Friends Forever! (6 page)

“Eh?” I said.

“So I act like a chimpanzee, do I?” she yelled. “Well, thank you very much! Some friend you are. At least I'm not uptight and paranoid like you!”

“But, I . . . ,” I stuttered.

“And I've just phoned Miss Claudette ‘acts like a forty-year-old woman' Cassiera and given her a few home truths about herself too!”

“Oh God,” I groaned.

“And FYI, I'm not such a cheap tart that I can't even remember who my current boyfriend is!” shouted Fleur.

“Fleur!” I yelled. “That's not what—”

“I can't believe you'd both slag me off like that,” said Fleur, her voice crackling into raw tears.

“Cressida told you all this, didn't she?” I screamed. “Well, what a shock! Fleur, you have to listen to me about Cressida—”

“Cressida
accidentally
told me a little bit of it,” sniffled Fleur. “And don't you start blaming this on her just because you've never liked her. Don't turn this back onto her!”

“Fleur, it wasn't like that!” I protested, but on the other end of the line I could hear the usually brash, fearless Fleur Iris Swan sobbing her heart out.

And that's when things started to go downhill.

Silences, gossiping, arguments, mistrust.

It took me two hours to calm Fleur down and explain the perfectly innocent context in which Claude had made those silly remarks. Claude was pretty upset too, especially as Fleur had called her “tedious” and “big-headed.”

By midnight, we were all cool again. But I was determined to hear Cressida Sleeth's explanation for this.

That Monday, I spent my entire German class drilling holes in the back of Cressida's head with my eyes. When the lunch bell sounded, I let Frau Chalmers and the other pupils file out before cornering Ms. Sleeth in the classroom all alone.

“Right, you little tofu-munching freak,” I began. “I want a word with you!”

Cressida lifted her gaze and smiled at me serenely. “Darling, I don't speak to you, remember?” she said, shooing me away with her tiny hand. “You're the dull one.”

I have to say, that sort of floored me. Turning on one rib-boned pump, Cressida made for the door.

“Oh? Erm, right! You admit that, do you?” I yelled, following after her, grabbing her hair and yanking her blonde tresses backward. “You've tried pushing me out. Now you want Fleur and Claude at loggerheads! What are you getting out of this . . . you total weirdo?”

Cressida stopped in her tracks and smirked. “Well, at the moment, sweetheart, I'm being taken to all the best parties by Fleur and I'm getting my geography and history homework done for me by Claude. While you . . . well, let's see.” Cressida placed one finger to the corner of her mouth to ponder. “Oh, yes, you're getting cheated on by Jimi Steele with Suzette Laws because she doesn't squeal like a pig every time he puts his hand up her T-shirt. Ha ha ha!”

“What?” I said, my face crumbling.

“Oh, sorry!” said Cressida patronizingly. “Didn't you know that? Me and my big mouth! You should play tennis with Panama—she knows all the best gossip.”

“You . . . evil cow!”
I shouted as Cressida sped out of the room heading for the Year 11 lockers with me on her trail. “You won't get away with this, Frodo!” I yelled. “I'll die stopping you!”

“Lay one grubby unmanicured finger on me again and my daddy will sue you,” Cressida laughed over her shoulder as she bustled away, her gray muslin skirt billowing behind her, with me close at her heel still baying for blood. Then, just we turned the corner into the locker area where Claude and Fleur were chatting, Cressida let out this weird theatrical moan followed by pitiful blubbering.

“Claude! Fleur!”
Cressida whined, wrapping her sweater sleeves over her hands and dancing from foot to foot like a smacked toddler. “Waaaaahhhh! Ronnie is being so negative and aggressive with me over this silly misunderstanding!”

Thick streams of tears were trickling down Cressida's cherubic little face. “I'm so sorry if I've accidentally caused bad karma. So vewwwwy sorry!”

I knew, in a flash, that no one would believe me about Cressida's evil little outburst. In fact, within seconds both Fleur and Claude were hugging the little minx, trying to calm her down.

By the end of lunch break, it was agreed that to solve further problems, we should all have our astrological charts cross-referenced.

Silly old Panama Goodyear! Apparently she'd got it “all mixed up” about Jimi and Suzette Laws. They hadn't been getting together twice weekly since January for clandestine groping and snogging sessions.

