The Worst Girlfriend in the World (3 page)

Whenever I was feeling unsure and down-hearted, like I was tonight, I would climb into bed and stare at Edie, Andy and Gerard and it always made me feel better.

That photo represents everything I want to be. The problem is that I’m just not sure how to get there.

On Monday morning, walking through the college grounds, after the trudge up the long hill from Merrycliffe town centre, felt like walking the green mile.

Obviously I wasn’t the only new person starting college that day. But I felt like the only person hanging solo and I was getting some smirky looks because of my candy-striped dress, tights and open-toed sandals. Merrycliffe College wasn’t ready for a tight and an open toe.

I styled it out by putting on my big dark glasses – they’re a lot like the ones that Audrey Hepburn wears in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
– and assumed my best ‘bitch,
please
’ expression.

It got me through three hours of filling in forms and my first catch-up GCSE Maths class, then skulking around the canteen for the rest of the morning. It was weird not having a form room to hang out in but at least I could go home for lunch without fear of being accused of bunking off. At college you were treated as an adult, or else they didn’t really care what you did – it was too soon to tell.

Mum was actually up when I got home. Not dressed, but she’d managed to make it down to the kitchen and was watching a repeat of
Location Location Location
on the little portable TV.

‘Oh, there you are,’ she said when I walked in. ‘I know I never got round to it yesterday but let’s make that list and go to Morrisons. It will only take me ten minutes to shower and change.’

She’d had the whole summer break, six weeks, to go to Morrisons with me instead of taking to her bed, but she chose today, this lunchtime, on my first day of college, an hour from my first official lesson in how to become a fashion designer.
Now
she decided she wanted to stock up on loo roll and fish fingers.

I also knew that if she really was serious, it would take her way more than ten minutes to shower and change. I could go back to college, then come home again and she might just about be ready to leave.

‘Well, I have a few things I need to do first,’ I said vaguely because I wasn’t even sure that Mum knew that this was my first day at college. Dad had texted me that morning telling me to ‘break a leg, kid’. Alice’s mum and dad had given me a card yesterday and some salted caramel buttons from Hotel Chocolat. But as Mum spent most of her time in bed with the covers over her head, for her the days all bled into each other. The only difference was good days and bad days and there hadn’t been that many good days for a long, long time. ‘I’m sure I’ll be done by the time you’re ready to go, but shall I make a cup of tea first?’

I made her tea and toast again. Started the shopping list. Had a slightly tense discussion about soap pads versus scourers and Fairy Liquid, then told her I had to pop out.

It was easier not to give her details but a brief, shadowy outline of what was happening in my world. That way no one got hurt.

‘I won’t be long,’ I promised cheerily as I opened the front door. ‘Call me on my mobile when you’re ready to go.’

I was so late that I had to get the bus back to college, which meant a mad rush to the bus stop and I still had to chase down the bus until it stopped at the lights, then hammer on the door and pout and make sad puppy faces until the driver relented.

I didn’t want to start my BTEC L3 Extended Diploma in Fashion and Clothing a red-faced, flustered mess, but we don’t always get what we want.

I followed the signs to the art block, which was right at the back of the college grounds. Then I wandered around for a bit, getting more and more panic-stricken, until I found the right studio. I took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting but it was something more exciting than seven other students sitting on stools in a semicircle in a workroom. Beyond them, I could see the workstations at the other end of the room; huge tables, each with a sewing machine built into it. I wanted to rush to the nearest one and get acquainted – but that could wait. First, I was curious and also more than a little scared to see who my sewing companions would be for the next two years.

Two of them obviously knew each other because they were jabbering away and also they were old, like in their forties at least. Probably retraining after being made redundant or something. By the look of them, they were hoping to open a boutique selling dresses covered in bits of frou-frou and diamanté. Not that I was judging. Me? Judge? Never.

