Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy

Lucy-Anne Holmes is a writer, actress and campaigner living in Sussex. She is the author of three previous novels –
50 Ways to Find a Lover
,
The (Im)perfect Girlfriend
and
Unlike a Virgin
– which have been published in ten countries. Lucy is also the founder of the No More Page 3 campaign. To find out more about Lucy follow her on Twitter (@lucyanneholmes).

50 Ways to Find a Lover
 

The (Im)Perfect Girlfriend
 

Unlike a Virgin
 

Table of Contents

• About the Author
  
• Also by Lucy-Anne Holmes
  
• COPYRIGHT
  
• Dedication
  
• Chapter 1
  
• Chapter 2
  
• Chapter 3
  
• Chapter 4
  
• Chapter 5
  
• Chapter 6
  
• Chapter 7
  
• Chapter 8
  
• Chapter 9
  
• Chapter 10
  
• Chapter 11
  
• Chapter 12
  
• Chapter 13
  
• Chapter 14
  
• Chapter 15
  
• Chapter 16
  
• Chapter 17
  
• Chapter 18
  
• Chapter 19
  
• Chapter 20
  
• Chapter 21
  
• Chapter 22
  
• Chapter 23
  
• Chapter 24
  
• Chapter 25
  
• Chapter 26
  
• Chapter 27
  
• Chapter 28
  
• Chapter 29
  
• Chapter 30
  
• Chapter 31
  
• Chapter 32
  
• Chapter 33
  
• Chapter 34
  
• Chapter 35
  
• Chapter 36
  
• Chapter 37
  
• Chapter 38
  
• Chapter 39
  
• Chapter 40
  
• Chapter 41
  
• Chapter 42
  
• Chapter 43
  
• Chapter 44
  
• Chapter 45
  
• Chapter 46
  
• Chapter 47
  
• Chapter 48
  
• Chapter 49
  
• Chapter 50
  
• Chapter 51
  
• Chapter 52
  
• Chapter 53
  
• Chapter 54
  
• Chapter 55
  
• Chapter 56
  
• Chapter 57
  
• Chapter 58
  
• Chapter 59
  
• Chapter 60
  
• Chapter 61
  
• Chapter 62
  
• Chapter 63
  
• Chapter 64
  
• Chapter 65
  
• Chapter 66
  
• Chapter 67
  
• Chapter 68
  
• Chapter 69
  
• Chapter 70
  
• Chapter 71
  
• Acknowledgements
  
• Advertisement
  
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For all the amazing women I’ve met, and those I haven’t, who battle with the dark days
 

My name is Jenny Taylor but everyone calls me Fanny. I admit, it isn’t ideal being called Fanny on a day-to-day basis, but it could be worse. ‘It could be worse’ is my catchphrase. I have need for it a lot. I don’t have the best of luck. Take, for example, the reason I am called Fanny. When I was at school my classmates realised that if you said Jenny Taylor again and again very quickly, you got the word genitalia. For years I was called a creative array of private-part slang but it was Fanny that stuck. Thankfully. I wasn’t keen on Bald Man in a Boat. See. It could have been worse.

So, my name is Jenny Taylor, or Fanny, and there’s not much else to say about me really. I’m quite unremarkable. If I rubbed a lamp and a smiling genie appeared offering me a wish, I wouldn’t say fame and fortune, I wouldn’t even say world peace. I would say, ‘Hello, genie, please could I just be happy for the rest of my days.’

As an answer it hardly dazzles with ambition, does it? But happiness is important to me. It’s important to me because there was a time when I wasn’t very happy at all.

I’ve got what is hilariously known as ‘a history of depression’. Phew. There, I’ve said it. I always feel like a bit of a failure when I admit that. I try not to. One in four women is affected by depression, apparently. I wonder whether they all get paranoid that people are thinking, Woah! She’s a freak! when they mention their depression too. I hope not. Philippa, my best friend, credits my father as the cause of my depression, because my father
HATES
me. Seriously, his favourite thing to say to me is, ‘Jenny, (tut) you’re so useless.’ By and large, he’s got a point, but it’s probably not the most empowering thing you can repeat to your child. So, my early years were a bit testing, and then my first experience of love was pretty grisly. I was wildly in love with this fella and he pooped on me from quite a terrific height. That’s when the depression kicked in. But that was years and years and years ago now.

These days, I’m all about happiness. Happiness is so important to me that I have my own happiness manifesto pinned to the back of my bedroom door. It is pithily titled the Smiling Fanny Manifesto and was written by Philippa who had just seen a documentary on telly entitled
Making Slough Happy
. Basically, she pinched the main points that the psychologist people on the programme were making. The Smiling Fanny Manifesto, by Philippa Flemming, reads as follows:

There are two things you can tell about Philippa from reading this, one is that she is a slave to the motto ‘why use a full stop when you can use 6,000 exclamation marks instead’, and two is that she is the best friend a girl could ever, ever, ever (and on ad infinitum) wish for. The gift she mentioned was three DVDs of my favourite stand-up comedians doing live routines.