No, of course not!

Jimi assured me, amid all the crying and screaming, that he and Suzette were “just really good friends” who'd “grown closer” during the stressful run-up to the A-level exams. This led to them “hanging out” in each other's bedrooms late into the night, “studying” and “chatting.”

Something I wasn't allowed to do.

Weirdly enough, however, the very moment I went crazy and dumped Jimi over this
. . . he and Suzette announced they were going out together!

But remember, Jimi hadn't cheated on me and broken my heart. No, he'd waited until we'd “officially had closure” before getting freaky with another girl.

Oh, purrrrrr-leeeeeease! Which Christmas tree did they both think I'd fallen off?

After all the sobbing and hurling subsided, I just felt angry and stupid. I began staring into the mirror for hours at a time, imagining parts of me I'd alter if only Magda and Loz would buy me a birthday gift voucher for the Transform Clinic.

New nose? Yes, please.

Perkier bum? Absolutely.

Bigger boobs? Yes, big humongous boobs, definitely. Not tiny little feeble swellings that sit there adding nothing to my shape.

I hated Jimi Steele for making me feel so ugly and charmless. (Okay, I didn't hate Jimi Steele. I felt like I'd love him forever. Mum, on the other hand, truly hated Jimi Steele and had to be physically restrained from giving him a backhander across the face in Safeway.)

The only good thing about splitting with Jimi was that Cressida Sleeth got out of my face for a couple of weeks and let Fleur and Claude get on with making me feel better.

If I'd not had the LBD during that fortnight, I don't know what would have happened. I never wanted another boyfriend as long as I lived.

 

 

The GCSE exams began five weeks ago in May. It was around then that Cressida phased out Fleur.

Fleur had served her purpose. Nowadays, Cressida knew all the hottest people to know at Blackwell. She played tennis with Panama, had several hot boys sniffing round her, and got personal invites to all the best parties. She just didn't need Fleur anymore. She was perfectly civil, but the texts, the calls, the Reiki sessions, the past-life therapy, all that just stopped.

At first I was chuffed. Now Fleur would see Cressida for the freak she really was—but it didn't work out like that. Instead, Fleur got angry with Claude for not dropping Cressida in protest. Things got weirder, more complex, more subtly nasty.

A distinct crack began to form right down the center of the group. Fleur was bitching about Claude and Cressida “leaving us both out of things” while Claude and Cressida spent their days in the library cramming for the GCSEs like weird book-ogling Siamese twins.

I don't blame Claude for being flattered by Cressida's undivided attention. Let's face it, we've both played second fiddle to Fleur right through Blackwell. And Claude truly believed that Cressida liked her the best.

I buried my head in quadratic equations and infinite verbs and tried to ignore the whole mess.

Eventually Cressida bought Claude a heart-shaped necklace to thank her for being “such an amazing friend during Year 11,” which Claude wore to her geography exam. This riled Fleur so deeply that she stopped texting Claude daft good-night messages at bedtime, something the LBD have done every night since Year 9.

So, Claude refused to lend Fleur her green Morgan dress for the Blackwell Golden Centenary Barbecue, telling her to “buy her own clothes,” seeing as the Swan family “had more money than sense anyhow.”

And by this point, I was finding it hard to like Claude. Or Fleur for that matter.

And that pretty much brings us up to now.

“Hmmm . . . well, you know what the moral of that tale is?” Nan asks, crashing open the oven door and producing a tray of sweet-smelling scones.

“Er, no?” I say, my eyes red-rimmed.

“Never trust a vegetarian,” she says. “Hitler was one, you know.”

“Really?” I say.

“Absolutely,” she tuts. “A couple of plates of corned beef hash down his neck, he'd never have invaded Poland. What's life without the odd lovely Scotch egg? Cuh! No wonder that Cressida Slime article is so bitter and twisted.”

I gaze forlornly at Nan, who has flour on the end of her nose and a random sultana in her hairline. She winks at me before hobbling to the pantry and producing a tin of Lyon's black treacle, a bottle of Glenmorangie whiskey and two small glasses.

“Can I tempt you with a wee nip? Just for your nerves?” Nan asks, pouring herself a healthy-sized dram.

