Girls, Guilty But Somehow Glorious

by Sue Limb

  ‘Well, I told him I didn’t have a farm, of course, you idiot,’ said Dad. ‘We’re not all hooked on lying, you know.’

  Oliver Wyatt knew I’d lied to him about Dad having a farm. He must now think of me as the most pathetic, lame, nerdy idiot in the entire school. And from tomorrow at 9 a.m. I would be in constant danger of bumping into him round a corner, and hearing his diabolical, mocking laugh. Oh, and I had to borrow £800 off my friends to stop my sister being arrested for debt. Apart from that, life was just dandy.

  .

  .

  23

  TUESDAY 8.48 a.m.

  Horrid money moments …

  Next morning, I reported to Mr Powell and was given a severe talking to. I told him about Tamsin’s crisis. Not the real financial crisis – the fictional heartbreak crisis. It made no difference. I was on a warning, and all my teachers had to sign me in and out of lessons for a month.

  I had missed registration because of my session with Mr Powell, and after that it was double art. Chloe doesn’t do art. She opted for business studies, so we didn’t meet until break. I found her by the tuck shop. She looked very pale. She grabbed me.

  ‘Zoe!’ That was all she said. She looked almost as if she might be going to cry.

  ‘Chloe!’ I said. ‘What was going on last night? Did you get home OK?’

  ‘I rang my mum,’ she said. ‘And she said it was all right to stay where I was.’

  ‘Whaaaaaat?’ I gasped. I know Chloe’s mum is a lot more liberal than mine, in an old hippy sort of way, but this seemed a bit extreme. ‘They let you stay the night at Beast’s?’

  ‘I wasn’t at Beast’s,’ said Chloe, looking jittery. ‘We were at an Amnesty vigil in the high street. You know, like, uh – kind of demonstrating on behalf of political prisoners. And collecting money for their campaign. We were in a sort of cage thing like a prison.’

  ‘What? All night?’ I was amazed. ‘Were you sitting on the actual pavement? Wasn’t it freezing? Was there a loo? Did you have to pee in public?’

  ‘There was a loo just around the corner,’ said Chloe. ‘At a petrol station. They let us use it. And we had mattresses. And blankets. And candles.’ It sounded almost romantic.

  ‘So was this just you and Beast?’ I enquired. ‘Or did you have a chaperone?’

  ‘It was me and Beast and Gareth and Jennie,’ said Chloe. I felt instantly rather jealous of these new friends. But I needn’t have. I could see Chloe’s chin begin to tremble. ‘I’ve been really stupid, Zoe,’ she said in a quavery voice. ‘I really thought Beast was, you know, like, interested in me. After he said all those things and kissed me in the back of Donut’s car. But it was like totally obvious that he fancied this Jennie girl. He was hitting on her right in front of me!’

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘Just try and forget all about him, OK?’

  ‘It was horrendous,’ said Chloe. ‘I feel just, well – humiliated. He just amuses himself by flirting with me if there’s nobody more attractive around. He must think I’m a total loser.’ She was shaking now. Always a bad sign.

  ‘Who cares what he thinks?’ I tried to cheer her up. ‘Ignore him. Move on. At least you did a brilliant thing for the political prisoners. I’ll support you. You can have my last fiver.’ I fished it out of my pocket. A thin but grateful smile crept across Chloe’s face.

  ‘Oh, Zoe, thanks so much!’ she said in a trembly voice. I put my arms around her. ‘You are so fantastic!’

  ‘I’ve got just a little tiny favour to ask in return,’ I said, holding her close because I couldn’t say this face to face. ‘Could you possibly lend me some money? Just lend? Not for very long? Just till Easter – or at the very latest, a couple of weeks after Easter?’

  Chloe escaped from my hug and looked a bit thoughtful.

  ‘OK, it’s possible,’ she said. ‘How much do you need?’

  ‘Oh, just, well …’ I said, trying to make it sound very little, ‘uhhhh, how much could you manage? I mean, what’s in your Newquay fund? £200?’

  At this point Chloe fainted. I think it was mainly the lack of sleep, to be fair. Somebody called a teacher, and I put her in the recovery position even though, as she was wearing a short skirt, it meant you could see her knickers.

  They were quite nice knickers actually, with butterflies on. I made a mental note to ask her where she got them.

