by Frances Vick
Lisa scowled. ‘It is from Oman. He said I’m not allowed to wear it at home in case Mum sees it, but I asked if I could take it to school with me to show you, and he said yes. He didn’t want to say yes either. He said you’d be jealous and you are.’ She paused to assess Kirsty’s lack of enthusiasm. ‘You’re jealous.’
‘I’m not,’ Kirsty replied. She really wasn’t.
‘Well you will be soon.’ Lisa twirled the ring. ‘He says he’s going to give me a matching necklace too. For my birthday. And you know Harvest Festival? They say they’re going to come. Him and Mo. I asked them to come.’
The bell rang then. ‘What? Why?’
Lisa rolled her eyes. ‘To meet you. I told them about you and showed them your picture, and Mo said you were really pretty and he wanted to meet you. In Oman they’re royal, they’re real actual princes, and anyone who marries them will be a princess. I wanted us both to be princesses, but maybe I don’t now, because you’re too babyish.’
Kirsty couldn’t help feeling a shy pride… someone thought she was pretty? A boy thought she was pretty! OK, not a boy, a man, but still…
‘You can’t just become a princess though.’
‘Princess Di did,’ Lisa replied smartly.
That was true. ‘Yeah, but—’
‘She married a prince, and now she’s a princess.’
‘But, she’s grown up! I mean, we’re in school and you can’t get married when you’re in school—’
Lisa flapped a dismissive hand. ‘Yes you can. You can in Oman. It’s different there. They told me, they can have lots of wives and you don’t get married like in a church, but you just kind of say you’re married and you are.’
Kirsty thought about this for a minute. It could be true. ‘How? How can you just say you’re married?’
Lisa made that irritated gesture again. ‘You fall in love and then you kiss and then you say some words and stuff and then you’re married. He told me. Things are different there.’ Her face creased with annoyance. ‘I knew you wouldn’t get it!’
And she tossed her head, pushed past her, and left the toilets with great dignity.
Kirsty shuffled about by herself for a while feeling doubtful and confused. When she got back to class Lisa had installed Jackie Johnson in Kirsty’s seat, so she had to sit at the back between Alexandra Wass, who was from a weird religious family who didn’t even own a TV, and David Briggs, who ate his own earwax. It was humiliating.
Lisa punished Kirsty for her insubordination all day. They walked home in silence until, on the Iron Bridge, Kirsty eventually cracked and apologised. After that, all the way past the secondary school, under the canal bridge, through the park, Lisa talked incessantly about Tokki, about the desert and oases and flying carpets and showers of gold. To Kirsty it just sounded like she’d watched a lot of movies, and she even recognised huge chunks of one of her breathless tales had been lifted from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad because she’d watched it herself with her parents only that weekend. Still, it was so nice to be friends again that she didn’t challenge her.
They were nearly at the park gate when Lisa started yawning, stretching, yawning again, before finally mock-stumbling, halting altogether.
‘I’m so tired.’
‘Come on, we’ll be late for Crackerjack. It’s the Spooky Special today.’
‘I know all about spooky stuff.’ Lisa drawled. Kirsty kept walking. ‘Wait!’ Lisa commanded. Kirsty, reluctantly, stopped, turned. Lisa yawned yet again, meaningfully. ‘I hardly got any sleep last night. We got back so late I slept in my make-up!’
‘Why were you wearing make-up?’
‘Because Tokki took me to the cinema last night? That’s why I was wearing make-up ’cause it was an 18? And we watched a horror film and it was about this man? Who killed this other man? And then they buried him but he kept coming back? It was scary. And when we got home I didn’t want to go to the bathroom and wash my face even, and I couldn’t be alone I was so scared, so Tokki stayed with me until I wasn’t frightened any more.’
‘What d’you mean, he stayed with you?’ They were approaching the park gates now, leading to the car park of Kwik Save. From here it was only ten minutes from home. There was no-one around.
‘Oh, I shouldn’t! I promised I wouldn’t tell!’
Kirsty didn’t want to miss Crackerjack, she was going to have to muster up an appropriate level of interest, otherwise Lisa wouldn’t move.
‘Lise! Lisa, come on, tell me!’
