my finger.

He helps me carry the shopping all the way home. Anna is very grateful to us both. Russell’s having a cup of tea with us when Dad comes home, early for the first time in ages. He’s carrying a huge box of Sainsbury’s groceries.

“Dad!
I
went to Waitrose,” I say.

“Well, we won’t run short of butter and tissues for a while now,” says Dad.

“Thank you for getting all the stuff, anyway,” says Anna, fumbling in her handbag. “How much did it come to? I’ll pay you out of the housekeeping purse.”

“For God’s sake, I can buy a few groceries. I can still earn a bob or two. Not as much as you, perhaps, but enough,” Dad says sharply.

It’s hopeless. I thought they might just make it up now but they seem to be back to hating each other, though they have to be icily polite in front of Russell. I help Anna unpack the second lot of stuff, opening up Dad’s box of tissues when I sneeze again. I do hope I’m not going down with Eggs’s cold. He is over the sniffles and now coughs all over everywhere instead.

Dad and Russell make slightly uneasy small talk—uneasier still when Russell starts on about Cynthia rushing out to buy an Anna Allard designer sweater. Dad’s conversation dwindles to the odd grunt. Russell realizes he’s on quicksand and hauls himself to safety by talking about the art competition. He has the nerve to boast about his elephant cartoons.

“
My
elephant,” I mutter.

Russell sighs. “I told you, Ellie, if I win I’ll go fifty-fifty with you. Though it’s not
your
elephant, it’s
my
cartoon elephant.”

“Still, Ellie’s always drawn little elephants ever since she was a little girl,” says Dad, drinking the cup of tea that Anna’s poured for him, though he doesn’t actually acknowledge her. “Why didn’t you do your elephant yourself, Ellie?”

“Oh, she was too late to enter the competition,” says Russell, as if I had simply been too idle to get it together in time.

“No, I did have a go,” I say. “I didn’t draw elephants, though. I did a little blue mouse.”

Dad looks up at me. “Not
Myrtle
Mouse?”

“Yes.”

“Is this another of your special characters?” Russell asks. “Can’t I draw mice anymore without you making a fuss? Maybe you’ll tell the Walt Disney organization to watch out too!”

I ignore Russell. I’m looking at Dad. I rather hope he keeps quiet. He doesn’t.

“Myrtle was invented by Ellie’s mum,” says Dad.

Russell looks at Anna.

“No, her
real
mum.”

Anna flinches. I don’t think Dad means it nastily. His whole face has softened.

“She made up Myrtle Mouse when Ellie was little. She wouldn’t go to sleep until her mum made up a Myrtle Mouse story.”

“We made her up together, Dad. And I always drew pictures of her. Well, I used to copy Mum’s at first, but then I did my own.”

“So you’ve copied your mum’s drawings for the competition!” Russell shouts. “You little hypocrite! All that fuss about my copying Ellie Elephant. And I
didn’t
copy you anyway.”

“I didn’t copy my mum.”

“You just admitted it in front of all of us!” Russell insists.

“That was when I was
little
. I reinvented Myrtle. She’s not a bit like the little mouse my mum made up, not now. She’s mine,” I say defensively.

“Rubbish! If you’ve used your mum’s design that’s really cheating,” says Dad.

I want to kick him. Anna looks like she does too. “Don’t be so unfair! Ellie’s just used a little child’s character as a jumping-off point for her own artwork,” she says. “Of course she’s not cheating. What a thing to say to your own daughter! What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m jealous, aren’t I? At least, that’s what my precious daughter thinks.”

“Dad! Anyway, I’m not even eligible for the stupid competition. I sent my entry in too late. They’ll probably just chuck it in the bin.”