I peel them off and run them under the cold tap, but as the pink water disappears down the plug hole I know trying to save them is pointless. I put them into the bath with my knickers.
In the mirror I look at my vagina. It feels red and sore – it’s changed forever.
I open Mum’s old drawer trying not to think about what it used to mean to me. I take out a tampon and put one foot up on the side of the bath. I slip the tampon’s cardboard tube halfway inside me, and a gentle push has it double up and come away in my hand like I’ve been using them for years. The fear of entering that unknown space now gone. I feel proud of myself, grown up. Relieved.
I clean myself up and roll the jeans and knickers into a ball, carry them into my bedroom and stuff them into my rucksack. In the morning I’ll throw them into the bin at the end of the road and work out an excuse.
I put on my shellsuit and go downstairs. My huge leap towards womanhood personifies itself in a roly-poly into the centre of the living room.
‘Sit quietly, Renée. Your nana is watching her programme,’ Pop snaps.
I crawl up onto the sofa. It’s quite hard to sit quietly in a shellsuit.
As soon as I meet Sally outside Boots I know I am in for a horrible Saturday. She is so angry with me for sitting in the library with Renée, but at the same time so full of herself because I chose to go with her.
‘I bet Renée can’t afford to go shopping,’ she says in her usual snarky tone.
‘Well, her family aren’t rich like yours.’
‘Do you think she is trendy? I don’t. Her clothes are so nondescript.’
‘She is just totally unaffected by fashion. I think that’s quite cool,’ I say, determined not to encourage her.
‘There is nothing cool about Renée Sargent. And stop going on about her, will you? I thought today was supposed to be about me,’ she says, storming off.
‘Every day is about you, Sally,’ I say under my breath as she marches into Pandora and starts scraping the clothes along the rails. I sit on the sofa outside the changing rooms and hope this goes quickly.
With an arm full of clothes, she goes into the changing room and tears the curtain across so hard that it nearly falls down. She pokes her head out and hisses, ‘You should be grateful you have me. I’m the reason you have a life at all. I’ll try these on, then you can pass those in one by one and I’ll try them on while you put these ones back. I think Phil will prefer the short dresses.’
‘Who is Phil?’ I ask, deliberately trying to annoy her.
‘I TOLD YOU, he works with my dad. He’s twenty-seven. We are going out.’
‘You’re going out with a twenty-seven-year-old? How does your dad feel about that?’ I am genuinely interested to know how that is working out.
‘He doesn’t know, but he’ll be fine once he realises it’s serious.’
‘Have you . . .’ I buckle at the thought of talking about sex with Sally. It feels far too unnatural to have a conversation like that with her. Luckily she knows what I mean.
‘No, not yet. But he wants to, I can tell. But you wouldn’t understand because you’ll probably be a virgin forever.’ She cackles like a witch. ‘Hold this.’ She throws another top over my arm and scrapes the curtain back across. I stand staring at it. My arm is weighted down by the huge pile of clothing she’s hung over it. A moment of clarity comes over me. This isn’t what friendship is about, I know that now.
‘Sally?’ I say boldly.
She tuts. I hear a zip go up and a clear note of disappointment in her next tut, this one not aimed at me.
‘Sally?’ I say again.
The zip goes back down and I see the dress drop to her feet under the curtain. She still doesn’t acknowledge me.
‘SALLY?’ I rip open the curtain. She is facing away from me, bending down to pick up the dress, her bony bum up in the air for all the shop to see. She spins around, her arms covering her boobs, her face a vision of pure horror.
‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING? CLOSE THAT NOW!’ she screeches.
I push the curtain open even further, enjoying the power I feel for once.
‘Sally, for ten years I have let you treat me like some shit on the bottom of your shoe. You boss me around, put me down, embarrass me all the time. I’ve had enough. I’m not the pathetic idiot you think I am, and you, you are such a bitch.’
I drop the clothes on the floor and turn to leave. Her face is frozen from the shock of my outburst. I feel a thousand feet tall.
‘Flo, FLO! Come back here, Flo! Don’t you walk away from me!’
I turn back to her. She looks ridiculous. My voice remains perfectly calm.
‘Our friendship is over, Sally. I don’t need to be treated like this any more. My other friends are
nice
to me.’
