The Beloved Girls

by Harriet Evans

  Giles came towards us: tall, broad, flashy. Janey took a step back.

  ‘Kitty!’ he said, in a voice of booming bonhomie. ‘Guys! Look, Kitty is here, and she’s brought someone.’

  I kissed his cheek, but he didn’t respond.

  ‘This is Janey,’ I said. ‘You remember, she’s staying with us.’

  ‘Right.’ He nodded, sort of, towards her, but didn’t look at her. ‘Hey, congrats, Kitty,’ he said. ‘I hear you got your A-levels, babe.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah.’ I picked a strand of still-damp hair out of my face, running it through my fingers, flicking it behind my back. Lucy Calthorpe, watching, mechanically did the same.

  The background chatter in the pub stayed loud, but I knew most eyes were on us, or, if not, that they knew this was happening.

  ‘You must be really pleased. I flunked mine. But who cares?’ Giles came up and put one large arm around me, squeezing me. He ignored Janey. As he got closer I smelled cigarettes, stale beer, pot and something funky. He was holding a pool cue. ‘Are you ready to make some music?’ He twisted a lock of my hair around one finger.

  ‘Sure am,’ I said, trying to gee myself up. His finger turned, rolling the hair tighter. ‘But maybe in a bit, Janey and I might get a drink, chat first.’

  ‘Oh.’ He was still ignoring her. ‘I missed you at rehearsal the other day. Thought you’d dumped us.’

  ‘You’re pulling my hair.’ I put my hand up to his.

  ‘I’m just saying – you got so drunk the time before we had to drop you back at home, then you miss the next one . . .’

  The time I’d been late, and he’d forced me to drink half a bottle of voddy, then smoke some weed, then rehearse, but I was flopping around all over the place, so he’d driven me home, stopping to make me have sex in the back of the car, in a layby. He’d screeched along the driveway, doing a handbrake turn, and opening the door, pushed me out onto the gravel. Aunty Ros had seen me, tumbling out onto the ground, skirt around my waist. But I was so drunk I couldn’t tell her what had happened.

  ‘It hurts, Giles. Stop it.’

  ‘Oh. Does it?’ But he didn’t stop twisting, and then he took more hair into his hand, wrapping it over and under his fist. I moved my head, to accommodate the pain, move closer to his fingers.

  In my ear, as I drew closer, he whispered: ‘Don’t fucking stand me up again. OK?’

  My neck was bent, one leg and hip lifted higher as his finger rose up, the tight gold spool of my hair around it. ‘Yeah – yeah,’ I said, my eyes watering, trying not to let them. You couldn’t flap or cry with Giles, he’d sense the weakness. ‘Look, sorry. We had the stuff with Rory, and the bees, and that girl I told you about staying –’

  ‘I’m the girl. Hi.’ I had almost forgotten Janey, standing behind me. ‘Could you stop doing that to her hair, please? She doesn’t like it.’

  Giles gave a bark of laughter, but didn’t let go.

  ‘Hi. Really pleased to meet you,’ he said, in that honeyed, English charming way that he did so well. ‘Luce!’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Kitty’s here!’

  ‘Yay!’ came a voice. ‘Seen her already. Hi, Kits. Love you.’

  These boys thought of themselves as radically disparate to each other, in the matter of length of forelock, preference for rugger or cricket, beer or port. (Nico was wildly different, because he was half-Greek, a fact remarked on by them all the time.) They were all white, all definitely straight, they all liked sport, and loved England, and would vote Conservative.

  ‘Giles,’ I said. My nostrils stung, my eyes stung; every now and then he’d tighten and it would be painful in a whole new way. Never mind, I found myself thinking. If he pulls harder the hair will just come out. It can’t keep getting worse. ‘Hey – I love curls, but shall we go and –’

  ‘Hi! Giles,’ Janey’s voice was carrying. ‘Catherine is asking you to stop. Didn’t you hear her?’

  I don’t think he even registered she’d spoken. ‘Don’t. Do. That. Again,’ he whispered in my ear, cutting across me. ‘If I say we rehearse we rehearse. If I say let’s go to the pub you get here early. You let me down. Don’t. Why do you do this to me? OK?’ He yanked the head again, and then suddenly gave a high-pitched, strangulated squawk. ‘Ouch! Ow! Ow! What the fuck?’