There was a really pretty black girl with her own ‘bitch,
please
’ expression, and a girl who was totally orange ’cause she’d overdone it on the fake tan. She had fake everything else too: eyelashes, nails, hair extensions. I wondered if she’d got the wrong room and was meant to be doing a hair and beauty course. A lot of the girls who worked in Alice’s dad’s salons had the same look and they were perfectly nice but they weren’t the kind of girls I wanted to hang out with on a daily basis.

Then there was a girl with pink hair who was working a Steampunk look – I was sure that’s why she had clock faces sewn on to her billowing, gothy black dress. Last of all were two semi-cute boys. One wearing an old-fashioned three-piece suit, the other wearing jeans, a Fred Perry shirt, Adidas trackie top with Adidas Shell Toe trainers. It was a very old skool look.

Obviously the two boys were gay. My gaydar was infallible. I took a seat nearest to the one in the suit and there wasn’t even time to make eye contact with anyone or open my
Designers I Have Met And Liked
notebook, before the tutor came bustling through the door.

I’d been expecting a Lancastrian version of Anna Wintour, the uber-chic editor of US
Vogue
, not a middle-aged woman who looked like she’d yell at you if you presented her with a crooked seam. She wasn’t wearing anything amazing either but an olive-green jumper and boring black trousers. I couldn’t imagine how she was going to teach me anything I wanted to know about fashion design.

Up until now, I was completely self-taught. I’d learned how to make clothes through trial and error; watching how-to videos on the internet and buying clothes from the 50p bin in the chazzas so I could take them apart to see how they were made.

‘I’m going to assume that you know nothing about fashion design and start with the basics,’ Barbara, the tutor, said. ‘Though I do expect all of you to be able to thread a needle at the very least.’

We all laughed nervously and I waited for Barbara to tell us about all the exciting things we’d be doing, from learning how to make trousers to corsetry. While I waited, I mentally sketched out a perfect pair of cigarette pants and was just frowning over the zipper when I realised that Barbara had stopped talking ages ago and we were meant to be taking it in turns to introduce ourselves.

I’d already missed the two older women’s intros. Barbara had moved on to the black girl, whose name was Sage (I wondered if she’d made that up), who was keen to pursue a career in costume design for film and TV.

Orange girl, as I’d suspected, admitted that the hair and beauty courses had been over-subscribed so she was here under duress, waiting for a wannabe hairdresser or aesthetician to drop out. Her name was Krystal with a K. Girls like that always have names like Krystal with a K.

Then Barbara moved on to Three-piece Suit who was called Matthew and was interested in menswear and tailoring. He even name-checked Fred Astaire and Miuccia Prada. He’d make a perfect fashion friend, I thought, and tried to smile at him welcomingly but I don’t think he noticed.

The Steampunk girl was known to her parents as Dora and launched into an impressive but quite scary ten-minute rant about mainstream fashion and how she was only interested in avant-garde design and she’d ‘like, rather die than have to ever design anything as mundane and boring as a raincoat or a pair of slacks. Honestly, I would totally die.’ I could tell she and Krystal with a K were not going to be bosom buddies, but I thought Dora might be interesting to hang out with. Sitting next to her was Mr Old Skool, AKA Paul, who hoped one day to have his own sportswear empire even though he’d never so much as sewed on a button before.

Then it was my turn. I wasted precious time dithering over my name, which wasn’t the best start. Officially I was called Francesca Barker, but that had always been shortened to Frances. Anyway, everyone called me Franny B, had done ever since nursery school, though I couldn’t demand that of new acquaintances – they kind of had to make that decision for themselves.

‘I’m Frances. Franny, really,’ I said after several long, long moments. Then I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t share my five-year plan, which saw me to my final days at Central St Martin’s where my entire degree show was snapped up by Net-A-Porter and everyone marvelled at how a dump like Merrycliffe-on-Sea could have produced me
and
Martin Sanderson, who had his own huge fashion empire as well as being Creative Director at the French couture house Corres, and was an even bigger inspiration to me than Edie Sedgwick. Then Martin Sanderson would give me a job, preferably in Paris, and that was my five-year plan.

