The Following Girls (20 page)

‘You free all afternoon? Me too. ‘
Study periods
,’ she giggled.

Julia had trebled the available floor space in the tiny room by dragging two gigantic hardboard playing cards left over from a production of
Alice in Wonderland
all the way from the Drama cupboard so that both girls could stretch out in comfort. The new flat surface was a perfect place to lay out the papers and piece together a large, wonky joint.

Baker’s heart began a drum roll of panic, partly fear of getting caught but mostly fear of making a tit of herself. She watched Julia, noting how her fingers gripped the roach, how long she held the smoke, and then copied the older girl exactly, fighting to stay cool as the groovy gases seeped into her blood: a lovely, fuzzy-wuzzy tingly feeling. She drew the relevant diagram in her head (extra marks awarded for clear labelling): an alveolus and a passing capillary with little dots and arrows showing the dopey doings plunging into the bloodstream. She began mentally colouring it: blue for the oxygen, yellow for the dope.

It occurred to Baker that she ought to say something about the joint. It was traditional – like Sunday lunch: this is delicious, darling. Did you bake these yourself?

‘Nice.’ (Seemed safe enough.) ‘Where did you get the stuff?’

‘Boyfriend got it for me.’

Julia had a real boyfriend with a motorbike. Bunty had seen them at a pub on the river: helmets on the bench beside them, his ‘n’ hers leather jackets. It never featured in the Tampax ads, funnily enough, but it was what everyone truly wanted. You’d think market research could have told them that. Ask bloody anybody: blue-eyed bloke with bike. Sod
snorkels
.

‘Baz knows a guy.’

Baker let out a tiny silent moan of envy.
Baz
. Trust Julia to have a
Baz
, or a
Zak
, or a
Jed
. Hairy, scary, heavy metal names. Fifth form boyfriends had wimpy names: Tim, Mark, Robert. Or Jeremy. Then she remembered Baz was short for Barry – or just possibly Basil – and felt better. Then she tried to picture herself on the back of a bike – not knowing where to put her hands and trying to put on a brave face for the view in the wing mirror – and felt worse again.

Julia puffed away expertly, her other hand retrieving a (confiscated) mag from the bundle in her bag:
For women who know where they’re going
. She flicked through it and let the pages flutter to a halt between her fingers.

‘Got this one off a first former. She hasn’t dared do the quiz: “How to tell if you’re good in bed”. Good in bed?’ she scoffed. ‘Chance would be a fine thing, doesn’t even wear a bra.’

Other girls had to answer their questions with the aid of a dream boyfriend: how you’d like him to respond. Or had to improvise – what would Donny Osmond do? Not Julia. Julia had Baz. And now Bunty had Nick.

‘
“
If your boyfriend asks you to try a new position do you a. agree reluctantly? b. suggest some of your own
?
”
’

‘
Or c: Archimedes screw
,’ interrupted Baker, giggling uncontrollably. ‘Always godda have a silly answer.’ She pecked guiltily at one of the Jaffa Cakes. She had forgotten how nice they were. Gingham tablecloths again.

Julia frisbee’d the mag across the room. It skimmed over Baker’s head, alighted briefly on a rank of pipes then slithered down the back while Julia moved on to the next title in the pile.

‘Do you think
anyone
over twenty-one actually reads this rubbish?’

‘Sometimes.’ Baker thought of Spam and her code books. ‘But I know what you mean. You’d think they’d get over it. I mean if you want lipstick you can just go to the shops, see what there is, buy lipstick. Don’t need a map. Switch to
New Statesman
or
Popular Mechanics
or something.’

‘Popular Statesman,’ puffed Julia. Giggles.

‘Or, or, or,’ Baker rummaged tipsily in her own bag, ‘
Spare Rib
. Supposed to work like an antidote to women’s mags – still all about willies mind you.’

