The Worst Girlfriend in the World

by Sarra Manning

  Francis sat down next to Louis, shook his head and took a decisive bite of his burger. ‘You don’t want to do that, man,’ Louis told him. ‘They get the chickens, take off all the nice bits and give them to Waitrose, then they take everything that’s left and shove it in a mincer. Like, everything. Nipples, eyelashes, toenails, testicles…’

  ‘Louis, chickens don’t have testicles,’ Francis said mildly and I’d just been thinking that myself and I couldn’t help but smile. Francis smiled back.

  It looked weird on his face, like he mostly used it for sneering. ‘I don’t think chickens have nipples either,’ I said and I didn’t even blush… much. ‘But I’ve never got that close to one to be able to know for definite.’

  ‘Still, reckon that burgers have got chicken toenails in them…’

  ‘They have claws, dickhead.’

  ‘… and hair and teeth,’ Louis insisted quite happily. He was one of those people who didn’t seem to ever take offence. ‘You start growing extra nipples you’re out of the band, laughing boy.’

  ‘How will I ever get over that crushing blow.’ Francis shook his head again and carried on eating his burger, while Louis told me that Francis had been kicked out of the band when he’d got a place at an art college in London and they wouldn’t let him rejoin when he came back after a year until he really grovelled.

  ‘I don’t remember grovelling. I do remember you begging me to join again because the new guitarist only knew two chords and I know three.’

  ‘You came back to Merrycliffe after escaping to London?’ I heard myself ask in scandalised tones. ‘Christ, I would never come back here if I made it to London. Never. Not even for public holidays.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought that too but here I am,’ Francis said. He looked pretty gutted about it. I couldn’t blame him. I was dying to know why he’d come back, but it was probably because he’d been kicked out of art college so I didn’t want to pursue it. ‘You have been to London though, haven’t you?’ Francis asked me. ‘To see the Christmas lights or on a school trip or something?’

  I could have bluffed but Francis had lived in London so he’d know that I was lying. ‘Nope. Barely made it south of Manchester,’ I admitted sadly.

  ‘We can’t have that,’ Louis exclaimed and now that I wasn’t simply admiring him from afar, he was even better than I’d ever imagined. Friendly and funny and not at all up himself. ‘We’re playing a gig in London in November. In Camden!’

  ‘Camden,’ I echoed a little wistfully. ‘I’d love to go to Camden. And Hoxton and Shoreditch and Selfridges and Liberty to buy fabric.’

  ‘We’re hiring a minibus to take us down. There’ll be room for you if you fancy it,’ Louis said casually. He didn’t seem to realise he was offering me the keys to the kingdom. Louis and London. Louis in London. Me and Louis in bloody London. ‘You just have to chip in a tenner for petrol.’

  ‘Really? Are you sure? Is this some kind of elaborate piss-take?’

  ‘No!’ Louis looked quite hurt at the suggestion. ‘Franny can come up to that fancy London gig with us, right, Francis?’

  Even Francis didn’t look too horrified at the thought. He did look a little put-upon, but I was starting to think that was just how he looked when he wasn’t sneering. ‘Yeah, sure, come. Just promise you won’t drink too much, then get a kebab from a dodgy place in Archway on the way home and throw up all over the minibus like Louis’s done twice.’

  ‘I would never do that! I hate kebabs!’ I said and they both grinned and I was in. I was so in.

  I floated back to college on a little cloud made of euphoria and stardust. Then, as if the day couldn’t get any better, Barbara praised my hard morning’s work and was really impressed that I was mocking up my design on a toile first. The others all glared at me.

  ‘Teacher’s pet,’ Matthew hissed when Barbara was busy berating Krystal with a K, who’d managed to get fake tan on the pink velour she’d insisted on buying. ‘How did you even know what a toile was?’

  ‘I illegally download episodes of Project Runway,’ I whispered back and Sage said that she did too and as we worked, we talked about the last season and a designer we’d both particularly hated and loved in equal measure. And all the time I was thinking about Louis and going to London and the only little black spot was that I really wanted to tell Alice about it.

