Жаклин Уилсон - Girls In Love

‘What are you staring at?’ she says.

‘Nadine! Isn’t it flipping obvious ?’ says Magda. ‘Can’t you get Liam to eat a decent meal before he goes out with you? He seems to want to slurp great gobbets out of you all the time.’

‘Just mind your own business, OK?’ says Nadine.

Magda shrugs and saunters out of the changing rooms. I hang back. Nadine knows I’m still here but she bends down, fussing with her shoes. Her hair swings forward and I see the startlingly white scalp at her parting. I remember when we used to play hairdressers and how I loved to brush Nadine’s long soft rustling hair, so different from my own mass of wire wool.

‘Naddie-Baddie,’ I say softly. I haven’t called her that since we were in the infants.

She looks up and she’s suddenly herself again. ‘Ellie-Smellie,’ she says.

‘Oh, Nad. Make friends, eh?’

‘I didn’t ever break friends.’

‘Yes, but you’ve been all cold and narky.’

‘Well, you started it, gabbing to Magda.’

‘I know, I’m sorry. I could have bitten my tongue off for telling her. Look.’ I stick my tongue out and mime biting it. I’m a little too enthusiastic with my demonstration and my teeth sink in before I can stop them. ‘ Ouch! ’

‘Oh, Ellie, you are a nutcase.’ Nadine gives me a quick hug. ‘We’re friends, OK?’

‘I’m so glad. I can’t stand not being friends with you,’ I say, sucking my tongue. ‘Are you going to be friends with Magda too?’

‘Well, only if she stops giving me grief about Liam. She’s just jealous anyway, because he’s so dishy, a hundred times better than that Greg of hers.’

‘Cheek!’ says Magda, who’s come running back to see what’s happened to me. Then she laughs. ‘But certainly partly true. Greg isn’t a patch on Liam when it comes to looks. When I first saw your Liam I was dead jealous, I admit it. But now . . . Oh, Nadine, can’t you see, he’s just using you.’

‘No, he’s not. He really cares about me. He can barely leave me alone when we’re together,’ Nadine says.

‘Yes, but that’s just sex, Nadine. That’s all he wants. He doesn’t even take you out properly. Just gets you to go off on all these walks.’

‘He does so take me out. We’re going to Seventh Heaven on Saturday night,’ says Nadine. ‘He’s got these freebee tickets from a mate.’

‘Wow! Seventh Heaven!’ I say. It’s the newest and baddest and best club. Everyone’s desperate to go there. None of our lot has made it yet.

‘But what about my birthday?’ says Magda. ‘I thought you guys were coming round to my place, right? And we would go out all girls together?’

‘Oh, God,’ says Nadine. ‘I forgot, Magda! And these tickets, they’re just for Saturday night. Oh, what am I going to do?’

‘It’s OK,’ says Magda. ‘You go. Who’d want to pass up a chance to go to Seventh Heaven? Hey! Ellie, how about if you and me go too? I’ll get my dad to cough up the cash. Don’t worry, Nadine, we won’t cramp your style. We’ll keep well away from you and Dracula.’

‘Dracula indeed!’ says Nadine, but she laughs.

It’s OK at last. We’re all three friends again. And we’re going to Seventh Heaven!

I wonder if the blond dreamboat Dan ever goes clubbing???

Nadine is telling her parents she’s spending Saturday with Magda. I really am – but of course I’m not telling Dad and Anna we’re planning to go to Seventh Heaven. My dad loves to act laid back but I know he’d never let me go there in a million years because there’s been all this stuff in the local papers for weeks about the fights at four in the morning and girls being rushed to hospital with drug overdoses and all this other seriously heavy stuff. I just tell them Magda’s having this little party and I’ll sleep over at her place and come home some time on Sunday.

‘What are you going to wear to this party?’ Dad says. ‘Not that T-shirty thing again?’

He’s home half an hour early , so Anna’s all set for her evening class. Dad’s trying to act as if the row this morning didn’t happen.

‘Maybe it’s time you had some new clothes, Ellie. Here.’ He hands me twenty quid. Then realizes it’s not enough. He fumbles in his wallet. ‘I haven’t got enough cash. Look, why don’t you go shopping with Anna, use the credit card?’ He looks at Anna. ‘ Both of you buy yourself something new, eh?’

Anna looks tense. I’m scared she’s going to start another row, start on about guilt money or something – and then I won’t get my outfit after all. But then she shrugs. ‘OK. Sure. So, Ellie – we’ll go late-night shopping tomorrow.’

‘Can you get home early again and look after Eggs, Dad?’ I say. ‘He’s such a pain to take shopping.’

There. I’ve fixed Dad now. He can’t stay out late and play around. Anna gives me a little nod of acknowledgement.

It turns out that we have fun shopping together. It’s almost as if Anna is Magda or Nadine. We wander round Jigsaw and Warehouse and River Island and Miss Selfridge and Anna tries on all this mad stuff and when I see her slinking round the changing room showing off her navel in this really raunchy gear I just fall about laughing and she gets the giggles too and it’s like we’re two girls together. I dare squeeze into some of the sexier stuff too but it’s a BIG mistake. I am the mistake. I am big. Well. F-A-T.

‘You’re not fat, Ellie. For God’s sake, you’re just perfectly normal size,’ Anna insists, although she’s Ms Stick Insect herself so she’s OK. I’m Ms Big Bumblebee – with the emphasis on the Bum.

‘What am I going to wear ?’ I say, after I’ve tried on 101 outfits and discarded them all. ‘I want something hip and cool and now – and yet I look positively indecent in all this stuff.’

‘You’re just a bit curvy for current fashion,’ says Anna. ‘You don’t want these tacky tops or skimpy little skirts.’

‘So what else am I going to wear? A black plastic rubbish bag?’

‘We’ll find you the perfect outfit, Ellie, I promise,’ says Anna.

And she does! There’s this long tight stretchy skirt that I’m scared might be a bit frumpy, but there’s a sexy slit up the back – and then she finds a satin shirt to go over the top and I try it on and it’s like – wow! – I’m not me any more. I don’t look like some stupid podgy little kid. I look much older. Fifteen. Maybe even sixteen.

‘Oh, Anna, it’s great!’ I say. ‘But the two together are going to be ever so pricey.’

‘So what?’ says Anna. ‘Let’s go mad.’

She buys a little short bright skirt for herself that is so different from her usual check-shirt-and-jeans young-mum style. Anna doesn’t look older. She looks much much younger.

‘Let’s buy some tarty shoes too,’ she says.

We strut around in these silly heels, both of us staggering. Then we go for identical black suede shoes with little buckles.

‘You have them, Ellie, it’s OK,’ says Anna.

‘No, it’s not fair. You saw them first. You have them, Anna.’

‘You two are very sweet to each other for sisters,’ says the assistant, laughing at us.

‘We’re not sisters,’ says Anna. ‘Though it feels like we are sometimes.’

‘We’re . . . friends,’ I says, and it’s true. For the moment, anyway.

We both get a pair of black buckled shoes and we dance down the road in them, though we’ve both got blisters by the time we get home.

Anna’s being so sweet I feel bad about telling her lies but I know the moment I mentioned Seventh Heaven she’d morph into strict stepmother mode and say No Way.