‘Yeah, but you’ve got to look at all the normal mags as well, got to know your enemy,’ said Julia. ‘It’s just like the whole Fawcett thing,’ another scorching puff on the tissue paper firework in her hand, ‘no good starting a fight about it. It’s just about looking the part. A bit of lipstick won’t hurt. Camouflage. Then once you’re inside you can do what you like.’

‘Yeah, but suppose the wind changes and you stay like it?’

‘Oh gawd. D’you reckon? Is that what happens? Get married, have
babies
, forget what it was you came in for? Oh gawd.’

Both of them sad suddenly. Like the end of the tea party on the ceiling in
Mary Poppins
.

Julia began sticking some more fag papers together, a toddler in craft corner, tongue between teeth.

‘My mother had a baby.’

It was the first time Julia had mentioned parents. Baker had imagined her home alone like Pippi Longstocking, living on pancakes and peppermints.

‘Just now? How old is she?’

‘She’s forty-fucking-two. That’s dis-
gust
-ing. And it smells and makes a noisy noisy noise.
I
don’t smell and I hardly make any noise, but nobody decorates
my
bedroom or buys
me
a mobile with little sodding rabbits on it.’ The trace of a tear in the corner of those pretty blue eyes.

‘Bastards,’ said Baker, consolingly, patting her leg. No hairs on it.
I look better in trousers: my legs are so rough and hairy
moaned the woman in the ad.

‘Read me from your magazine,’ said Julia.

‘My friend Bunty hates me reading things out.’

‘Silly moo.’

Baker grinned gratefully at Julia who began reading the ads from her own magazine –
Over 21
– while Baker rummaged through her
Spare Rib
for the antidote.

‘
“Be sure of total personal freshness with
Fresh ’n’ Dainty
feminine deodorant, available as spray, sachets or gelée,
”
’ said Julia. ‘Gel-lee? G-ross.’

‘Oh yeah? Says here: “Women are mobilising to overcome the ravages of thrush and allied vaginal disease.
”
’

‘Mobilising? Like tanks?’ More giggles bubbled up from beneath the cricket jersey. ‘Wonder what the uniform’s like? Expect it’s all in Miss Batty’s drawer: “Join the WIFFs”.’

This turned out to be the funniest joke ever told but then each joke was more hilarious than the last.

‘
“Dress up to the nines, even if you’re only going to the pub – a flash of pretty knicker won’t go astray.
”
’ Then on the next page:
‘
“What your knickers say about you.
”
’

Julia had her knees up, showing the usual glimpse of ageing blue gusset.

‘I’d pay mine hush money if I were you,’ said Baker.

She flicked past the ‘Spotlight on Eating Disorders’ to the
Spare Rib
small ads.

‘
“Neurotic ex institutional psychologist would very much like to contact fellow sufferers.” Woffor?’

Julia was putting the finishing touches to the new, slightly smaller joint. ‘Netball. Or hockey if she gets enough replies. Where did you get that thing?’

‘My mum – my real mum – got me a subscription. It comes addressed to “Manda Baker”, that’s what she used to call me.’

‘Manda . . . mandibles,’ mused Julia. ‘D’you ever see her?’

‘Lives in the Bahamas now, but she gets a friend of hers in Basingstoke to send me stuff. Awful stuff. It’s like having a really-really-really
terrible
pen friend. Ran away when I was three. This was “not what she wanted her life to be like” apparently. What she told Dad, anyway.’

‘So you got a stepmother?’

‘Yup.
She’s
over twenty-one but
she
still gets magazines and buys what they say. All sorts of rubbish. She likes scenting things: the insides of drawers; shoes;
carpet
. And she likes
hiding
things under other things. Even the toaster has a cosy; it’s shaped like a lickle thatched cottage. We make toast every single bloody day but we have to hide the doings for some reason. Or keep the dust off. Keep it safe from the toast monster.’

Spam’s Valentine from Dad that year had been a large, brightly coloured, quilted chicken to put over the food processor. ‘Talk about the way to a woman’s heart.’

