He’d just tweeted a picture of a dress made from a gorgeous watered silk with what looked like a digital print of a blown-up snowflake on it, which was fascinating but not as fascinating as the little exchange I found when I scrolled back to yesterday’s tweets on my timeline.
@WorstGirlfriendInTheWorld Cant beleve how much skin u were showing last nite!
@LouisDesperado U can talk! But if U got it, flaunt it, amirite? ;)
@WorstGirlfriendInTheWorld Just healing the world with our hotness, babes. ;)
I thought I might start to cry when I realised that Alice was free from the parental chains. Tania, or more likely Sean, had caved and the only punishment she’d got for being totally, completely and utterly out of order was to be grounded for one measly Saturday night. Jesus, there were worse consequences for stealing pick ’n’ mix from the 59p shop because they always called the police. Usually you got away with a telling-off but they banned you from the 59p shop for life. They even put your picture up in the window. It had happened to a mate of Raj’s.
Alice was meant to be penitent and remorseful. She should also have been barred from any place where she could reasonably expect to have fun until my hair grew back. That was only fair, I thought, as I stuffed the whole of the chocolate muffin in my mouth. Then I could do nothing for a while but chew furiously and come to the slow realisation that I was maybe overreacting. Maybe even being a little immature. I was still annoyed with Alice for flirting up a storm with Louis, but that was the only way that Alice could connect with him.
Whereas I connected with Louis on lots of different levels. Except, I hadn’t quite worked out what those levels were apart from pretending to like cats in sunglasses and the Chicken Hut.
Also I had Francis. Francis was my road less taken to Louis, except actually he really wasn’t that any more. He was my friend and he was missing in action.
Francis was still absent the next day. When Sandra broke the overlocking machine with a loud and ominous crunching sound, Amir from Facilities arrived. Not to fix it, like Francis would have done, but to hang an out of order notice on it.
‘Um, no Francis then?’ I asked casually and very quietly because if Sandra and Karen even heard you mention a man’s name, they automatically assumed that you were shagging him and wouldn’t stop asking questions about his performance and generally taking the piss.
Amir shook his head. ‘Nope,’ he said.
‘So, he’s not in college today?’
Amir shook his head again.
‘Is he sick?’
Amir shrugged. He was a man of very few words. I gave up.
Francis was still AWOL on Wednesday. I began to wonder if everything was all right. I wanted to call him, but then I remembered that we’d only been friends for not even two weeks and we hadn’t swapped phone numbers. I could send him a Facebook message but that seemed inappropriate when we’d only used Facebook so Francis could post that video on my wall of the Rolling Stones performing an eighteen-minute version of ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ at Hyde Park in 1969 and for me to comment: LOVE, LOVE, LOVE first ten minutes but then it gets a little samey. Francis had replied: Franny! I wish there was an “Unlike” button for your cruel comment. When that was your only Facebook contact with someone, it felt really wrong to send them a very personal message about their father’s terminal illness.
All I could do was worry and hope that Francis and his dad were all right and that he’d be back at work soon because I already missed hanging out with him. There was so much I wanted to show and tell. Like, we were both obsessed with the old lady who worked in the Sue Ryder shop who wore nothing but purple and I liked to give him an outfit update each morning when I passed her on the way to college. And I’d amassed a huge quantity of YouTube clips of talking animals, and stale bananas from my 59p shop pick ’n’ mix because those were two of Francis’s favourite things.
I hadn’t known Francis that long, but he’d made major inroads into my daily routine.
‘Haven’t seen your mate for a while,’ Paul commented as he and Mattie left college with me at Wednesday lunchtime. Two books I’d ordered on inter-library loan had come in and they wanted to see what the library had in the way of DVDs. Not much, I’d warned them but they wouldn’t be told. ‘Has he got the sack for skiving off?’
I lurched into a lamp post. ‘Do you think?’ Francis did spend a lot of time hanging out with us. ‘No! Surely Amir would have said. Though what if there are budget cuts? The news is full of budget cuts. Francis was last in so he’d be first out.’
Now I was properly worried, though Mattie and Paul didn’t understand that Francis losing his job would be kicking a man when he was already down. They were talking about the chances of finding The Big Bang Theory boxed set in the library and that left me free to decide that I had to Facebook message Francis tonight even if it was inappropriate.
‘Stop frowning, Franny,’ Mattie said, as we climbed up the steps to the library. ‘Otherwise you’ll be caning the Botox before you’re twenty.’
I mumbled something in reply, then headed to the Orders desk and they went to the two sparse sets of shelves that were the DVD department. I got my books, a biography of Diana Vreeland, legendary editor of US Vogue during the sixties, who pretty much discovered David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton, and yet another book, Popism, about Andy Warhol.
I ordered a biography of Alexander McQueen and was just about to join Mattie and Paul to see if the DVD shelves would cough up a copy of something cool when I saw him.
My heart, my fickle heart, did the little salmon leap it always did and then he looked up from the graphic novel he was reading, lips moving in time to the words, smiled and waved.
I couldn’t have not gone over. Besides he was now shouting, ‘Franny B! Hey, Franny B!’ with blatant disregard for keeping quiet in the library.