  Not in a gloating way but because I was used to telling her everything and it used to be that we cheered each other’s good times and helped each other through the bad times. And also, I kind of wanted Alice to come to London in Thee Desperadoes’ minibus because she would automatically make it ten times more fun.

  15

  Because I felt so guilty about not telling Alice I’d hung out with Louis, I agreed to let her cut my hair.

  I hadn’t been going to. I still wasn’t convinced that I had the bone structure or the balls for an urchin crop, and an urchin crop wasn’t necessary since I’d decided not to dress up as Edie Sedgwick for The Wow’s Halloween party. I was going to do what everyone else did: wear what I’d normally wear and shove a witch’s hat on top.

  Then Sage found my rubbery silver T-shirt dress scrunched in a heap on my work table when I said she could borrow my tape measure. ‘What’s this?’ she asked, holding it up. ‘One of your seams is puckered.’

  ‘It’s hard not to pucker stretch material,’ I said, barely glancing at my abandoned dress. ‘It was part of my Halloween costume. I was going to go as Edie Sedgwick, but now I’m not.’

  ‘Oh, that druggy heiress who used to hang out with Andy Warhol?’

  I promptly stabbed myself in the finger with a pin. ‘Ow! Wait! You know who Edie is? How do you know who Edie is? No one ever, ever does!’

  Sage blinked. ‘I saw that film about her with Sienna Miller, Factory Girl. It was amazing. She was gorgeous but so doomed…’

  ‘I know! Like, the world should have been hers but she was surrounded by people who fed off her beauty…’

  ‘Right! I read this book about her after I’d seen the film,’ Sage said and I was all set to bombard her with a thousand questions but then Paul stuck his hand up and asked who Edie was.

  Nobody could ever ask me who Edie was and expect me to give them a brief one-sentence reply. I had to stop what I was doing and give Paul Edie’s potted biography and make hand gestures as I said things like, ‘And then after she’d come out of the menty hospital before she went to live in New York and became an artist, she went to this clinic where she literally had her legs pummelled into shape. Literally.’

  Sage pulled up some pictures of Edie on her iPad, then she found a YouTube clip of Edie that I’d never seen before. We watched Edie and Andy Warhol appearing on a sixties American chat show – him refusing to speak because he was too cool and Edie being funny and charming and it must have been the most inspiring thing you’d ever seen if you were stuck in a small boring house in a small boring suburb – it would have totally made you want to move to New York and become an artist too.

  The way I felt about Edie, the way she moved and fascinated me, was the feeling that I wanted people to have when they wore my clothes, and then I really wished I was still going as Edie for Halloween.

  ‘You so should,’ Sage said when I told her. She looked round the workroom. ‘Hey, Mattie, do you fancy dressing up as Andy Warhol for Halloween?’

  I clasped my hands to my heart. ‘Oh, please say that you will.’

  Dora was busy scrolling through photos of Edie and Andy and the other ‘Superstars’ who’d hung out at Andy’s studio, the Factory. ‘I’ve been really stuck for a Halloween costume.’ She gestured at her black crinoline. ‘It’s hard when you wear ballgowns on a daily basis to up your game for Halloween, but I’d quite like to dress up as this Ultra Violet woman. I might even dye my hair purple.’

  Then Sage said that if we were all going, she’d skip spending the weekend in Leeds with her dad and come to The Wow’s Halloween party. ‘I’ll go as Nico from the Velvet Undergrou
nd,’ she decided. ‘If anyone says a black girl can’t be a blonde German then I pity them. I’m going to rock the hell out of a white trouser suit and wear a blonde wig and a big hat.’

  Obviously Paul didn’t want to be left out so he said he’d dress up as Lou Reed, the Velvet’s lead singer, and being part of a gang all with a common Halloween theme was so much cooler than wearing a witch’s hat and being done with it.

