Out of My Depth (32 page)

She was wearing a black shift dress that her mum had bought her from Laura Ashley. It was inoffensive. It was plain. It finished just above her knees, which knobbled out below it in an ugly manner. She felt gawky and stupid, and she wondered why she was going to be the only girl in the whole sixth form who was in this predicament. There were a few fellow ‘tomboys’, who would be staying at home wearing their Metallica T-shirts. The other geeks, people like Izzy’s hanger-on, Mary-Jane, would be at the disco, being wry about their imagined wildness and wearing shiny dresses that had been run up by great-aunts, or bought from the elderly section of M&S. She pictured Mary-Jane last year, shimmering in unflattering yellow, and she almost felt sorry for her at the memory.

But MJ would enjoy herself, as would Izzy, and horrible racist Janie and her friends, and the Goths, Beth and Bobby (who had turned up last year resplendent in tight black and purple dresses and full make-up). Tamsin’s mother, who had supervised the evening for years, admitted that she generally had a reasonably good time. Tamsin knew that most of her enjoyment came from laughing at her charges, and she wished she had enough distance to laugh too. Even Mrs Spencer, Izzy’s least favourite teacher, had apparently been known to dance. Tamsin was the only person there who was going to be checking the time for the entire evening. She should have stayed at home and watched Noel’s House Party with Billy.

But she was here, and she was here ludicrously early.

‘Come on, Tamsin,’ said her mother, turning to wait for her.

‘Do I have to?’

‘Well, no, you know you don’t have to. But your friends will be here — what’s the problem? People always seem to manage to have a good time.’

‘Yeah.’

They put chairs out around the edge of the hall. They checked the bar was stocked and ready, and that there were plenty of soft drinks. They sat down, side by side, on plastic chairs, and waited. Tamsin looked sideways at her mother. She was in full teacher mode, in a paisley blouse and a sensible skirt, with her hair in a spinsterish bun. At the weekends, Mum wore jeans and sweatshirts and she looked just like a normal person. The moment she had anything to do with school, however, she suddenly appeared in flesh-coloured tights and thick pleated skirts. Blouses with brooches materialised, and her hair, normally longish and messyish, was scraped back and fixed firmly with spray and combs. When Tamsin’s mother was with her husband, she was tactile and smiley, with rosy cheeks and a loud laugh. At school, she was a frump.

‘Don’t you want to dress up?’ Tamsin asked her, curious.

Mum smiled. ‘Don’t you?’ she asked back.

‘No, I don’t. But I know you do. Don’t you want to put on one of your dresses and look glam and have everyone saying to their boyfriends, actually, that’s a teacher?’

‘Jesus Christ, no! I’m not here for a party. God forbid. I’m on duty. I want to look as much like a teacher as I possibly can. Because if I dressed up as if I was going to a real party, I might suddenly forget myself and start drinking wine and dancing, and before I knew it I’d be neglecting my duties and losing the respect of you girls and on top of that I’d be shelling out for a cab home for us both.’

Tamsin laughed.

Mrs Spencer came into the room and looked around with a broad, chilling smile.

‘Evening, both,’ she said.

‘Hello, Mary,’ said Mum.

‘Hello, Mrs Spencer,’ Tamsin said to her shoes.

‘Looking forward to tonight, Tamsin?’ Mrs Spencer asked.

‘Oh, I can hardly contain my excitement.’ Tamsin spoke in a monotone, still staring at her shoes.

‘I can see that.’

Tamsin’s mother rolled her eyes ostentatiously at her colleague. ‘Tamsin,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go to the toilets and do your hair and make-up?’

Tamsin raised her eyebrows and spread her hands wide. Mum rummaged in her handbag and retrieved a make-up bag. She threw it over. ‘Just get some colour on your lips at least. A bit of mascara. Red lipstick. Be a devil.’ She shook her head. ‘You’ve always been a tomboy.’

‘Aren’t you glad, though?’ asked Tamsin. ‘Aren’t you pleased I’m not a slapper? You wouldn’t believe what I could be doing.’

‘Yes I would believe it.’ She looked to Mrs Spencer. ‘We would believe it, wouldn’t we?’

‘Oh yes, indeed, we would.’ They laughed at a secret memory. Tamsin’s mother always refused to share stories from the previous eleven balls, but she smiled at the memories when Tamsin asked. It drove Tamsin insane.