‘Oh, hey, Louis,’ I said in a hushed whisper when I reached his table. ‘You all right?’
‘I think I’m all right but I need to know that you’re not still mad at me.’ He pulled an exaggerated pouty face. ‘You know, for comparing your new haircut to several different dudes. Francis said you were really pissed off.’
‘Oh, that.’ I was over that. Had been ever since Francis had explained that Louis was… how had he phrased it? That Louis had no filter. ‘Yeah, my hair is a bit of a sensitive subject.’ I had a cute geometric-patterned Primark scarf tied round my head, but my hand was already creeping up to touch the bald spot, even though everyone said it wasn’t a bald spot any more. I still wasn’t convinced that twelve days was long enough for a bald spot to stop being bald. ‘I’m not pissed off with you. Honestly.’
I couldn’t believe Louis had given even a few moments of his time to worrying that he might have upset me, but he gave me a blinding smile as soon as I said that we were cool. ‘Great. I hate it when people are mad at me. You’d be surprised at how often it happens.’ Actually the more I got to know him, the less surprised I was that not everyone fell under his spell. Apart from girls. All the girls.
Louis looked at me expectantly like he was waiting for me to pull a rabbit out of my tote bag. There were so many things I could have asked him. If he’d noticed that I wasn’t at The Wow on Saturday and whether he really thought that Alice was the girl for him. Or I could even screw up every last gram of courage that I possessed and request the pleasure of his company on an actual date, but that could all wait.
‘I’m glad I ran into you,’ I said and Louis smiled happily again, but I wasn’t going to get sidetracked. ‘I’ve been wondering where Francis is. He hasn’t been in college for the last three days and I’m not sure if he’s been sacked or, well, if there’s stuff going on at home.’
Louis scrunched up his features like he was suffering a thousand agonies. ‘Home?’ he echoed. I could feel the effort he was making not to blurt out what he obviously wanted to blurt out. He had one of those faces where you could tell exactly what he was thinking.
‘Yeah.’ I lea
ned in closer, not to take great big whiffs of Louis but so I could lower my voice. ‘You know, um, with his dad.’
‘Oh! So he told you about his dad?’ Louis let out a sigh of relief that ruffled my ridiculously short fringe. ‘OK! Cool!’
‘He mentioned it in passing.’ I shrugged like it was no big deal. ‘So, is everything all right with his dad? Is that why he’s not been in work?’
‘Yeah. I mean no! Oh, hang on. Like, um, no, his dad’s in hospital and yeah, that’s why he’s not been around,’ Louis clarified. ‘Something up with his dad’s piss.’
‘Ewwwww! What?’
There was a loud shushing noise behind me. I didn’t dare look round, especially as Louis chose that moment to put his hand on my arm to pull me a little closer.
That should have been my cue to melt into a puddle of gloop that was formerly known as Francesca Barker, but it turned out I was made of stronger stuff. Also, I was so grossed out by what Louis had just said that I wasn’t sure I wanted his hands anywhere near me.
‘He’s got an infection in his pee or his kidneys. Whatever. It was pretty serious. Francis even missed a rehearsal because he was at the hospital.’
‘You guys actually rehearse?’ Another Merrycliffe mystery solved.
‘Every Monday evening,’ Louis told me proudly. ‘Well, except we don’t really do much rehearsing because that goes against the whole spirit of Thee Desperadoes, so mostly we play Rock Band in our drummer’s basement. But Francis didn’t even text to say he wasn’t coming.’
‘He was probably worried about his dad.’ There was a thought I didn’t want to think. ‘But is his dad getting better? How long is he going to be in hospital for? He will be coming home, won’t he?’
Louis was nodding happily again. It was my turn to sigh in relief. How strange to think that time wasn’t something that stretched endlessly in front of you but something precious that could run out. How did Francis even get up in the morning and walk and talk and smile and remember to look up clips of films that he knew I’d like?
‘Don’t worry. It’s all cool. Francis’ dad and his piss…’
‘God, please stop saying that…’
‘Hey, Franny, we all do it,’ Louis said earnestly. ‘Everyone has to sh —’
I held up my hand in protest. ‘I get the picture. Francis’s dad is on the mend and Francis will be back at work soon, right?’
‘Right. End of the week. I never thought you were this uptight, Franny.’
And I never thought that a) I’d ever go up to Louis and start talking to him like it was the most normal thing in the world and that b) I’d then beg him to shut up because he kept talking about a mutual friend’s dad’s wee.
‘I’m not uptight. I’m actually quite laid-back,’ I said, though I was probably more on the uptight part of the life spectrum. I glanced over my shoulder to see Mattie and Paul waiting at the exit for me. ‘I have to go but if you see Francis, will you just say hi and that… Just say hi and that I’m glad everything’s all right… No! Just say I said hi.’
‘Sure,’ Louis said. His attention was drifting back to the graphic novel he’d been reading. ‘Franny B says hi. Got it. OK. Yeah…’
I’d lost him.
But I found Francis. Or rather I thought I saw him in the distance when I was dropped off at college by my parents the next morning like I was six or something.