‘She sounds bored to me: bored, bored, bored. Does she have any friends?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Must have. Be miserable otherwise. Do you do stuff together? Shopping?’

‘She likes being on her own.’

‘Bet she bloody doesn’t. Ask her.’

Baker wriggled guiltily and looked back at her magazine, desperate for a change of subject.

‘“Isolated Aberystwyth feminist would like to meet others.
”
’

Julia winced. ‘Oooh, don’t hold your breath, Gwyneth love. Have you
been
to Aberystwyth? I have. On holiday.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ slurred Baker. ‘You can’t go on holiday to Aberystwyth. Be like going on holiday to Croydon.’

‘Except Croydon has better pubs. The actual holiday was in
Llann
something. In a caravan. Llancaravan.’

A caravan? Baker frowned uncomfortably at the thought. The Bakers went on smart package holidays to hotels where you had your own stretch of beach with banks of tip-up deckchairs and stripy parasols and waiters bringing Spam another Cuba Libre. She tried to visualise Julia and the Smiths all eating, sleeping and farting in a blue and white box slightly smaller than Bob Baker’s garden shed. Sounded crap.

‘Nice.’

‘Nice? It rained every bleeding day.’

‘Any feminists?’

‘Nah. Not a sniff. Not even for ready money.’

Baker went back to her
Spare Rib
.
‘
“Dear Holly of sw11. Re Semen Allergy. Please write to us again as several readers have written with the same complaint and would like to contact you.” Told you. All about willies. Wonder what Holly’s knickers say about her.’

‘Their lips are sealed.’

Baker thought her lungs would burst from the effort to contain the volume of laughter.

Julia took another exaggerated, super-groupie puff on the joint then stood unsteadily on the nine of hearts and began a great swirling, looping scribble on the only pipeless patch of wall with a giant red felt tip she had stolen from under the whiteboard in the Maths Room.

I hate Mrs Mostyn.

She was wiggling her bum as she wrote.

Mrs Mostyn is an evil, cock-sucking Snog Monster
.

She had beautiful, flowery, very arty writing – the kind you got from practising a lot in the back of your rough book – with curly Ws and a great waggly tail on the g. The indelible scribble completely covered the wall and Baker felt the laughter die inside her. The fear was back. She felt sick, a weird fizzing sensation in her hands as if the magazine in her fingers were wired up to the mains.

‘Your face!’ a stuttering yodel of a laugh, like a cartoon character: ‘It’s okay. Got a poster.’ and Julia began to unfold a giant picture of a tall, skinny black man wielding a guitar which she stuck over the scarlet ink with four scrunches of sellotape. ‘Don’t worr-ee!’ A drunk’s delivery, like Spam on the sherry. ‘We’ll be long gone by the time they get the organ donations together.
Long
-gone. Over twenty-one, Well Housekept.’

Baker truffled around in her bag some more and dug out a paperback called
No Gentle Possession
(another jumble sale find).

‘My mum reads those. Load of rubbish. What do you want with it?’

‘Research,’ said Baker.

‘Research? Research for what?’

‘Miss Gleet has got us all writing novels. She’s quite keen on mine, so Dr O’Brien says.’

‘You want to watch that.’

‘Watch what?’

‘All that
unlocking
crap, “releasing your potential” like you were a dry cell battery or something. You know: success in the school play and before you know it she’s top in Maths and captain of lacrosse. It’s all bollocks. S’not about you, s’not about unlocking your gifts. It’s just about making you spend more time doing the stuff they like. Trust me: I’ve studied their habits.’

Baker was asleep on one of the sitting room sofas when Stottie rang on Friday night suggesting a mooch round the high street on Saturday, or a trip to the pictures, or maybe even the boys’ school disco thingy? A female voice was shouting in the background about homework and the size of the last phone bill. Stottie sounded really disappointed when Baker said Spam wasn’t letting her out. Could she tell she was lying? She’d hung up almost at once: poor old Stottie.