Жаклин Уилсон: Girls In Love

‘Per-lease,’ says Magda. ‘Can’t you kiddiwinks go and wave your legs somewhere else? It’s just too distracting, dearies.’

They straighten up, giggling foolishly, and then scatter when Magda flaps her hands at them.

‘Right,’ she says, seating herself carefully. Her skirt is a good six centimetres shorter than mine. She has to position it with extreme accuracy or else she’ll be the one showing off her knickers. Which are definitely not regulation.

Nadine sits beside her, kicking off her battered school shoes. I can see her black pearl toenail varnish through her tights.

I nudge up beside them, feeling a sudden warm rush of love for both of them.

Nadine’s been my friend ever since nursery school, when we stirred bright green dough in the Wendy House and played we were poisoning all the dollies. We stayed staunch friends all through primary school, playing Witches in the playground and Mermaids when we went swimming and Ghosts when we spent the night at each other’s houses. We vowed we would stay best friends for ever and ever, just the two of us. But the first year of secondary school we weren’t allowed to sit where we wanted. We had to be in alphabetical order. I found myself sitting next to Magda.

I was a bit scared of Magda at first. Even when she was only eleven she had a proper figure and she arranged her hair in a very sophisticated style and wore a thick coat of mascara so that her eyes looked knowing. She had finely plucked eyebrows that she raised when she took a second look at you.

She hardly spoke to me that first week. Then one time in class I was doodling on the back of my new school roughbook, drawing an ultra-hip cool-cat Magda. I made her a real pussycat with sharp whiskers and a fluffy tail. I drew me as a little fat mouse, frightened of Magda, all twitchy nose and scrabbly paws. Magda suddenly leant over me to see what I was doing. She worked it out at once. ‘Hey, Ellie! That’s great ,’ she said.

So I drew some more stuff and she liked that too. We were friends after that. She wanted me to be her best friend.

Only of course I had Nadine. And Nadine didn’t like Magda at all at first. But when Magda invited me over to her place one day after school I forced Nadine to come too. I wanted moral support more than anything else. I imagined Magda living this amazing cool independent existence. I couldn’t have been more wrong. She’s got this lovely noisy interfering funny family. Magda’s the baby. Everyone’s pet. She acts like a cute little kid at home. Anyway, she invited Nadine and me up to her bedroom and she gave us both a full make-up job. I loved it. She actually made me look like I had big dark eyes behind my specs and she did this subtle line each side of my face so it looked like I had cheekbones. It was the first time I’d ever worn make-up and I thought it was wonderful. Nadine was a bit sniffy. Magda said it was her turn. She gave Nadine a real gothic look, chalk-white face and truly black lipstick and astonishing outlined eyes. When Nadine saw herself in the mirror she smiled all over her amazing new face and wanted Magda to be her friend too.

So we’ve been this best-friend threesome ever since, right through Years Seven and Eight. Now we’re Year Nine, thirteen – well, Magda’s nearly fourteen, and Nadine is fourteen in December, but I’ve got to wait all the way round till next June.

It’s irritating. I really look the youngest now, because I’m still so small and roly-poly with these revoltingly chubby cheeks. I have dimples , for goodness’ sake. I’m used to Magda looking older, especially now she’s highlighted her hair. But Nadine used to look really young for her age with her heart-shaped face and her long black hair tumbling round her shoulders like an Alice in negative. Now she looks . . . different.

‘Come on, then, I haven’t seen you both for ages! What have you been up to?’ says Magda, but she doesn’t pause for breath. She tells Nadine and me all about her Spanish holiday, and how all these waiters kept waylaying her and this guy at the pool kept picking her up and throwing her in the water and this other much older guy kept trying to buy her drinks at the poolside . . . This is the standard Magda stuff and I don’t always concentrate because I’m watching Nadine. She doesn’t look as if she’s listening either, bending forward so that her hair hides her face like a black velvet curtain. She’s inking a tattoo on her wrist with a black felt-tip pen, a careful heart with an elaborate inked frill. This is a change for Nadine. Her tattoos are usually skulls or spiders.

‘What about you, Nadine?’ I say the second Magda shuts up.

‘ What about me?’ says Nadine. ‘You mean my hols? I saw you after. Before you went to your cottage. It was hell. Relentlessly cheery. And you had to queue for hours and all the kids had Mickey Mouse ears and there were all these giant cartoon characters waving at everyone. It was all so bright. It made my eyes ache.’

‘Crawl back to your coffin, Ms Vampire,’ says Magda, laughing. ‘I bet Natasha loved it.’

Natasha is Nadine’s little sister. Nadine and I have never been able to stand her, but Magda is extraordinary, she actually likes little kids. She’s even fond of Eggs. She’s always going on about how she’d like to have little brothers and sisters herself.

‘Natasha ate four ice-creams and then was very sick all down her brand-new pink Minnie Mouse T-shirt,’ says Nadine. She painstakingly inks a name across her heart.

I lean forward to read it. ‘Liam?’ I say.

Nadine blushes. Nadine never blushes – she doesn’t look as if she’s got enough blood – but now I can see bright pink beneath the fronds of black hair.

‘Liam?’ says Magda. ‘I didn’t know you were an Oasis fan.’

‘Not that Liam,’ says Nadine.

Magda looks at me for enlightenment. I shake my head. We both turn back to Nadine.

‘So who’s this Liam then?’ Magda asks.

‘Oh,’ says Nadine. A tiny pause. ‘He’s my boyfriend.’

We stare at her. ‘Your boyfriend ?’

I nearly tip over backwards down the steps. Nadine has a boyfriend. I can’t believe it! How come Nadine’s got a boyfriend before me? Before Magda ? Magda has loads of guys fawning all over her – well, so she says – but she doesn’t actually go out with anyone yet.

‘A real boyfriend?’ says Magda, and she sounds just as shocked as me.

‘But you don’t even like boys, Nadine,’ I say.

‘I like Liam,’ says Nadine. ‘And he isn’t a boy anyway. Not really. He’s seventeen. At college.’

‘So where did you meet him?’ says Magda, sounding suspicious. ‘How come you’ve never even mentioned him before?’

‘Yes, you didn’t say a thing about this Liam in your letters, Nad,’ I say.

I wrote lots of letters to Nadine and Magda when I was cooped up in the cottage. Magda never bothers to write back properly. She just sends postcards with ‘Love and Kisses, Magda’ on the back – which is sweet, but not exactly informative.

Nadine is a much more satisfactory correspondent – several pages in her carefully printed italic script, with little showers of star and moon sequins scattered inside the envelope. But all she wrote about was this weird new band she’s keen on and how she’s trying to teach herself to read the Tarot and a whole long moan about her family. Her dad’s forever on at her to work harder even though she’s always in the top three at school. He can’t see why she can’t come top in everything, which is crazy because Amna is always way in front of everyone and she’s got this mega IQ, like she’s a total genius andno-one could ever beat her no matter how hard they tried. Then her mum hates Nadine’s clothes and make-up and hairstyle and wants her to smarten up and wear these chichi clothes and smile like an American cheerleader. And Natasha is just Awfulness in Ankle Socks, acting the Angel Child whenever Mummy and Daddy are around but being the Brat from Hell whenever Nadine is forced to look after her.