  Miss Donaldson came and Chloe, by now recovering, was helped off to the medical room. As the bell had gone, Miss D told me to go to my next lesson. Toby and I went to the medical room at lunchtime and discovered Chloe had been sent home. Her mother had come to fetch her, I expect, in her weird old hippie camper van covered with Greenpeace stencils.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘She’s spent a night with Beast, but it was all in aid of Amnesty.’

  ‘If I ever get to spend a night with anybody,’ said Toby, ‘it’ll be in aid of myself, darling!’

  ‘Listen, Tobe,’ I said, taking his arm, and strolling with him towards the school field. ‘I have a problem.’

  ‘Houston, we have a problem,’ said Toby. ‘We’ve lost the lipstick!’

  I laughed, but I hoped he was going to take this seriously. I had to get some support from somewhere. Chloe had gone into a coma rather than lend me money. Toby wasn’t going to escape so easily.

  I told him about my trip to see Tamsin, and her financial problems, and I laid it on really thick. Toby listened carefully.

  ‘So basically, Tobe, I’m looking for loans,’ I said. ‘Big loans, but short-term.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Toby, looking vaguely shocked. ‘Right.’

  ‘Listen, Tobe,’ I switched to my serious voice. ‘How much have you got saved up for Newquay?’ Toby hesitated.

  ‘£280.56,’ he said.

  ‘Lend it me!’ I begged. Toby’s eyebrows flared. ‘It’s just to pay Tamsin’s college bill. Then she’s getting a job in the Easter hols, and she’ll earn enough to pay most of it back right away.’

  Toby thought for a moment, then offered me his hand. ‘Done!’ he said. I blinked. I could hardly believe it. We shook hands, then I flung my arms around his neck.

  ‘Toby, you are an angel!’ I gasped. I was so, so thrilled. I shut my eyes tight and gave him an extra-hard squeeze. Toby did a squeaky wheeze, like a very old teddy bear.

  I laughed, opened my eyes, and looked over Toby’s shoulder. And what did I see? Strolling towards us across the grass, and accompanied by a sixth-form girl with particularly long slim legs, was Oliver Wyatt! Hell’s Bells and Buckets of Spit! Toby couldn’t save me from this one.

  .

  .

  24

  TUESDAY 1.04 p.m.

  Blanked and gutted …

  For a moment I didn’t know whether to go on hugging Toby or to fall hastily out of his arms. The moment Oliver Wyatt appears, everything is so damned complicated. If he hadn’t recognised me yet, he might not recognise me at all if I stayed wrapped around Toby, hiding my face in his chubby old neck. On the other hand, if Oliver had recognised me, I didn’t want him to think I wanted to be wrapped around Toby, like ever.

  Although God knows I was never going to be even remotely wrapped around Oliver. All I wanted, at this moment, was to be in Australia. I fell briskly backwards out of Toby’s embrace and hit him playfully across the chops, just to prove to anybody in the area that the hug had been meaningless. They could see I would just as soon beat him up, in an affectionate way, of course, as one might beat up a brother.

  Toby looked a bit surprised, and started to say something. I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was saying. My head was full of loud noise. Later I realised it must have been the blood pounding round my brain. But right then all my previous history with Oliver Wyatt kind of flashed before my eyes – like, at the moment of death, when we apparently get a high-speed replay of our whole lives.

  I first really got into Oliver a year ago, in a school play. He was dressed in black playing some sombre knight in a medieval epic
. He didn’t say much, but he looked so handsome, my bra straps kind of burned into my shoulders with excitement. Then a couple of weeks later, I’d been sitting on the upper deck of a bus, and I’d been relaxing and looking down at the street, and suddenly there he was – going into a bookshop!

  My heart literally exploded all over the roof of my mouth. Instantly I jumped up, raced down the bus stairs, got off at the next stop, and hurtled at 100 mph back to the bookshop, where I failed to find any trace of him whatever. But it was proof I was hooked, and the fact that Oliver had recently been in the bookshop gave it a fabulous glamour.

  And Oliver was approaching! Right now, in the real world! I could see him coming up behind Toby. Although, of course, I wasn’t actually looking at Oliver, but desperately avoiding eye contact. However, somehow, although I wasn’t looking at him at all, I could see nothing else.