‘Oh, Tamsin,’ Mrs Spencer said as an afterthought. ‘Would you like me to take care of your hair? I could give you a lovely chignon.’

Tamsin fingered a strand of her loose, lank locks. She thought this had to be the low point of her life to date. Mrs Spencer — Hairy Mary — was going to do her hair. It was dreadful on many levels, but the worst was the fact that she knew Mrs S would do a better job.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Yes. If you wouldn’t mind. Why not?’

People began to arrive at half past seven. Tamsin hated being the first. She hated the giggly girls coming in tarty clusters, with their boys. She hated the fact that she was invisible. It was a toss-up over which was worse: sitting on one of the chairs she had lined up around the edge of the room, all on her own without even a book to read, sitting at the bar with her mother, or sitting by the toilets with Mrs S.

She could not possibly hang out with the teachers. She sat by herself, in a random chair halfway down the long room, and stared around, and waited.

There were, she decided, two girls arriving for every boy. When you took the Mary-Janes and the Tamsins out of the equation, that meant, she decided, that every boy was guaranteed a snog, and every girl who had basic social skills would probably pull. As the partygoers continued to arrive, Tamsin mentally divided them into two camps: the slappers and the virgins. The typical virgin wore a Bo-Peepish dress with a full skirt and gathers at the top of her sleeves. She clutched a matching bag, which contained a brown lipstick, a twenty pound note, and ten pence for the phone. Bo Peep stood self-consciously with her friends, looking warily at boys who did not look back.

The slapper, on the other hand, was in a skin-tight concoction, with cleavage spilling over the neckline, and almost her entire thighs exposed. Her money was kept in her bra or, stripper style, tucked into a stocking top (which was all very well until the barman gave her change). She eyed up the boys and they eyed her right back, discussed her with their mates and, depending on exactly how slapperish she looked, placed bets.

Tamsin’s Laura Ashley dress didn’t cover her arms at all. She pulled at the strappy sleeves, contorted with self-consciousness, knowing that nothing she did would make a thin strap cover a bony shoulder, still less an ugly elbow. She rubbed her cheek, trying to take off her mother’s blusher which, she felt, was making her look like Aunt Sally from Worzel Gummidge. She pulled at her hair. Mrs Spencer had been businesslike and had produced a tin of hairpins, and the results of her handiwork were depressingly impressive, but Tamsin was not a chignon kind of girl. She was dubious about being beautified by her old biology teacher. She was about to pull her hair loose when Izzy appeared.

‘Hey,’ said Tamsin, smiling in spite of herself. ‘Nice dress.’

‘Do you think? Is it OK?’ Izzy sat down beside Tamsin.

‘Yes, I think. Yes, it’s more than OK. Bloody hell, Izzy. You look stunning.’

Izzy smiled in delight. She was ravishing. Her dress finally fitted her slender body perfectly. She had been up until three, pinning it against herself, taking in seams and sewing them, changing her zip for a longer one so she could fit her hips in, and once, painfully, sitting on a needle. Now she was beautiful, and tired. Tamsin quickly scanned the room, to judge how much attention Izzy was attracting. The answer, inevitably, was plenty. Every male eye in the room seemed to turn to Izzy at the same moment.

‘Thanks,’ Izzy said. ‘Hey, you have to cheer up. You’re not allowed to be depressed. It’s a party, remember? I like your hair.’

‘It’s the bloody school disco and my mother is propping up the bar. And I’m not even going to tell you who’s responsible for my bloody hair.’

‘And now your best friend has arrived. So things are looking up. I know it’s horrible. I didn’t want to come either, but we may as well have fun.’ She sprang to her feet. ‘I get nervous sitting down. I can feel the seam straining. Drink?’

As they headed towards the bar, Tamsin looked around. Nobody here was interested in her, and she shuddered at the idea of getting off with any of these pigs. No man of any interest to Tamsin would turn up at a girls’ school disco. Robert Smith of the Cure would not be seen dead here. Instead, there were identical boys from Cowbridge, poncing around in their dinner jackets, practising their sleazy smiles on girls with porcelain skin and indulgent daddies. Shouting close to their ears with stinky cigarette breath. She grimaced, and steered Izzy to the end of the bar where her mother was not stationed.