‘Other friends? Like you have any other friends. Oh wait, you mean Renée Sargent? Ha, she will ditch you the minute something better comes along. At least I’ve stuck by you, which isn’t easy sometimes, because you are so boring. Flo, if you walk away from me now you will always regret it. You’re nothing without me.’
‘No,
you
are nothing without me.’ I realise I’m shaking, but I keep going. ‘The only reason you’ve stuck by me is because I’ve stuck by you and without me YOU have no one else. And Sally?’
‘WHAT?’
‘You have a skid mark.’
I leave the shop to the sound of her wailing and walk through town feeling so proud of myself that I could scream. I want to run up to strangers and tell them what I just did. This has to be one of the best moments of my life. The deed is done – Renée and I are free to be friends. Sally is officially out of the picture. I can’t wait to tell Renée.
Saturdays are usually so boring at home, but today is different. I want to do nothing but lie on my bed and think about Julian. Time is flying by, the hours lost just thinking about him and that night in the car. I want more of it. I keep thinking about how much more confident I will be next time, how sexy I will act, how much I could turn him on if he only knew the real me. He doesn’t know how funny I am yet either. I will make him laugh next time, then I’ll give him a perfect blow job and I will definitely go on top.
The doorbell rings.
Renée,’ calls Pop. ‘Someone is here for you.’
I jump up in a split second. Shit shit shit, what if it’s him? I’m wearing my shellsuit. I try to get out of it, hopping on one foot. The left leg gets stuck and I fall backwards onto the floor. My bedroom door opens slowly.
‘Renée?’ Flo’s head peers in and she sees me lying there – red-faced in a panic with my shellsuit around my ankles. ‘Is that a shellsuit?’ she asks, confused.
‘I just found it in my wardrobe. I put it on for a laugh.’ I pull up the shellsuit and sit on my bed. I feel like such a twat. ‘What are you doing here?’
She comes further into my bedroom and looks around. ‘I like your room,’ she says. I know she is lying. It’s horrible. Pop won’t let us put up posters, and the wallpaper is old. I’ve never had a friend come into it before, and suddenly I feel very uncomfortable for a whole load of other reasons than I already do. Can she tell Mum died almost exactly where I am sitting?
‘What are you doing here?’ I ask again.
She sits down next to me on the bed. She looks happy with herself.
‘I told Sally. I told Sally where to go and how horrible she is, and I left her in a changing room with no clothes on and it feels totally amazing. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.’
‘Oh, right. That’s great. Good for you,’ I say, almost completely without emotion. I know I am being mean but can’t help it.
‘I thought it was what you wanted? We don’t have to sneak around any more.’
‘Great. Sneaking around, yeah that was bad, wasn’t it?’
I can’t even look at Flo. It must have taken every shred of confidence she had to stand up to Sally, but I can’t look at her without imagining myself with Julian in his car and how she would feel if she knew.
‘Renée, we are going for a drive,’ shouts Pop up the stairs.
‘What is it about old people and going for drives?’ I say, laughing. Flo looks more confused. I know I should say something about Sally.
‘Wait there, Pop. I’ll come with you,’ I shout, as I frantically pull on my trainers.
‘You are going to go with your grandparents for a drive?’ Flo asks. ‘In a shellsuit? Don’t you want to go out and celebrate the fact that we can be best friends in public now?’
‘I need chewing gum,’ is all I can think of to say as I usher her out of the house and climb into the back of Pop’s car. As we drive away I watch Flo standing at the end of our driveway looking absolutely gutted. I feel like the biggest bitch ever.
As Pop pulls into a petrol station Nana is muttering something about ice creams, but I’ve gone back to thinking about Julian. Eventually he and I will tell Flo what happened, and all of this will be fine. She will understand that we couldn’t help ourselves. She will be my best friend and he will be my boyfriend and all this tension will have gone. I really do hate lying to her, but I can’t tell her yet. It’s too soon.
‘Here,’ says Pop, handing me a small bundle of notes. ‘Go and pay for the fuel and buy Nana a Cornetto. You can have one too.’
I get out of the car, my head still a million miles away from reality. As I walk across the forecourt and up to the shop I see him, bending over under the bonnet of a car, a spanner in his hand. I’d recognise him from any angle anywhere in the world, no matter what he was wearing. What are the chances of me just stumbling across him at work? I didn’t even know which garage he worked at. I have no choice but to embrace this as a sign that we are meant to be together. This is no coincidence, this is the universe helping me out.