They were going to the big wholesale supermarket in Preston. They always went there about a week before Dad headed off on a long European trip. That was usually when I clenched every muscle in my body and kept them clenched until he came back, but this time I was unclenched. The outing to buy catering packs of bacon and Capri-Sun usually coincided with Dad writing the dates he’d be away on the calendar in the kitchen and pinning up his itinerary on the fridge. But this time both calendar and fridge were unmarked so it looked like he was staying in Merrycliffe for a while longer.
I opened the door before Dad had even pulled into the kerb. ‘Don’t forget to buy me one of those huge glass jars of the pralines. Oh and if they’ve got the nice pizza, not the gross pizza, make sure to get lots and lots.’
Dad muttered something about how he was amazed I hadn’t asked for a job lot of cheap vodka and cans of Red Bull and Mum lifted her head up from her shopping list, which she’d been compiling and cross-referencing and amending for three days.
‘I’m sure that the cheese on even the nice pizza is full of carcinogenic chemicals,’ she told me. Then she slapped on a cheery smile. ‘Have a good day, love!’
It was almost comforting the way we slipped into these roles like we were a normal family, but then Dad would go away again and we would become an abnormal family. Not even a family but just one girl left to cope with her menty mother.
‘Bye then,’ I said, and hurried after Francis. He was too far away to call out to and I was still swiping my ID at the security gate when he went through the entrance marked Staff Only.
But he was back, which meant that his dad was better, and I’d discovered a sixties actress called Julie Christie and wanted to show Francis a scene from a film called Billy Liar where she skipped down a street and had adventures. I also needed to give him a tenner for the London petrol kitty and mostly I just wanted to say hi.
This morning as I’d been brushing my teeth, I’d made a vow to myself that I would redo the armholes on my grey leather dress, which were still giving me all kinds of grief. Once they were sussed, I would ease in the sleeves. The sleeves would become my bitches.
‘I think a sleeveless dress would be much easier,’ Barbara told me when she assessed my work-in-progress later that morning. ‘I don’t think you’re ready for sleeves.’
Of course that just made me want to put sleeves on my dress even more.
‘Why do you think so many dresses in the shops are sleeveless?’ Barbara asked me.
She had this habit of staring at you without blinking when she was talking and she had her glasses on, which made her eyes look superbig and distorted, and I started blinking a lot more than I normally would. I was beginning to get paranoid that Barbara would think my blinks were taking the piss when the door to the studio opened and my head swivelled in that direction, as it had done all morning whenever anyone even passed by in the corridor outside. This time my head-swivelling wasn’t in vain.
It was Francis with his toolkit.
He was walking straight towards me. I smiled. Had the ‘Hey!’ all ready to go, but then he took a left towards the broken overlocking machine and even though I tried to catch his eye, his eye refused to be caught.
Even after Barbara had moved on to give Paul grief, I didn’t have a chance to talk to Francis because Sandra and Karen were busy explaining how it totally wasn’t their fault that the overlocker was making a terrible noise, and I had a meeting with my English tutor.
‘Hey you,’ I said as I walked past but he didn’t hear me or look up because he was intent on unscrewing tiny, tiny screws with a tiny, tiny screwdriver.
There was no chance to catch up with Francis at lunch either as I had a lunch date with Lexy of Thee Desperadettes fame who I’d been tweeting with about possible sequinned T-shirt designs. She was going to bring along Kirsten of the allergic-to-false-eyelashes-glue fame.
I was worried that it was going to be awkward and it was awk at first. ‘So you’re the girl that always hangs round with that girl,’ Kirsten said when we met up outside the posh sandwich shop. Her eyeballs were normal size but she was giving me serious glare action. ‘What is her problem?’
Where to begin? ‘I don’t really see her so much any more,’ I mumbled, because it still felt wrong to slag Alice off to other people.
‘It looked like Louis was seeing quite a bit of her on Saturday night,’ Lexy said drily and I waited for my stomach to drop to the floor. Just as it started to plummet, I thought I saw Francis across the road, but it wasn’t him and by then my stomach had righted itself.
I found I could listen to Lexy a
nd Kirsten discussing Alice’s Saturday night exploits without flying into a murderous rage even though it sounded like she’d been all up on Louis all evening. I guess now we weren’t actually friends any more, none of the rules we’d drawn up applied.
‘I would never let Louis that near once he’s taken his top off,’ Kirsten sniffed. ‘His sweat gets everywhere and I love him but sometimes he smells really ripe.’
‘Foul,’ Lexy agreed. They didn’t sound that besotted even though they were members of Louis’s entourage of besotted Desperadettes. ‘I also really hate it when he drops to his knees in front of me and beats his chest. I keep telling him that it’s not even a little bit funny and then he gets upset and it’s impossible to stay angry with him.’
‘Why’s that?’ I asked.
They both looked at me and shook their heads. ‘Because it would be like kicking a kitten,’ Lexy explained and I wanted to interrogate her further, but then Kirsten asked if it was true that Alice had come at me with a razor blade and that was why my hair was so short, then they both put in orders for sequinned T-shirts.
The Worst Girlfriend in the World Page 18