That did it. Lisa was ready to deliver her prepared killer line. ‘OK, earlier? I lied. We’re not engaged… we’re married!’ she squealed. ‘Me and Tokki!’
‘What d’you mean, you’re married?’
‘I can’t tell you because it’s a ritual? From Oman? And it’s secret, but when you get engaged to Mo he’ll explain it all and then we can talk all about it. You can get the same ring as me, too, but with emerald eyes so they won’t get mixed up.’ She punched Kirsty lightly on the arm. ‘We’ll be princesses together! He’s gorgeous, is Mo. I said to Tokki that he’d better watch out ’cause I might marry Mo too!’
‘Can you do that in Oman?’ Kirsty, dazed, asked.
‘Oh yeah. You can do that in Oman. You can do anything in Oman.’
The phrase stuck with Kirsty. You can do anything in Oman. Anything? Perhaps you could eat whatever you wanted, and watch whatever you wanted on TV, and stay up late and wear make-up (or not). Being a princess didn’t seem very interesting, but maybe princesses were different in Oman too. Maybe they didn’t have to wear Peter Pan collars and sensible shoes and smile emptily at lines of old ladies and cradle crying babies, like Princess Di had to. Maybe being a princess in Oman was… exciting?
She closed her eyes, trying to summon a suitably appealing image – herself and Lisa on a yacht, brown and lean as those girls in that Duran Duran video, their eyes hidden by enormous sunglasses, holding glasses of cool-looking liquids with their elegant, unbitten fingers. It was a nice image. Tokki and Mo weren’t in it because she didn’t know what they looked like – it was just her and Lisa. Chink-chink went the ice in the glasses as the sun dipped down into the waves turning them orange, red. And they would finish their drinks and… then what? Dress for dinner? She imagined them slipping into identical slinky outfits, applying sugary lip gloss and emerging into the twilight even more languidly beautiful, taking the arms of their faceless husbands, and then… and then… what? S.E.X.?
You can do anything in Oman.
‘Mum, have you ever been to Oman?’
‘Isn’t it a Scottish island or something?’ Sarah Cooper was pulling steaming wet clothes out of the washing machine. ‘The bloody spin’s broken again.’
‘No, it’s abroad. It’s deserts and stuff. Camels.’
‘No, I’ve not been to Oman. What d’you want to know about Oman for?’
‘Lisa’s new lodgers are from Oman. They’re princes.’
Mum peered irritably at the washing machine dial. ‘They won’t be princes.’
‘They are, Lisa said so.’
‘If they’re princes, why’re they lodging at Denise Cook’s house then? Why’re they living in Beacon Hill? Why aren’t they living at The Ritz or something?’
‘What’s The Ritz?’
‘A posh hotel in London.’
‘Well they couldn’t stay in London, ’cause they’re learning English at college here.’
Mum gave the washing machine a little kick and that seemed to start its juddery spin cycle. ‘Now it does it! After I’ve got the bloody washing out!’
‘They’re learning English at Marlborough House.’
‘Lisa’s having you on, love. She’s joking.’
Kirsty was indignant. ‘She’s not! They’re princes and they even want to make her into a princess! They’re—’
‘Kirsty, look!’ Mum interrupted urgently.
‘What?’
‘Look, there, out of the window! Can you see it?’
; Kirsty trotted to the window excitedly. ‘What? What is it?’
‘A pig! Can you see it?’
‘A pig?’
‘Yeah. Flying. Can you see it?’
Kirsty frowned. ‘That’s not funny.’
‘I bet if Lisa told you that, you’d make out you saw it.’ Mum smiled a bit grimly. ‘You believe everything that girl says. You need to watch that.’
‘But—’
‘Lisa Cook is no princess, and whoever Denise is letting that room to, they’re no princes either. Have some sense. Lisa lies like a rug.’
‘She does not!’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ The washing machine was making a wheezing, clunking sound as the spin cycle slowed. ‘This thing is on its last legs.’
‘She’s not lying!’ Kirsty insisted.
‘Really?’ Mum swung to face her, her hands on her hips, her tired eyes narrowed. ‘What about that time she was here for a sleepover and she stole your Care Bear and tried to say she didn’t, even though I saw her put it in her bag? And when she told us her uncle had died in the Falklands and she doesn’t even have an uncle?’