  But if I was going to do Edie justice then I had to cut my hair. When I texted Alice to ask if she was up to the job, she texted back, YES! YES! 1000xYES! Best news I’ve had all week! YAY!!!!!!!! Cutting my hair would also make Alice happy, which was good, because stuff between us wasn’t as great as it could have been.

  ‘You won’t regret this,’ she promised when I turned up at her dad’s salon on Friday afternoon. She pulled me through the salon, which had black walls and floor and these cream-coloured, French-chateau-style chairs and cabinets. It was very cutting edge for Merrycliffe. All the girls who worked there wore black too. They looked up from highlighting and blowdries and manicures and smiled as Alice hurried me past them. ‘Now I know it’s an Edie look but I’ve also got these pictures of Carey Mulligan in Vogue so I’ve got something really detailed to work with.’

  I didn’t want to look like Carey Mulligan even on the front cover of Vogue, but I nodded as I waited by the sinks while Alice wrapped me in a huge black robe. ‘Just remember to keep it long and messy in the front, OK?’

  ‘You got it,’ Alice said brightly. Then she cracked her knuckles like she was about to have a fight, which worried me a lot, but soon I was leaning back against a basin while she washed my hair and gave me a head message as she worked the conditioner through. ‘Your head actually has all these pressure points that relate to different parts of your body.’ Alice sounded like she was reading from a textbook.

  ‘Oh really? I thought that was your feet,’ I said.

  ‘It’s your head too,’ she said firmly as she kneaded her fingertips against my temples, then made circular motions towards the crown of my head. It felt amazing. ‘I forgot to ask, was the water too hot?’

  ‘It was perfect.’ In fact, it was probably the best hairwashing I’d ever had.

  Alice did the hairdresser thing of carefully arranging a towel around my wet hair instead of making a turban like you’d do at home, then led me to a screened-off area, away from the hairspray-scented hustle and bustle of the salon. I saw her dad, Sean, busy with his scissors but before I could wave, Alice yanked me behind the screen and pushed me into the chair.

  ‘I thought we’d be more private here and we can have some of this, like my dad’s favourite clients.’ This was a bottle of Prosecco chilling in an ice bucket along with two glasses.

  I was completely down with drinking some really posh sparkling wine, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted Alice going anywhere near alcohol when she was meant to be cutting my hair. After all, she refused to drink booze when she was doing her nails ’cause it made her brushwork go wonky. ‘Maybe you should wait until we’ve finished,’ I started to say, but Alice had already downed a glass of Prosecco in one.

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’ she asked in a hurt voice, as she finally handed me my glass. ‘I’m not going to make you look anything less than gorgeous.’

  Alice seemed really jumpy and kept picking up a pair of scissors and then putting them down again. But I wanted things to be right between us, even though I still hadn’t told her that I’d been hanging out with Louis. I also wanted to differentiate myself from her and Thee Desperadettes by embracing my edginess. And I really needed to get in touch with my inner Edie, leech a little of her cool and daring – well, when she wasn’t having nervos and doing a shedload of drugs.

  ‘OK, let’s do this!’

  ‘OK!’ Alice picked up a wide-toothed comb and ran it through my damp hair, then she gathered it into a loose ponytail and secured it with a scrunchie. ‘You ready, Franny?’

  ‘I’m ready!’

  ‘Here goes!’ She picked up the scissors and cut my ponytail right off!

  ‘Christ, some warning would have been nice!’ I cried as I jerked my head, which wasn’t very clever when Alice was still holding the scissors and nearly sliced into my ear.

  ‘Don’t panic. That’s how we always start,’ Alice soothed me. ‘Have another drink.’

  It didn’t help that I was facing away from the mirror as Alice combed, then cut, then looked at me with her face screwed up either in concentration or consternation – it was hard to tell which.

  We talked about Strictly Come Dancing and I moaned about Mr Chatterjee, who’d told me off for chewing gum while I was stuck in the window doing alterations because I was ‘an ambassador for the shop’. And Alice talked about school and how one of the Year 13s was definitely pregnant but everyone was too embarrassed to come right out and ask her.

