Жаклин Уилсон - Girls In Love

There doesn’t seem much point in asking Nadine. Magda asks Chrissie, but she’s already going to a party that night. She asks Jess but she says it’s not her kind of thing, thanks. She asks Amna who says she’d give anything to go but her dad would go bananas.

‘Maybe my dad won’t let me,’ I mumble.

‘Rubbish. Your dad seems really cool to me,’ says Magda.

Dad always makes a fuss of Magda when she comes round to our house.

‘I’ll ask him for you if you like,’ says Magda. ‘OK?’

I don’t really want her to. I don’t know if I really want to go to this party. What will I wear? What will I say? What am I expected to do ?’

‘What’s up?’ says Magda. ‘He knows you’re going out with Dan so you won’t let any other boy try it on at the party – so he can’t object, can he?’

Oh help. I’ll have to keep Magda away from Dad at all costs. Dad thinks it hilariously funny that I write so much to the real Dan. He’ll talk about him to Magda and she’ll twig what he’s really like.

‘No, leave Dad to me, I’ll handle him,’ I say firmly. ‘OK, I’ll go to the party with you, Magda.’

‘You won’t regret it, I promise,’ says Magda.

I regret agreeing almost immediately. I tell Dad about the party, practically hoping he’ll say no way. Anna is very doubtful, and asks straight away if the parents are going to be there and what about the drink/drugs situation and suppose there are gatecrashers?

‘Look, I don’t want to be rude, but I wasn’t asking you, Anna, I was asking Dad,’ I say. Though I’m secretly glad she’s pointed out all these objections.

I hope Dad will take them all on board and agree it’s out of the question.

But he doesn’t. ‘Come off it, Anna, you’re sounding positively middle-aged,’ he says. ‘This is just some tame little party at a schoolboy’s house. Why shouldn’t Ellie go? And she’ll be fine if Magda’s going too. That kid knows what she’s doing all right.’

‘I don’t give a damn about Magda. It’s Ellie. Does she know what she’s doing?’ says Anna.

‘We’ve got to credit her with some sense. You know enough not to do anything stupid, right, Ellie? You go to your party and have fun.’

‘I don’t think you’re being a very responsible parent,’ says Anna. ‘But then you’re not famed for your responsibility, are you?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ says Dad.

‘I think you know,’ says Anna.

‘I don’t have a clue,’ says Dad.

I don’t have a clue either but I leave them to have a row while I go up to my room. I get out all my clothes and try on every single item. I look a mess in everything. Fat. Babyish. So utterly uncool that I despair.

I’m still despairing on Saturday evening, even though Magda arrives early and gives me advice.

‘Dress down. You’ll look as if you’re trying too hard if you dress up. Wear your jeans. Not the cruddy ripped ones. The black.’

OK. So that’s my black jeans, even though they’re so tight I shall be cut in two if I sit down.

‘You won’t be sitting down, babe. You’ll be dancing,’ says Magda. She looks at my boots. ‘Well, lumbering.’ She sees my face. ‘ Joke , Ellie!’

I don’t feel like laughing. I feel so fat I select my biggest baggiest T-shirt to wear with the jeans.

‘No no no,’ says Magda. ‘Dress down but also dress sexy.’

‘But I’m not.’

‘You don’t have to be it. Just look it. Something little and tight on top. For God’s sake, Ellie, yours are Wonders without the bra. So if you’ve got it, flaunt it.’

I’ve never felt less like flaunting in my entire life. But I do as I’m told and put on an old purple T-shirt I wore when I was practically a little kid. It strains across my embarrassing chest. I look as if I’m wearing a giant rubber band but Magda insists I look fine. She makes me up with purple shadowed eyes to match the T-shirt and fusses that we haven’t got deep purple nail varnish too.

Dad is giving us a lift to this Adam’s house. (Magda is meeting Greg there.) Dad winks approvingly at Magda, who is looking ultra-cute in a little black skirt and a black-and-white top so short she shows her tiny waist whenever she moves. Dad stops winking and blinks when he sees me. ‘Ellie!’ he says.

‘What?’ I say, trying to sound surly and defiant – but my voice cracks.

‘Mmm. Well. You look very . . .’ He looks over at Anna. ‘Maybe this party isn’t such a good idea after all,’ he says. ‘I didn’t realize it was going to be so . . . grown up.’

Anna raises her eyebrows. Eggs jumps up onto the armchair. ‘Look at me! See how tall I am! I’m a grown-up. I want to go to the party.’ He jumps up onto the arm and slips.

Anna is kept busy quelling his yells and rubbing his sore bits. Dad sighs and offers us an arm each. ‘Allow me to escort you, ladies,’ he says.

He fusses in the car, grilling Magda about Greg and the other boys. He asks all Anna’s questions about parents and drink and drugs and insists that he will be waiting outside at twelve to take us home.

‘Like Cinderella. Only ball gowns aren’t what they used to be,’ he says, giving my T-shirt another nervous glance.

He looks a little reassured when we draw up outside Adam’s house, one of those cosy mock-Tudor jobs with a little goldfish pond and a garden gnome in a little red plaster cap and matching bootees. There’s a car parked in the drive.

‘Ah. At least his parents are at home,’ says Dad.

‘Cool subterfuge,’ Magda breathes in my ear.

But guess what? It’s not subterfuge at all. Adam’s mum comes to the door, in a pastel sweater and leggings, holding one of those big plastic plates with little sections for nuts and crisps and twiglets. ‘Ah! You two are . . .?’

‘I’m Magda and she’s Ellie,’ says Magda faintly.

‘And you’re friends of Adam’s?’

‘Well, I’m a friend of Greg. And he’s a friend of Adam,’ says Magda. ‘And Ellie’s my friend.’

I don’t feel like being Magda’s friend, not after tonight!

This is not a rave-up. This is a terrible embarrassing non-event. Adam is a boy who looks almost as young as Dan even though he’s in Year Eleven. He’s a little weedy whats it with an extremely protruberant Adam’s apple (appropriate), which bobs up and down when he talks.

For a long terrible while it’s just Adam and Magda and me in the living room, with Adam’s mum bustling in and out offering us party nibbles and some ghastly punch that’s got about one tot of red wine to every gallon of fruit juice. Damp shreds of maraschino cherry and tinned mandarin lodge against my teeth whenever I try to take a drink.

Adam hisses that his parents decided against their weekend break because his dad has a shocking cold. We hear frequent explosive sneezing from upstairs. I don’t think there are going to be any heavy bedroom sessions tonight somehow.

Greg turns up eventually. Magda gives him a hard time, whispering furiously in his crimson ear.

One more boy arrives half an hour later. He’s clutching a can of lager and boasts that he’s had a few already. He keeps belching. Adam finds this funny and swigs from the can too when his mum is out of the room.

I would sooner go out with Dan than these two.

I would sooner go out with Eggs .

Why doesn’t anyone else come???

After endless awful ages there’s another knock and it sounds as if there’s a whole crowd of boys outside but when Adam’s mum goes to the door there’s a whole load of spluttering and mumbled excuses and someone says they’ve come to the wrong house and they all charge off.