“Nah,” I sigh. “I'll pass.”

“Very noble,” Nan smiles, tapping her floury nose, then taking a dainty glug of the pungent fluid. “So, anyway, what's the lay of the land now? When did you last see Claudette and Fleur?”

“Wednesday,” I tell her. “It was the last GCSE exam. English.”

“And?” Nan prompts.

“Well, the paper was fairly easy,” I sigh. “So I was really hoping we all might go to Ruby's afterward for cakes to celebrate. But the second the bell went, Fleur chucked her pencil case in her bag and stormed out with her nose aloft.”

“And Claudette?” asks Nan, picking up her whiskey and taking another dainty glug.

“She just watched her go!” I cry, tears spilling down my face. “Like she didn't care. And then the most awful thing of all happened!”

“What?” says Nan, reaching up her sleeve, pulling out a fresh cotton handkerchief and passing it to me.

“Then Cressida pranced over to Claude's desk with an evil little smirk on her face. I couldn't hear exactly what she said, but it sounded like she was firing one of her servants or something! She thanked Claude ‘for all of her hard work,' then breezed out without even saying good-bye!”

“The little harridan,” tuts Nan, knocking more of her whiskey back. “She dropped Claudette too, once the exams were over?”

“Yeah,” I say. “When I left the exam hall, I saw Cressida jumping into the back of Panama Goodyear's Range Rover. Panama was driving and Abigail and Derren, two of the most vile snobs at Blackwell School, were there too! Claude was scurrying off up the street alone.”

“Oh,” says Nan.

“She won't answer her phone,” I say.

The cuckoo clock in Nan's hallway chimes six times. I place my face in my hands and sigh deeply.

“What do you think I should do?” I ask, not holding much hope that a half-tipsy octogenarian can save the LBD's summer.

“Hmmm . . . well,” says Nan, smothering a scone in clotted cream and pushing it in front of me, “that's as plain as the nose on your face, Veronica.
You have to save the LBD!”

“Save the LBD?” I repeat.

“Yes!” she nods. “And quickly, before this whole affair gets any sillier.”

“It's too late,” I sigh.

“It's never too late to patch things up,” smiles Nan. “Sure, it'll take a bit of talking and pride swallowing. But you girls can do that.”

“Hmpgh,” I bristle. “Maybe I don't want to be friends with them again. Maybe I've seen a side of Claude and Fleur I don't like!”

“Veronica,” says Nan seriously, “no one's perfect. If you allowed only people into your life that you liked all the time, well, you'd be a very lonely person. Friends make mistakes. That's a fact of life. Bearing grudges gets you nowhere. Let an old fool tell you that for nothing.”

Nan picks up her enormous white handbag, which always lives beside her ankle. She fishes around in it for a while, pulling out an envelope containing a pile of well-thumbed black-and-white photographs.

“Edith Warburton,” Nan announces, handing me a photograph of a pretty dark-haired girl aged about twenty-five in a 1940s dress. “Dizzy, that was her nickname. Ahhh . . . the boys loved Dizzy! I never got a look in with those American airmen when she was around. Mad as a hatter, she was!”

“Was she your friend?” I say, examining the photo.

“For fifty years,” Nan says, nodding. “I was there when she gave birth to George, her first boy. Ha! What a night that was. You've never heard language like it!” Nan looks at the photo again, biting her lip a little.

“Did you ever argue?” I ask.

“Oh, now and then,” Nan says a little sadly. “But we always made up again . . . well, until 1987, when we stopped speaking altogether.”

“What happened?” I gasp.

“Well,” Nan says, sighing. “Young George, he got engaged to a girl called Marie. Nice girl she was, worked as a teacher . . . lovely teeth . . . Anyhow, George and Marie, they decided to get married at the local registry office. Y'know, what with them both being, er, athleticists . . .”

“Atheists?” I suggest. “They didn't believe in God?”

“That's it!” says Nan. “So anyhow, I says to Dizzy, I'll not bother wearing a hat to the wedding, seeing as it's not a religious do. Well, Dizzy took great offense at that! She said, ‘Leticia, if you don't want to take George's big day seriously, then don't come at all!' ”