Жаклин Уилсон - Girls In Love

A whole little gang of girls come into the ladies’.

‘It’s OK, we’re not in the queue, we’re just waiting for our friend,’ Magda tells them.

‘She’s not the dark-haired girl with that Liam, is she?’ says one of the girls.

‘So?’ says Magda.

‘Well, she wants to keep clear of him. He used to hang round this girl at our school, really young, just in Year Eight, or maybe she’d just started Year Nine.’

Magda and I keep stum.

‘He has this thing about really young girls. He says if you go with virgins you don’t have to bother about safe sex because you can’t catch anything off them.’

‘ What? ’ I say.

‘I don’t believe it!’ says Magda.

‘It’s true. He’s done it with lots of girls, but he gives them the elbow the minute they start to put out. This girl at our school, she got pregnant from this one time, but he just told her to get lost, he didn’t want to know. He said she was a slag anyway, saying if she’d do it with him then she’d do it with anyone.’

Magda and I stare at each other, horrified. Then we look at the cubicle where Nadine is. Surely she must have heard? She stays in there until all the other girls have gone. After a few minutes we hear her crying.

‘Come out, Naddie,’ I whisper.

‘Yes, come on, babe, it’s just us,’ says Magda.

Nadine comes out, tears streaming down her face. She heard all right.

‘We’re going to go home,’ says Magda, putting her arm round her. ‘We’ll sneak out the back, leave him standing there. I’ve got the cab fare. You come back to my place and sleep over with Ellie and me.’

So that’s just what we do. And when I wake up at dawn and hear Nadine sobbing in the spare bed I slip over and get in beside her and cuddle her close.

Dear Dan,

I’m ever so sorry but you really CAN’T come and stay at my home. I did ask, but Anna my stepmother won’t allow it. I don’t think you realized this on holiday but she’s really really strict and right at the moment she’s dead annoyed with me because she found out that I went to this amazing club with a serious reputation so now I’m grounded for the rest of the TERM and she says I can’t have anyone at all to stay, so I’m afraid it really will be Christmas at the cottages before we see each other again. I do hope you understand and don’t feel too mad at me.

L. Ellie X

My tongue is black all over. It’s a wonder it hasn’t cracked at the roots and crumbled into cinders in my mouth.

I feel so mean saying all that stuff about Anna. She’s been really super to me. And she’s never said anything about the night of Magda’s party. I came home from Magda’s as good as gold on Sunday and said we’d just had this super birthday meal that had lasted practically all evening, but when I kicked off my killer shoes Anna saw my tights were all holes because I’d been dancing so much. She’s been an absolute sport and it’s especially unfair for me to say she won’t let anyone come and stay because next weekend she’s letting Magda and Nadine stay over Friday night.

We’re all going to Stacy’s birthday party. It’s going to be great if everyone starts celebrating their birthdays in style – we’ll be raving right through the year! Not that Stacy’s party is going to be a rave . We wondered why on earth she’d asked us to her party because she’s not our particular friend, we hardly know her, but it turns out she’s asked the entire form, and a lot of girls in Year Nine in the other forms too.

‘My mum and dad are hiring the hall at the community centre and there’s going to be a disco and a finger buffet and we’ve got an extension so it’s going to be eight till late,’ Stacy burbles.

‘Wow!’ says Magda, but Stacy doesn’t twig she’s being sarcastic and just grins gratefully.

‘Yeah, isn’t it fabulous? Well, see you there, you three.’

‘We’re really looking forward to it . . . not ,’ says Magda, the minute Stacy’s back is turned.

‘Shut up, she’ll hear,’ I say. I always feel much more worried about damply enthusiastic girls like Stacy who are so terribly uncool. If I didn’t hang around with Magda and Nadine and try really hard to be hip I could so easily be one myself.

But Magda can be caring too. She’s looking at Nadine, who hasn’t said a word. She’s barely spoken since the Seventh Heaven night when she walked out on Liam. She just drifts round after us like this pale little ghost. The purple marks are fading on her neck but it’s going to take her much longer to get him to fade from her mind.

‘Oh, I don’t know, Stacy’s party could be a laugh, I suppose,’ says Magda. ‘We could stick together, us three, and have a bit of a bop. I quite fancy a girls’ night out. OK?’

‘OK!’ I say. ‘Right, Nadine?’

I have to nudge her twice before she nods.

But it turns out it isn’t going to be a girls’ night out at all.

‘You can all bring a boy,’ Stacy announces. ‘My boyfriend Paul is coming. This is going to be a proper party.’

‘I like im proper parties,’ says Magda.

‘I can’t come then,’ says Nadine. ‘I haven’t got a boy. Not any more.’

‘Oh, don’t go all droopy again, babes, I can’t bear it,’ says Magda. ‘Of course you’re coming.’

‘Yeah, with me. I haven’t got a boy to bring either, have I?’ I say. ‘Seeing as my Dan is stuck up in Manchester.’

‘I can always ask Greg to bring along two of his mates,’ says Magda.

‘No way! Not again!’ I say very firmly indeed.

It turns out Greg won’t agree to go to Stacy’s party. Magda can’t believe it.

‘The nerve of it! He says he won’t go to a stupid Year Nine baby birthday party because his mates would give him stick about it if they found out – after he made me go to that night of Ultimate Embarrassment at that nerdy Adam’s place! I told him where to get off. Or words to that effect.’ Magda grins. ‘So now I haven’t got a boy either, Nadine. We’re a right pathetic trio. One totally absent boyfriend, and two exes.’

‘Well, we’ll go to Stacy’s party just the three of us, like we planned originally. Let’s make it a real girls’ night out,’ I say. ‘You two come back to my place and sleep over afterwards, yeah?’

Magda agrees enthusiastically. Nadine doesn’t look as if she agrees at all, but she can’t summon up the energy to argue.

‘I am seriously worried about Nadine,’ Magda whispers to me in class. ‘Ellie . . . how far did that Liam get with her?’

‘I’m not sure. I know he made her do all sorts of stuff, but I’m not sure about actual sex.’

‘You don’t think . . .? She couldn’t be pregnant, could she?’

‘Oh, Magda!’

‘She looks so pale.’

‘Well, she’s always pale.’

‘Yes, but now she looks like death . And she’s so droopy.’

‘That’s because she’s missing Liam.’

‘How can she now she knows the truth about that creep?’

‘Maybe she’s missing him even so.’

‘ What? Look, I don’t get all this moping-around lark. I’ve just given up Greg and yet I’m not an old droopy-drawers.’

‘Yes, but you were never really that gone on Greg, were you?’

‘How do you know Greg wasn’t the love of my life, the passion of my girlhood, the flame of my bosom, the fire of my loins—?’ We are both shrieking with laughter by this time.