Жаклин Уилсон - Girls In Love

He smiles at me!

Then he walks neatly past while I dither, still in a daze.

I look back over my shoulder. He’s looking back at me. He really is. Maybe . . . maybe he likes me. No, that’s mad. Why should this really incredible guy who must be at least eighteen think anything of a stupid schoolgirl who can’t even walk past him properly?

He’s not looking up. He’s looking down. He’s looking at my legs! Oh, God, maybe my skirt really is too short. I turned it up myself last night. Anna said she’d shorten it for me, but I knew she’d only turn it up a centimetre or so. I wanted my skirt really short. Only I’m not that great at sewing. The hem went a bit bunchy. When I tried the skirt back on there suddenly seemed a very large amount of chubby pink leg on show.

Anna didn’t say anything but I knew what she was thinking.

Dad was more direct: ‘For God’s sake, Ellie, that skirt barely covers your knickers!’

‘Honestly!’ I said, sighing. ‘I thought you tried to be hip, Dad. Everyone wears their skirts this length.’

It’s true. Magda’s skirt is even shorter. But her legs are long and lightly tanned. She’s always moaning about her legs, saying she hates the way the muscle sticks out at the back. She used to do ballet and tap, and she still does jazz dancing. She moans but she doesn’t mean it. She shows her legs off every chance she gets.

Nadine’s skirts are short too. Her legs are never brown. They’re either black when she’s wearing her opaque tights or white when she has to go to school. Nadine can’t stand getting sun-tanned. She’s a very gothic girl with a vampire complexion. She’s very willowy as well as white. Short skirts look so much better with slender legs.

It’s depressing when your two best friends in all the world are much thinner than you are. It’s even more depressing when your stepmother is thinner too. With positively model girl looks. Anna is only twenty-seven and she looks younger. When we go out together people think we’re sisters. Only we don’t look a bit alike. She’s so skinny and striking. I’m little and lumpy.

I’m not exactly fat . Not really. It doesn’t help having such a round face. Well, I’m round all over. My tummy’s round and my bum is round. Even my stupid knees are round. Still, my chest is round too. Magda has to resort to a Wonderbra to get a proper cleavage and Nadine is utterly flat.

I don’t mind my top. I just wish there was much less of my bottom. Oh, God, what must I look like from the back view? No wonder he’s staring.

I scuttle round the corner, feeling such a fool. My legs have gone so wobbly it’s hard to walk. They look as if they’re blushing too. Look at them, pink as hams. Who am I kidding? Of course I’m fat. The waistband on my indecently short skirt is uncomfortably tight. I’ve got fatter this summer, I just know I have. Especially these last three terrible weeks at the cottage.

It’s so unfair. Everyone else goes off on these really glamorous jaunts abroad. Magda went to Spain. Nadine went to America. I went to our damp dreary cottage in Wales. And it rained and it rained and it rained. I got so bored sitting around playing infantile games of Snap and Old Maid with Eggs and watching fuzzy telly on the black-and-white portable and tramping through a sea of mud in my wellies that I just ate all the time.

Three meals a day, and at least thirty-three snacks. Mars bars and jelly beans and popcorn and tortilla chips and salt and vinegar crisps and Magnum ice-creams. Gobble gobble gobble, it’s no wonder that I wobble. Yuck, my knees are actually wobbling as I walk.

I hate walking. I don’t see the point of going for a walk, lumbering along in this great big loop just to get back to where you’ve come from. We always do so much walking in Wales.

Dad and Anna always stride ahead. Little Eggs leaps about like a loony. I slouch behind them, mud sucking at my wellies, and I think to myself: This is fun ??? Why have a holiday cottage in Wales, of all places? Why can’t we have a holiday villa in Spain or a holiday apartment in New York? Magda and Nadine are so lucky . OK, Magda was on a package tour and they stayed in a high-rise hotel and Nadine was only in Orlando doing a Disney, but I bet they both had brilliant sunshine every day.

In our little bit of Wales it’s always the rainy season. Black clouds are a permanent fixture, like the mountains. It even rains inside the cottage because Dad thinks he can fix the roof slates himself and he always makes a total botch of it. We have buckets and bowls and saucepans scattered all over upstairs, and day and night there’s this drip-tinkle-splosh symphony.

I got so utterly fed up and depressed that when we paid the usual visit to this boring old ruined castle I felt like casting myself off the battlements. I leaned against the stone wall at the top, my heart still banging away like crazy from the awful climb, and wondered what it would be like to leap over into thin air. Would anyone seriously care if I ended up going splat on the cobblestones below? Dad and Anna had a firm grip on Eggs but they didn’t make a grab at me, even when I leaned right over, my head dangling.

They actually wandered off hand-in-hand with him, mumbling about Bailies and Boiling Oil. They are overdoing the involved-parent act. I doubt if Eggs can spell castle yet so he’s certainly not at the serious project stage. Dad never did all this stuff with me when I was little. He always seemed to be working or busy. When we went on holiday he went off sketching. But I didn’t care. I had Mum. Then.

Thinking about Mum made me feel worse. People don’t expect me to remember her still. They’re mad. I can remember so much about her – heaps and heaps of stuff. The games we used to play with my Barbie dolls and the songs we’d sing and how she let me put on her make-up and try on all her jewellery and her pink silk petticoat and her high heels.

I want to talk about her so much but whenever I try with Dad he goes all tense and quiet. He frowns as if he has a headache. He doesn’t want to remember Mum. Well, he’s got Anna now. And they’ve both got Eggs.

I haven’t got anyone. I started to feel so miserable I mooched off by myself. I walked to the other side of the battlements and found a crumbling turret. The entrance was roped off, with a warning. I ducked under the rope and climbed up all these dank steps in the dark. Then I put my foot on a step that wasn’t there and tripped, banging my shin. It wasn’t really that painful but I found I was crying. You can’t really climb when you’re crying, so I sat down and sobbed.

After a while I realized I didn’t have a tissue. My glasses were all wet and my nose was running. I wiped and sniffed as best I could. The stone steps were very cold and the damp spread through my jeans but I still sat there. I suppose I was waiting for Dad to come looking for me. I waited and I waited and I waited. And then I heard footsteps. I sat still, listening. Quick, light footsteps. Too light for Dad. Too quick for me to get out of the way in time. Someone tripped right over me and we both screamed.

‘Ouch!’

‘Oooh!’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t have a clue anyone was sitting there!’

‘You’re kneeling on me!’

‘Sorry, sorry. Here, let me help you up.’

‘Careful!’ He was hauling so vigorously we both nearly toppled downwards.

‘Whoops!’

‘Watch out!’

I struggled free and stood with my back against the damp wall. He stood up too. It was too dark to make out more than a vague shape.

‘What were you doing, sitting in the dark? You haven’t hurt yourself, have you?’

‘I wasn’t hurt. I might be now. I still feel very squashed.’