Mum didn’t like Lisa much. She once said that everyone who lived in the Beacon Hill estate was a bunch of pikeys. Kirsty didn’t know what pikey meant and had looked it up in the dictionary, but it wasn’t in there, and any word that wasn’t in the dictionary had to be Very Bad.
‘There’s lots of girls you could hang around with. Nicola? Or that new girl, Lorraine? She does horse riding.’ Sarah left a little pause, as if horse riding proved Lorraine’s superiority over the lumpen proletariat populating St Joseph’s Primary. ‘I’m not sure you should be walking back with Lisa after all. Maybe you can stay at the school until five and I can pick you up?’
Kirsty’s heart stuttered. Walking home from school had been a hard-won victory – it had taken weeks to talk Mum round! If she changed her mind she’d have to wait in the empty school for ages, and creepy Mr Ferabee the caretaker might talk to her, or try to make her help clean up or something… And so she reached for a reassuring lie.
‘I walk part of the way with Nicola now too, and yeah, you’re right, I think Lisa’s joking, I really do. She has a big imagination.’
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Mum snorted.
‘What’s for tea?’
‘Fish fingers and chips.’ She kicked the washing machine again. ‘This bloody thing! Life of its own!’
And that was the end of their first and only conversation about Toqueer Mohammed Al-Balushi. At least until Lisa disappeared.
Three
That sly, scary doggerel haunted her all night: You can do anything in Oman… You fall in love and then you kiss and then… And then what? S.E.X. It had to mean that, surely? She could ask Mum but what if she got embarrassed, started one of those earnest, confusing, blushing conversations, like the one they’d had about ‘periods’? Kirsty still didn’t know what a ‘period’ was, but she knew she never wanted to feel that mortified ever again.
And so she sat upstairs in her room, cuddling her Cheer Care Bear, telling herself she didn’t need to worry about the princess thing. The engagement thing. It was just Lisa lying. Silly. It was all just silly lies. Like the uncle in the Falklands, or the dolphins she’d swum with in Majorca, Tokki and Mo probably didn’t even exist. Of course they didn’t! Mum was right, as if a prince would live in Beacon Hill! And if they didn’t even exist, they couldn’t show up at Harvest Festival, could they?
But they did show up. And that’s when everything started to go wrong.
Pink cut-out letters, stuck on the low proscenium, proclaimed, ‘Thank You God, for the Harvest!’ Below were arranged the sad little pyramids of canned peas and corned beef, retrieved by harassed parents from the back of cupboards and shoved into school bags at the last minute. Reverend Gary, the local vicar, having already led the children through a confusing, boring talk about loaves and fishes, was now hobnobbing with the few parents who’d attended as well as the odd pensioner who never missed one of Gary’s performances wherever it was. Mrs Butler was grimly pounding out her small repertoire of hymns on the piano and Kirsty was revelling in the relief that the princes hadn’t come after all. She was back in class, putting on her coat, looking forward to going outside to take advantage of the baggy half hour after Harvest Festival to hunt for conkers. She knew where the best ones were, and if she was quick she could grab them all. Last year she’d been the conker-fight queen – and she’d kept her winning weapon – a 25-er – scarred and dented, the string running through it ragged and stained, in one of her treasure boxes at home. Just then a kid from the infants tugged on her sleeve.
‘Gottercometothehall,’ he said. ‘Gottercomenow.’
‘Why?’ she asked, but the child just shrugged, shoved a finger in one crusty nostril and wandered away.
Back in the hall Lisa was waving extravagantly, squealing, ‘Kirsty! Kirstee!’ Beside her stood two men, dark-skinned, impossibly, confusingly, real. They were both quite short, and Tokki – it had to be Tokki because Lisa was trying to hold his hand in a proprietorial way – in particular was slump-shouldered and had a little pot belly that strained against his polo shirt. It seemed weird for a prince to wear something like a polo shirt… Mo was taller, skinnier; his shiny grey trousers barely grazed his thighs, falling in polyester puddles to his tan plastic shoes. Both men were smiling, and their smiles were nice enough, though their teeth were brown and small, like bad baby teeth.
They didn’t look like princes.