  His finger was so tightly wound around my hair he couldn’t free himself, and it took a moment, as he screeched even more loudly, a sound like a cross between a sheep’s bleating protest and a bird being strangled. ‘What the –’

  He twisted around, to see wax from one of the candles in the wall brazier was dripping into his hoodie, onto his neck.

  Janey stood at a distance. Her arms were folded, her coat jacket over her arms.

  ‘She asked you to stop,’ she said.

  Giles glared at her, his face red, rubbing his neck. ‘Hey. Was that you, snooker ball?’

  ‘Come on,’ said Janey, walking to the bar, through a throng of curious, staring teenagers. ‘I’ll buy you a drink, Kitty.’

  She crossed over, ignoring Giles, but he watched her. His face had that set expression of studied lightness I knew so well. Janey leaned on the bar and nodded to Pete, the landlord. ‘Evening. Vodka, lime and soda for me please. And you? Yep. Two, please.’

  ‘Course, madam,’ said Pete, casting a dubious look at the Pollys, the Lucys, the Guys and Sebs and Nicos. ‘Single or double?’

  She smiled at him. ‘Oh, double I should think, don’t you, Kitty?’

  I couldn’t meet her gaze. But I knew she had seen the layers peeling off me. Like dead skin, withering in front of her eyes. She knew now I had no power. That outside the gates of Vanes, I was a wounded animal, a joke. Lucy Calthorpe, staring at Janey, giggled as Seb whispered in her ear. I saw her eyes, roving over Janey’s patchy head, her curious uneven dress, her clompy loafers.

  ‘Where are you at school then, Jane?’ Lucy asked her.

  Janey said brightly: ‘St Cecilia’s. It’s in Greenford.’

  ‘St . . . Cecilia’s? Lovely. Is it girls only?’

  ‘Yup. It is lovely,’ said Janey. ‘It’s just lovely. So lovely.’

  ‘Right,’ said Lucy, uncertainly. Polly, standing next to her, smiled.

  ‘What happened to your hair?’ she said, swigging down her vodka tonic.

  ‘My father killed himself, and all my hair fell out,’ said Janey. ‘Here you go, Kitty. Cheers.’ She clinked her glass against mine, as the others stared.

  I looked at Giles. He was smoking, moodily, muttering something to Guy, a tall, raffish, vague boy everyone fancied. Guy’s mother had modelled for Chanel. Now she was in a clinic with some undiagnosed condition. Guy hadn’t seen her for two years. It made him very needy. He was the drummer. I liked him the most of them all. He smiled at me, and nodded.

  ‘Hi there, Kitty. When do we go on, Giles?’

  ‘Not sure. Pete’s being a bastard about it. He says it’ll put the tourists off. But I say screw that, Petey baby!’ Giles turned round and hoicked himself up onto the bar.

  ‘Listen, Mr Giles. I can’t turn paying customers away and you’re too loud. Better to stick to the jukebox instead, on a hot summer’s evening like this.’

  ‘The jukebox?’ Giles said incredulously. ‘You booked us, though, Pete. I mean –’ He turned, suddenly, pointing his finger at Janey. ‘You. Why are you laughing?’

  Janey put down her glass. ‘Me? Because it’s funny.’

  He stood closer. ‘How so, Patch?’

  ‘Aahh,’ said Janey. ‘Another good one. It’s funny because even the person who booked you doesn’t want you to play on the grounds you’re too loud, which is a nice way of saying you’re shit.’

  Guy laughed and then stopped, abruptly. ‘You don’t know anything,’ Giles said.

  Janey said: ‘I know lots, actually. And definitely more than you.’

  She didn’t care, that was what was so fine about it all. Janey Lestrange did not care. I had grown up knowing I had my place in the world – I was:


  a) Decorative

  b) Charming

  c) Good at setting the table

  d) Leggy. ‘She’s a very leggy girl.’ Did anyone say that about Joss, whose legs also grew alarmingly long, the same summer? What do you think?

  ‘Show us, then,’ Giles said, with a small smile. He clapped his hands, starting a slow hand clap. ‘Show. Us. Then. OK, Pete. We’ll stand down. We’ve got some celebrating to do, anyway. Another night!’ He shrugged, like he’d taken the decisions. ‘Let’s have some jukebox time, instead. So. What music do you like, Patch?’

  I remember her expression. No anger, just calm. Summing up the facts, considering how best to rebut them. She reached into her pocket and removed her blue Sony Walkman. Nico, or Alex, or one of the band members, sniggered.