Amanda and Suzii arrived, tarty and giggling, an hour later. Both of them wore tight-fitting satin. Suzii’s blue dress was so short that the curve of her buttocks was just visible, beneath the hem, in lacy white knickers. Amanda’s legs were long and slender, and in her cream dress she might as well have been naked. Her shoulders were back, her chest was out. Her collarbone jutted out so far that it cast a shadow, and Tamsin suddenly wondered whether Amanda might be anorexic. Her make-up was impeccable. Every boy in the room noticed her. A few began to circle.

Suzii pushed her hair up with her fingers. It was stiff. ‘We’ve had half a bottle of vodka,’ she confessed, clutching Amanda’s arm.

‘Let’s start on the other half,’ Amanda shrieked, steering her friend towards the bar. Five men followed. Drunk Lodwell’s girls were notoriously enthusiastic. Tamsin thought that Suzii did herself no favours by dressing as she did. She was forever getting into sticky situations.

Tamsin and Izzy looked at each other. ‘I don’t think we’ll be seeing much of them this evening,’ Izzy shouted.

Tamsin raised her eyebrows. She was convulsed with the contrast between her gawky plainness and her friends’ sexiness. Flagrant, overstated tartiness was surely more healthy for eighteen-year-old girls than the apathetic lack of energy that dogged her. She wished she cared. She fingered the beginnings of a spot on her chin. There were some boys on the dance floor who were talking about Izzy, and Tamsin knew for certain that they were arguing over who was going to get the ugly friend. She scowled at them. They looked at each other and laughed. Tamsin looked down. She detested the fact that the boys dressed in black tie, as if they were sixty and going to the opera. She loathed the conspicuous excess, the show of affluence. She tried to imagine what it would be like in the Third World. What would African women their age, burdened down by children and having to fetch the water every day, make of this party? She was ashamed to be a part of it. She wished she’d stayed home and donated the cost of her ticket to Oxfam.

Tamsin couldn’t relax at school. If she was in the pub, she was fine. If she was at the Square Club, she was fine. At home, fine. Anywhere but Lodwell’s she felt reasonably comfortable. At school, though, she just could not be bothered. It was unnatural to spend so much time in such a high-pressured female environment. The bitchiness was unbelievable. The bigotry scared her. Now, to be at school and yet not at school, to be officially Having Fun, but with the whole of the sixth form in the room — this was hell. And she was about to lose Izzy.

‘Hey there,’ said a boy with black hair carefully styled around his face. He was ignoring Tamsin.

‘Er, hello,’ said Izzy, with a fresh and friendly smile.

The boy held out a hand. ‘Like to dance?’ he asked.

Izzy looked at Tamsin. ‘Go on,’ Tamsin told her. ‘Here, give me your bag. You don’t want to dance around it.’

Izzy handed over the bag, and her drink as well, and the boy led her, by the hand, onto the dance floor. Tamsin watched them. They stood opposite each other and jiggled around for a bit. The DJ was playing ‘I Wanna Give you Devotion’. Somehow, Izzy had the hang of jiggling gracefully. She even managed to mouth the lyrics without looking silly. Tamsin sighed. She checked the time. She finished Izzy’s wine.

The evening passed. Tamsin refused to dance, even with Isabelle. People were sick. Twice, Mrs Grey was called to the girls’ toilets to help Mrs Spencer tend to the extremely ill. Izzy kissed the black-haired boy for the entire evening, rosy-cheeked and happy to have replaced Jasper, temporarily. Amanda and Suzii flirted with all the contenders, and only chose their partners in the last hour. Tamsin was surprised they could see straight enough to pick them. Eventually, one o’clock came. Couples emerged from under tables and inside cupboards. Boys rubbed lipstick off their faces. Girls asked their friends for objective assessments of love bites, and made optimistic efforts at covering them with make-up. A young man picked up half-empty glasses from the bar and from tables, and even the floor, and drained their contents until Mrs Grey shouted at him to stop. Coats were retrieved. Lights went on. People left.

Izzy clung on to her boy, giving him a last kiss, until Mrs Spencer coughed very loudly. Then she said goodbye to Tamsin, clutching the back seam of her dress.

‘It’s started tearing,’ she said, giggling. The taxi driver might get more than he bargained for!’