  I prepared myself in anguish for the mocking jests I knew he would toss in my direction, about my delusions on the farm front and preposterous lies involving piglets. At the same time, my brain was still treating me to a hectic flood of memories: Oliver glimpsed by the geography room, by the boys’ loos, by the school office, by the Dolphin Cafe …

  He was now so close to us that I could feel my skeleton melting. I cringed, waiting for Oliver’s cruel aside. Toby was still rabbiting on about something, thank God. Bless him! Technically I was having an out-of-body experience and dear old Tobe didn’t have an inkling.

  Oliver Wyatt loomed, on my left, and passed me. The air which had blown playfully across his skin entered my nostrils. My nose hairs secretly burst into flame. But he said nothing. He even slightly turned away from me, as his companion, the sixth-form girl with the endless legs, was on the other side of him, and laughing.

  Seconds later, I assume, though to me it seemed like centuries, he had passed me and gone. And there had been no cruel jests. The total swine! He had blanked me! He would never speak to me again! I was beneath contempt! Worthless! Not even deserving of a cruel jest or mocking laugh! No piss taken.

  Possibly he was so enchanted with his leggy companion that he didn’t want her to know that I had ever spoken to him, let alone lured him with my tales of fabulous piglets. I was totally gutted at this evidence that I was nothing to him – perhaps even less than nothing.

  What a wasted opportunity! I had actually spoken to the legend that is Oliver Wyatt, in the hospital when I was with Donut – spoken to him, and blown it. He’d given me his card, dammit! It had been my chance to appear confident, charismatic and attractive, and instead I had come across as a lying, shrieking chav and a slapper – literally – of defenceless young men.

  ‘Would that be OK?’ said Toby, finishing his sermon.

  ‘Would what be OK?’ I asked, blinking. ‘I’m so sorry, Toby, I just switched off there for a moment and had a total brainstorm. Carry on.’

  ‘Well, I just said I could get the money for you today after school,’ said Toby, ‘if you like. And you could get it to your sister tomorrow or whatever.’

  ‘Toby, you are a babe!’ I cried, flinging my arms around him once again. He kind of flinched. ‘I shall never be able to repay you – I mean, in the ultimate sense! Not in the financial money-type sense – of course I’ll be able to repay you that, but this is such a big deal! You are a darling!’

  Just then Fergus turned up, and Toby told him all about Tamsin’s problems and how we were all going to rally round and empty our piggy banks. Fergus looked a bit uneasy.

  ‘I’mNotSure,’ he gibbered. ‘IDunno … LeaveIt WithMeOK?’

  ‘Tight git,’ Toby whispered to me later. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it out of him.’

  I was deeply deeply grateful to Toby for being the best friend in the world. But in a way it all seemed to be taking place far away and even long ago. The real me was trapped in some kind of hysterical bubble in cyberspace with only this fact: Oliver Wyatt hated me so much, he couldn’t even be bothered to take the piss.

  That night I called by at Chloe’s. Her mum, Fran, opened the door. Her thick grey hair was down to her shoulders this time, which in my view is a style disaster. Mum’s hair is always nicely cut and tinted. Chloe’s mum’s hair is hardly ever even brushed.

  ‘Oh, hello, Zoe,’ said Fran. ‘Come in. Chloe’s up now. She had a huge sleep. I think she was just overtired from her Amnesty vigil.’

  Chloe was lying on the sofa, wearing PJs and watching TV. Her mum went back to her funny little old fortune-teller’s table in the corner and started messing about with some books and papers. She’s not a professional fortune-teller. She just reads the tarot for fun. The table is round and covered with a sort of carpet, and behind it on the wall is a sort of purple tapestry curtain thing, so it’s all a bit picturesque.

  ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ said Chloe, switching off the TV. ‘Don’t want to disturb Mum – she’s writing a poem about stars.’ She gave me a meaningful wink. Clearly privacy was our first priority.

  We trudged up to Chloe’s little room, which is always cosy and tidy but kind of drab. If only she was more into colour. She’s also got a horrible kind of tank thing in the corner where she used to keep her pet toads and poison frogs and things. (All now, thank God, gone to froggy heaven.) I sometimes think her previous love of slimy creatures has shaped her taste in boys. We sat on her bed.

  ‘My life is in ruins,’ said Chloe.

  ‘So’s mine,’ I replied.

  ‘OK,’ said Chloe. ‘Who’s going to go first?’

  ‘Let’s toss for it,’ I said, getting a coin out of my purse. I flicked it up towards the ceiling. It glittered in the lamplight, somehow reminding me of how much money I had to try and get my hands on for Tamsin.