  ‘A mix tape,’ said Cleone, a jolly, husky-voiced girl, Polly’s cousin. She had left school the previous year and gone to university in Edinburgh. ‘Bloody love a mix tape.’

  ‘Great!’ Janey pressed ‘play’ on the CD cassette player resting on the bar.

  ‘Coming up, the UK official Top Ten,’ the tape announced, in a tinny voice. ‘And at number ten, it’s “Eternal Flame”, by those Bangles!’ And the keyboard, with its little cascade, led into the song. I half-closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear to watch. She’d seemed infallible to me, but that was within the boundaries of Vanes.

  Janey swayed in time to the music. Next to her, Cleone hummed loudly, slightly drunkenly. ‘Good song,’ Janey said. ‘Really good. We used to dance to it in the kitchen, and sing into wooden spoons, my dad and me. But this is my favourite.’ She fast-forwarded it, and ‘Days’, by Kirsty MacColl, started playing.

  I’d always thought it was just a sweet, jangling song – it was on the radio all the time that summer, and Janey was always playing it in her room, especially when she was entertaining Joss. But listening to it now as though for the first time, I realised how weird it was. Not a dreamy, summer song at all.

  ‘My dad loved the Kinks,’ Janey said. ‘I love Kirsty MacColl. Ray Davies, of The Kinks wrote it. So it was a song we both liked.’

  She started humming along, and for a moment everyone stopped and listened, to that bright voice echoing through the dingy, smoke-filled air of the pub.

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ There was a silence. ‘Who’s going to laugh at it? It’s funny, isn’t it, liking a song like that?’

  There was something in her quiet, amused voice. Like she knew them all, and knew they were losers.

  She’d stopped the tape, and was fast-forwarding it, and the trundling wheels rattled as they turned. Even Pete had stopped polishing glasses and was leaning over, listening. She pressed ‘play’.

  ‘More. The Queen herself, the one and only, the greatest, the woman who shows us the way . . .’ I realised then she’d drunk a bit more than me at supper. ‘Madonna!’

  ‘Like a prayer . . . Ahahahahahhh,’ she warbled. She had a terrible voice. But she held us all in the palm of her hand, that was what I hadn’t realised before, with the spark in her eyes, with her quiet energy, not by shouting loudly. ‘Just like a prayer! Possibly the greatest album of all time, Like a Prayer. You’re not singing, Giles!’

  ‘You’re ruining everyone’s evening,’ Giles said, smiling. ‘That’s why. Some chaps have come from miles away, OK? It’s a special evening for a lot of us and you’re not bloody getting it. Now listen, Patch –’

  But Janey had pressed fast-forward again, and then stop, and Phil Collins was singing. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve got the soundtrack to Buster. Yes, I bought it with my own money when I was sixteen. Got a problem with that? No?’

  (I did have a problem with it, but I didn’t feel then was the time to point it out.)

  Janey downed the rest of her drink, as the door swung open, banging loudly. She turned and nodded. I looked over to see Joss, framed in the doorway, summer evening sun casting a halo around him. His shoulders were drooping, and he was panting – he must have run down the hill.

  ‘I yelled at you to stop so you could give me a lift,’ he shouted. ‘I wanted to come too, Kits.’

  I shook my head at him, hopelessly.

  Janey pressed play one more time, and Transvision Vamp came on.

  ‘Oh baby, I don’t care . . .’

  She started dancing, and I saw then that she really could dance – and I remembered that time at the pool, when we’d danced together, when I’d realised again that connection between us. Her lithe, androgynous body moved smoothly, her hands above her head, fists touching. She swayed, smiling, eyes closed, mouthing to the chorus.

  Two or three other girls started dancing – Cleone, Polly, even Amarinth. Lucy stayed stock still, looking up at Giles for his reaction. The boys were also silent, as if not quite sure what to do.

  I saw Joss, suddenly, in the doorway – terrified, and angry, and I felt sorrow. We’d left school. We didn’t have to face any of those people again. I was out of there, I had left already, but Joss knew he would always be here. In the pub, in the village square, at the church on Christmas Eve, at the school for his son’s first day at Farrars. He was incapable of change. He glanced at Janey.

  ‘You said she was fit, Joss,’ Giles said. ‘Mate. Come on.’

  ‘Come,’ I said, and I finished my drink, and took Janey’s arm. She stopped dancing, obediently, and I knew we were as one.