I couldn’t say any of that because it sounded like I was really up myself, so I just said, ‘Well, I love fashion and making my own clothes and I’d really like to have my own design house one day.’

Barbara looked down at her wad of papers, then looked back at me. It wasn’t a good look.

‘So, you’re the girl who failed her GCSEs,’ she said.

That was completely untrue. ‘I didn’t fail
all
of them
,
’ I pointed out. I also wanted to tell her that it was blates unfair to share my academic shame with my new classmates. Wasn’t there such a thing as lecturer–student confidentiality? Like when doctors aren’t allowed to blab all your embarrassing medical stuff to people. ‘I’m retaking Maths and English.’

Barbara stared at me like she was amazed that I could even form sentences. Everyone else was staring too and not because they were in awe of my fashion-forward first day look, but because they probably thought I was intellectually backward.

‘We expect people on this course to have a minimum of four GCSEs including English at grade C or —’

‘I
have
got four GCSEs. In fact, I’ve got seven,’ I snapped in a way that had Barbara’s eyebrows shooting up. ‘As and Bs mostly and the other lady who interviewed me, the dean of art studies or whatever, said that as long as I attended catch-up lessons and retook Maths and English, she was happy to have me. I showed her my portfolio. I wrote a five-page essay on why I wanted to take this course.’
So why are you giving me such a hard time?
I thought, but I didn’t dare say it out loud.

Barbara settled back down with a little huffing sound. She had a tape measure around her neck in case of any measuring emergencies. I wanted to strangle her with it. I also wanted to cry.

‘I want to see your portfolio tomorrow.’ She shuffled her papers unhappily. ‘I don’t have your interview transcript and I don’t see a copy of your essay in your file either.’

‘I’ll print you out a copy.’

‘See that you do.’

Even if I managed to stay on the course and pass my retakes, I had a feeling that Barbara was going to personally guarantee that my next two years would be abject misery. She probably wouldn’t even let me operate a sewing machine without adult supervision.

I settled back down in my chair, hugging my notebook to me, and kept my eyes fixed on a spot on the greying white lino. I wouldn’t cry if I focused on just the one spot.

Barbara, who was now at the top of my shit list, number one with a bullet, wittered on about techniques and processes for ten minutes, then told us we could go. It was weird not having the day measured out by the sound of a bell ringing every fifty minutes but I couldn’t wait to get gone.

I stumbled to my feet, shoved my
Designers I’ve Met And Liked
notebook in the Marc by Marc Jacobs canvas tote that Siobhan’s mate had got me from London, hung my bag from my shoulder and tried to get to the door as quickly as humanly possible without any need for eye contact.

‘You’re Franny B, right?’ demanded a voice.

I turned round to answer Krystal with a K’s question. ‘Yeah,’ I said. I didn’t sound that friendly but I don’t think I sounded that
unfriendly
either. It was hard to strike a balance.

‘Right, so you’re mates with
her
.’ Krystal with a K pretty much spat the last word. ‘Alice Jenkins. You’re her best friend.’

I nodded. ‘We go way back. Why?’

I knew exactly why and I knew exactly what the next words out of Krystal with a K’s over-glossed pink lips were going to be. And right on cue… ‘She stole my boyfriend! She stole all of my friends’ boyfriends and she’s a sl —’

‘Well, I’m sorry about that,’ I said quickly because I really didn’t want to hear
that
word. ‘Anyway, they couldn’t have been very good boyfriends if they were that easy to steal. So, you know…’

‘Alice Jenkins? I only moved to Merrycliffe two months ago and I’ve already heard all about her. It sounds like she needs to come with a public health warning.’ Now Steampunk Dora was getting up in my grille. ‘You willingly hang out with her?’

‘She’s my best friend.’ I didn’t approve of Alice’s boy-baiting, but when strangers were giving her a hard time I’d defend her to the death. That was the deal with best friends. ‘She’s really funny. She does great impersonations. She absolutely doesn’t need a public health warning.’