  ‘Tails,’ said Chloe. This struck me as odd, as she usually says ‘heads’. And tails it was.

  .

  .

  25

  TUESDAY 7.32 p.m.

  Not completely convincing …

  ‘OK,’ said Chloe, ‘I’ve been totally stupid. Beast just used me. It’s so humiliating! He just snogged me for fun. Kind of because I was there. I mean, if you’d been in the back of that car with him, he’d have snogged you.’

  I wanted just to sympathise with Chloe, but what she’d said sounded faintly insulting somehow – as if it meant, Beast would have snogged anybody, even you. I knew she didn’t really mean it like that. But there was something else about it that I didn’t like.

  ‘I wouldn’t have let him snog me,’ I said. Instantly I regretted it. It made me seem kind of toffee-nosed and superior. I hadn’t meant it to.

  ‘Huh!’ said Chloe. ‘I’d like to see you try to stand up to him!’

  ‘No, no,’ I said, ‘the thing is, I don’t fancy him, Chloe. And you do, don’t you?’

  Chloe blushed. ‘I did,’ she admitted. ‘But now I hate him.’

  ‘Good. Because at one point I was beginning to think he’d ask you to go to the Earthquake Ball with him.’

  Chloe blushed again. ‘I would never even consider going to the Earthquake Ball with him, even if he wasn’t going with Lauren Piper.’

  The way she said ‘Lauren Piper’ tried to sound free and easy, as if Lauren was a major buddy, but I suspected that secretly Chloe was longing to transform Lauren into salami. As for all that ‘I hate Beast’ rubbish, only last Sunday – a mere two days ago, though it seemed more like two years – she’d said, ‘Beast is really just a pussycat. He’s absolutely adorable. He’s not at all like people say. He said I was beautiful.’ She said she hated him, but could I trust her to stick to her hate?

  ‘Never mind him,’ said Chloe, sticking out her lower lip. Then she gave me a kind of anxious, guilty look.

  ‘I’m really really sorry about the babysitting,’ she said. ‘I know I majorly let you down. I’m so sorry, Zoe. If only I’d gone babysitting with you instead of letting Beast take me to that horrible Next Big Thing! It was awful, Beast and Donut coming round to the Normans’ house and waking up the twins and stuff.
It was all my fault. Were the parents really cross? Did they give you a hard time?’

  ‘It’s kind of a big muddle,’ I said. ‘She was cross, so then I said I’d better not babysit for them any more, then she chased me down the street and begged me to reconsider.’

  ‘So will you never have to go there again?’ asked Chloe, looking mightily relieved.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I sighed. ‘It was all left up in the air. They didn’t pay me, either. I kind of left in a huff, sort of.’

  ‘Oh God!’ Chloe cringed. ‘I’m so sorry, Zoe. That was all my fault. I should have come babysitting with you. I was really mean. I hate myself.’

  ‘No need for melodrama,’ I assured her, biting my thumbnail (which I’d suddenly noticed was ragged). ‘Just never let it happen again, you bitch.’

  ‘Never!’ promised Chloe. ‘You’re my best mate, and if I ever let you down again may I be nibbled to death by poison toads.’ She stared solemnly at me and drew her finger across her own throat. Then she reached for her notebook and clicked her pen in a businesslike way. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s get back to the Ball. Let’s draw up another shortlist of boys who seemed too nerdy to consider last week. They might have matured unexpectedly in the last few days.’

  ‘Wait!’ I said. ‘You haven’t heard about how my life is in ruins, yet. Some best mate you are!’

  ‘Oh?’ said Chloe. ‘Is there more? Sorry. Tell me all about it. If anybody’s giving you a hard time, I’m going to eat them alive.’

  ‘Oh yeah?!’ I raised an eyebrow quizzically. ‘Forgive me, but don’t you only eat beans on toast?’

  I told her all about my awful bungled attempt to get to know Oliver, and his blanking me on the school field. She made a few sympathetic sounds, but to be honest she looked as if, somewhere in her heart of hearts, she was thinking about something or somebody else.

  Then I told her all about Tamsin’s probs. This time Chloe did seem sympathetic. She adores Tamsin. I think it’s partly because whenever they meet, Tam always says, ‘Oh, Chloe! You look absolutely fabulous!’ even if Chloe’s wearing a tired old sack with maggots literally peeping out of the ragged edges.