  ‘Are we going now?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. The edges of my vision were blurry. I blinked and gripped her arm more tightly. We turned for the door, and I inhaled the scent of the party – cheap perfume, sweat, cigarette smoke, beer, fried stuff, bleach.

  ‘You’re not going, are you?’ said Giles, in surprise, as if he couldn’t conceive why I wouldn’t want to stay.

  You never seemed nervous, Janey said to me afterwards. You seemed in control, all the time. You’d smile that smile. And you looked like you were sure about everything.

  ‘I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to sleep with you any more. In fact’ – I blinked, trying to make the whirring visions go away – ‘I don’t want to see you again.’

  I said it softly, but I had my keys in my hand, in case he tried to hurt me.

  ‘I’m not sure I’ve finished with you yet.’ He gave a slow smile. ‘So . . . Yeah. Let’s wait and see.’

  ‘No, let’s not.’ I shook myself, and clenched my jaw. ‘You have finished with me and I have with you.’

  His face pressed close to mine. There was no expression in his dark eyes which was worse, I wasn’t sure why. One eyelid twitched. ‘Like I say. I decide.’

  ‘Janey, let’s go,’ I said, and I stepped away from him.

  ‘Look, Kitty,’ Joss began. ‘Not that it’s a big deal, but Nico’s filled me in, and it’s a bit – well, it’s really uncool the way you’ve ruined everyone’s evening so –’

  ‘OK, thanks. Bye, Joss,’ I said, patting his arm.

  Outside, the air was fresh, and sweet; the crisp scent of autumn. I felt a horror slide over me, the idea of something ending and something new around the corner, something terrifying. It flooded me, when it came, this idea, and was often all I could think about.

  We got into the car and I drove away, fast.

  ‘That was –’ Janey began, as we climbed the hill. ‘That was intense. Are those people seriously your friends?’

  I swerved into a layby fringed with heavy beech trees, and turned the engine off, then closed my eyes, willing the blurry moving images away. ‘Yes,’ I said, through quick, low breaths.

  ‘Are you OK, Kitty?’

  ‘Course I am. I’ve had this before.’ I put my hand on her arm. ‘God, Janey, you’re cool.’ I started to laugh. ‘And you’re crackers.’

  She gave a snort. ‘Am I? I don’t care. More and more, I’m realising I don’t care. A bit like the song.’

  ‘What don’t you care about?’

  Janey leaned back in the seat, rubbing her scalp, eyes narrowed.

  ‘Oh. Well, I
suppose – any of it? Class, patriarchy, feudalism, conforming. My mother is obsessed with all that, with who mattered, who was at the Greenford Ladies Society luncheon that week, who had a new hat, who went to a garden party at Buckingham Palace. The irony is she’s the one who had an affair and broke up a marriage.’ She laughed. ‘You look blank.’ We were both silent, and I heard an owl hooting somewhere in the distance. ‘It’s later than I thought.’ I looked carefully at her, at her thin, sculpted lips, her high cheekbones, her wide eyes. She put her hand on my cheek, traced my lips with her finger. Then she kissed me.

  I’d kissed her before, but this was different. She had come to me.

  ‘I suddenly wanted to,’ she said, leaning back. ‘Sorry. Phew. I’m – I never behave like this. Most daring thing I’ve done is not tell a boy I liked him.’

  ‘I wanted to as well,’ I said. ‘Do I taste the same as Joss?’

  She blushed at that. ‘I deserve that.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘What? You kissing me or you sleeping with my brother?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘No, neither of them,’ I said. We stared at each other, flushed, eyes wide open. Hers were deep, deep blue, I’d never noticed before quite how pure their colour was, like the darkest sweet peas in the sheltered spot of the garden. ‘Listen, Janey.’ My hand tightened its grip on hers. ‘You have to help me. You want to escape, don’t you?’

  She hesitated. ‘I – I don’t know.’

  I tried not to show my irritation, or my desperation. ‘You – you can see this place for what it is, can’t you?’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that,’ she said, looking me over. ‘You’re sick of it. It’s new to me. It’s kind of magical, Kitty, and it’s not being at home and – I – I like it here.’

  ‘No, you like Joss’s willy,’ I said frankly. I moved closer to her. My heart was beating in my throat, and behind my eyeballs my head was pounding. ‘Listen. You know he’s not for you. You know he wants to stay here forever. That’s not what you want, Janey! The Collecting is next week, and the day after you’re supposed to go home. We haven’t got long.’