Both men held a gnarly-looking loaf. ‘Special bread! From Oman!’ Lisa told her. Kirsty didn’t see how it could be edible after being sent all that way, but she just nodded, blushed, and stared at the floor.
There was an awkward pause. Lisa let out a silly little titter.
‘She’s shy,’ she told the men.
Kirsty kept her eyes on the floor, sodden with shame at her own timidity, angry with Lisa for putting her in this position in the first place, shocked that this most ridiculous of lies wasn’t a lie after all. And if they were real, maybe Lisa was married? Maybe they were here to marry her too! The world swam and she felt suddenly very sick and very scared and very, very young.
‘Me and Kirsty, we’re going to live together, aren’t we? We’re going to live right next door to each other, and we’ll have one big garden, won’t we? And…’ Lisa had run out of things to say. The silence stretched. Even Mrs Butler had stopped murdering the piano and was struggling into her fawn-coloured coat. ‘Say something!’ Lisa hissed at Kirsty. To the men she tittered.
‘Is it hot in Oman?’ Kirsty muttered. They didn’t understand her. A furious blush spread over her cheeks. There was another long pause.
Tokki spoke then. He said, ‘You like sport?’
Somehow that seemed to unfreeze Kirsty. She even managed to look up at them. Both men were smiling and Mo made a running movement with his arms and said, ‘Athletics. You like sports?’
‘No,’ Kirsty managed, and she backed away. ‘Nicetomeetyou.’
She saw Lisa frowning, saw the men’s smiles stay static, she felt her wobbling legs carry her to the double doors, and then she ran to the toilets and cried.
* * *
‘I told them how you were my best friend and I’d only be a princess if you were too, and you made me look awful!’ Lisa’s thin, petulant little voice bounced around in the tiled room. ‘Boys don’t like shy girls.’
‘Well they’re not boys anyway,’ Kirsty muttered.
‘You’re a baby,’ Lisa told her scornfully.
‘At least I’m not some… stupid… cow, who likes ugly weird men with bad teeth!’ Kirsty pushed past her then, out into the corridor, and Lisa came barrelling out after her, chased her into the playground, and soon the school thrummed with the excitement of a fight! Now! Excited kids washed up onto the playing field behind the trees (the traditional place for all fights to be held) like so much flotsam and gasped as Lisa smacked Kirsty in the face with
a plastic skittle gone astray from the infants’. Kirsty retaliated by shoving her fingers deep into Lisa’s hair, grabbing at the roots and pulling hard. They struggled, and tore and kicked and thrashed for a few minutes, before the breathless chant of ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ from the crowd drew the attention of the dinner ladies who pulled them away from each other with their slab-like arms and sent them straight to Miss Farnell’s office where they were told that Ladies-Don’t-Fight-and-Enough-of-this-Nonsense-and-Set-an-Example-for-the-Smaller-Children.
True to code, both girls were silent and remorseful in the office, but once they were outside, Lisa thumped Kirsty on the back, and Kirsty kicked Lisa in the shin. Lisa hissed that she didn’t want to be friends any more and she didn’t want to go to secondary school with her and she could forget about them living next door to each other too. That stung, because Kirsty had always liked the idea of them being neighbours when they were old, old ladies in their forties or fifties… She said in a wobbly voice that that was just fine, and Lisa flashed her new sharp, nasty smile, but her eyes were a bit wet too.
For the next week, Kirsty played with other people, the girls she used to play with before Lisa monopolised her. They were happy to have her back; they seemed to see it as their Christian duty, nodded forgivingly, knowingly at her, and included her in their skipping games which Lisa said were babyish, but that was probably because she was bad at them. These girls were the serious, hair-combed, sedate types that Kirsty’s mum liked.
In the meantime, Lisa scampered about on her own, pretending to have fun. She smiled a lot, but every now and again she’d forget to, and her face was so desolate, so lonely. There were big sleepless smudges under her eyes, and she didn’t wear the snake ring any more. It wasn’t long before Kirsty relented, started saying the odd word to her, walking a little closer to her over the Iron Bridge. They got back together, like an old couple, or a bad band, and the sensible, well-groomed girls who skipped watched the process with a kind of adult sorrow. Lisa was A Bad Lot. Kirsty was Too Nice. But, such was life. What could you do?