I walk over. This is my chance to show him who I really am. Cool, confident, grown-up, completely together.
‘Hi, Julian,’ I say, trying to be casual.
He turns around. He has a piece of something rubbery in between his teeth. He spits it out and it lands on the floor.
‘Is that a shellsuit?’ he asks. He looks repulsed.
SHIT, shit, shit, shit. In the shock of seeing him I forgot I was wearing it. I scramble around in my brain for something to tell him.
‘It’s fancy dress. I’m on my way to a party. I’m a Chuckle Brother,’ I say, blushing.
‘A fancy dress party? At two in the afternoon?’ He doesn’t look convinced.
‘It’s my little sister’s party,’ I say, hoping he doesn’t already know that my ‘little sister’ is actually thirteen.
‘Right, well, off you go then.’ He turns back to the car and carries on fixing it.
Confident. Come on, Renée. Be confident.
‘Do you want an ice cream?’ I ask, instantly regretting it.
He laughs. But the wrong kind of laugh. He is laughing at me. He turns back to face me.
‘No, I don’t want an ice cream, because I am a grown-up. And what are you turning up to my work for? Are you a stalker or something?’
I feel so stupid. This all looks so deliberate.
‘No,’ I say. ‘No, I didn’t just turn up. We were out for a drive and we just stopped for ice cream. I didn’t know you were here.’
He looks over at Nana and Pop, who have just noticed that I haven’t gone into the shop yet. ‘Sure you didn’t. Anyway, you’d better hurry up. Your friends are waiting for you.’ He turns back to the car.
I stand watching him for a few seconds but even I, in my delirious loved-up state, know when I am not wanted. I go inside and buy Nana her ice cream. I have completely lost my appetite.
‘Renée, wake up. Wake up.’ Nana is prodding me.
‘What time is it?’
‘It’s 7 a.m. There’s someone on the phone for you. It sounds important. Come on, up you get, but don’t wake your sister.’ Nana gives me a little shake.
Who is calling me at 7 a.m? I don’t think I have ever had a phone call at 7 a.m. I put on my dressing gown and rush down to the kitchen.
‘Hello?’
‘Hey, it’s Flo.’
My throat closes up. Does she know?
‘Are you sitting comfortably?’
I brace myself for the biggest character assassination of my life. I feel evil, pure evil. I should have told her about me and Julian myself.
‘Yes.’
‘Good. OK, Abi, ONE, TWO, THREE . . . Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to Renée, happy birthday to youuuuuuuuu.We wanted to be the first ones to say happy birthday. Sweet sixteen, and all that.’ She speaks quietly into the receiver. ‘You are old enough to do it now! WOO HOOO!’
‘Thanks,’ I say, relieved. Of course, it’s the 9th of March. My birthday. ‘Wow, it’s so early. I thought something terrible had happened.’
‘Nope. Life is good, Renée. It’s nothing terrible at all. Go get ready and get to school early. I have pressies!’ Flo says, full of excitement.
I hang up. Something tells me my relief won’t last forever.
‘Was it about some homework?’ asks Nana as she comes into the kitchen. She walks straight past me and over to the sink, no Happy Birthday, no nothing.
‘No, Nana, my friend didn’t call me at 7 a.m. about homework.’
‘Well, what a funny time to call for a chat. I hope she doesn’t make a habit of it.’
I want to tell her, ‘Nana, it’s my birthday,’ but she will be so upset with herself for forgetting. I don’t want to embarrass her.
‘I’m going in early today. We have a computer project on so I’m going to meet with my group before school starts.’
‘Computers?’ says Pop as he comes into the kitchen. ‘What a waste of time. They should be teaching you trade skills rather than wasting time on those machines. Don’t wake your sister up as you get dressed. She needs her sleep.’
‘I won’t.’
I walk past the calendar on the kitchen wall. It’s still on December. Life in our house is officially not moving forward.
‘SURRPPPRRRIIISEEEE!’
When I walk into our form room Flo, Margaret, Nancy, Bethan and Charlotte are all wearing their green science smocks and waving hockey sticks at me.
‘What are you all wearing?’ I ask.
‘Flo only reminded me it was your birthday last night so we didn’t have time to sort fancy dress out. Hockey sticks and smocks is the best we could do,’ explains Margaret. ‘But look what we got for lunchtime.’