  It was as if we’d both decided that the topic of Louis was out of bounds but as Alice carried on cutting – lots of little snips now, much combing and a lot of frowning – she got quieter and I talked more and more to cover up what was turning into a tense silence.

  I found myself telling her that I was now going to The Wow Halloween as part of a themed group of Warhol acolytes. ‘I’d have been happy just to have Mattie come with me as Andy Warhol but the others decided they wanted in too.’

  Alice’s frown became even more ferocious. ‘I thought we were going together. We always go together.’

  ‘We are. We will. But they’re coming along too. Sage is really cool now we’ve got over that business with the dress. You’ll love her.’

  ‘Great. Everyone will know that you lot are a group and I’ll be stuck on my own,’ Alice complained, as the combing and the cutting speeded up. ‘They’ll think I’m totally lame.’

  I’d been so excited at the thought of recreating the Factory at The Wow and bonding with Sage over Edie that I hadn’t spent even one minute thinking about how it might make Alice feel. Now I did think about it and I knew that if she’d suddenly become best mates with Ash and Vicky and wanted to go to the Halloween party as Destiny’s Child or Charlie’s Angels, I’d have been jealous and felt left out and rejected too.

  This whole thing with Louis had started because Alice got in a strop that I was hanging with Dora and I needed to be a bit more sensitive about Alice’s feelings. Especially when she was currently armed with a pair of very sharp scissors.

  ‘Nobody could ever think you were lame. Everyone knows we’re best mates and we’re going to have a great time tomorrow night. It’s Halloween! We love Halloween! And it’s still not too late to go with the whole Factory thing we’re doing. You could come as, um, well, like Ingrid Superstar?’

  ‘Who the hell is Ingrid Superstar?’ Alice demanded and she did have a point. Despite her name, Ingrid Superstar was the most forgettable of the Warhol Superstars. Sage had already bagsied Nico so only Brigid Berlin was left, which meant Alice would have to wear a fat suit. ‘Jesus!’

  ‘I’m sure there’s someone else you could go as. Lots of famous people hung out at the Factory all the time. I’ll Google it in a minute. Please calm down.’ I wasn’t very calm myself. I was trying to see things from Alice’s point of view but I was a little fed up with Alice getting hissy every time I dared to mention college – and she’d been cutting my hair for ever and now my head felt suspiciously light. ‘Are you done yet? Can I see?’

  ‘No!’ It was a scream. ‘Don’t touch it!’ Alice slapped my hand, which had crept up to assess my new do. ‘Just don’t fucking touch it, OK?’

  ‘Language!’ Sean, Alice’s dad, poked his head round the screen. ‘What’s going on in here?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Alice said and she actually hid the scissors behind her back, which made shivers run up and down my spine. Not the good shivers. The very, very bad shivers.

  ‘Alice is meant to be giving me a sixties urchin crop.’ My voice was perilously high. ‘That’s the plan anyway.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Alic
e hissed at me. She cleared her throat. ‘We’re just hanging out. I pinched some Prosecco. Hope that’s OK.’

  It was obvious that we were not just hanging out. There was a huge pile of my hair on the floor and from the horrified look on Sean’s face there was not a sixties urchin crop on my head.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he boomed at Alice. Usually Sean was affable and chuckly and the coolest of dads but as he marched over to us, red-faced, eyes actually bulging, he didn’t seem so cool any more. ‘You’re not even allowed to blow-dry without supervision!’

  I put my hands to my head. I had no hair! What had she done?

  I jumped up from the chair and whirled round so fast that I nearly tripped over. ‘Easy there, Franny.’ Sean took hold of my arm. ‘We’ll fix this.’

  ‘It doesn’t look so bad,’ Alice said, but she looked like she was about to throw up. I tore myself out of Sean’s grasp so I could go crashing through the screens and race to the nearest mirror.