Now, I love the Smiling Fanny Manifesto. Not only has it kept the dark days at bay but it has also led me to meet some wonderful/terrifying/magical/totally maverick people and on many occasions have wonderful/terrifying/magical/totally maverick adventures. The only slight hiccup about the Smiling Fanny Manifesto is that basically it is ten things that have to be done every day, so it can be rather exhausting. Fairly regularly I can be found at two in the morning (after careful consideration we decided that in the case of the Smiling Fanny Manifesto the day should end when I go to sleep, rather than at midnight) grinning manically at random people, desperately trying to engage them in conversation or shrieking, ‘Please, can I help you with something! By that I don’t mean sexual favours!’

I met my flatmate, Al, in this way. It was by the chip van, Posh Nosh, which sits outside Tiddlies, Tiddlesbury’s one and only nightclub. Arty, the Posh Nosh chef, was making my cheesy chips and beans. I was keeping an eye on him. It’s very important the salt and vinegar go on the chips and then the beans go on top of that and then the cheese on top of that. No other variable works. So I was calmly averting cheesy-chip-and-bean catastrophe when I noticed this strange-looking bloke standing next to me. He looked to be about six foot five with long reddish hair that didn’t so much hang as float like a cloud about his head. He was reading the menu and rubbing his chin.

‘Can I help you make a decision?’ I asked him gleefully. I quite often sound gleeful when I’m asking people if they need help, especially in the early hours. It’s something I need to work on.

‘Ermmmmm,’ he mumbled.

‘Oooh, no, the beans next, please, Arty,’ I hyperventilated.

‘Ermmmm,’ the strange-looking fellow mumbled again.

‘You’re going to have a lamb doner.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Blokes always do this.’

‘What?’

‘Fanny about for ages looking at the menu and then order a lamb doner with extra garlic sauce.’

Arty, who was now sprinkling cheese on my chips, smiled.

‘Am I not right?’

‘She’s right.’

‘Please can I have a small blob of barbeque sauce on the side for dunking?’ I asked. It never lets you down.

‘I’ll have a lamb doner.’

‘See?’

‘I don’t think I was going to, I think you mind-tricked me into it.’

‘We do a lot of that in Tiddlesbury.’

‘Are you from here?’

‘Well, I went to school here. I grew up a few miles away, and then I moved here when I was eighteen. It was London, Edinburgh or Tiddlesbury. What about you?’

‘I moved here today.’

‘Welcome. Will you be doing the open-top bus tour tomorrow?’

‘Is there a…?’

‘No, I was joking.’

‘Oh.’

‘But me and my best friend Philippa can show you round if you like.’

‘Oh, er, great, really, wow, thank you.’

That’s tomorrow’s good deed sorted. Tidy.

‘I would introduce you to Philippa now, but…’ I turned my head to the right, towards the nightclub rubbish bins. Philippa was behind them, snogging the bloke who worked on the cooked meats counter in the supermarket. She likes to end the evening with a little snog. ‘Er, she’s a bit busy at the moment.’

‘Are you sure you don’t mind showing me round?’

‘No, not at all, meet you here at five. Wear comfortable shoes and bring money for sundry spending. What’s your name?’

‘Al. You?’

‘Jenny. But everyone calls me Fanny. Welcome to Tiddlesbury.’

‘Thank you.’

And with that I left him to his lamb doner. Not knowing that five days later I was going to move out of Philippa’s dad’s house and into the spare room of his flat, which is where I still live, which is where I am at this very moment, lying in bed listening to him clanking and crashing about in the kitchen. He calls it cooking. Quite often he gets up before work to do it. This morning he’s baking a cake. I think it’s some phenomenal chocolate extravaganza. The aroma reaching me is sweet, it’s making my tummy gurgle and my mouth fill up with saliva, something that doesn’t happen when he’s up early making duck ragout.

So the Smiling Fanny Manifesto has shaped most of my life up to this point. In fact, I dread to think where I’d be without it.

‘Fan!’ It’s Al, tapping on my door.

‘Come in,’ I call.

‘Fanny, Fanny,’ Al swings open the door and lunges onto my bed. He’s dressed in his acid house smiley face boxers, his towelling dressing gown with the missing belt that barely reaches his knee, and he is covered in a considerable dusting of flour. He’s holding a small plate on which sits a massive slab of chocolate cake.

‘Fanny, I nailed it.’

‘What did you nail?’

‘Nigella’s chocolate cake,’ he informs me proudly.

‘Ooh, that could be misconstrued.’

‘Eat up your breakfast,’ he says placing the plate on my duvet-covered lap. I beam. If there’s ever an early indication that the day is going to be a cracker, it’s chocolate cake for breakfast. Ooh, I’ll say that again. Chocolate. I love the stuff. I tuck in greedily. Al observes me, a contented smile on his face. He really is watching me very closely. I stop chewing and eye him suspiciously.

‘Are you looking at my man moustache?’ I ask.

‘You what?’

‘My man-tache,’ I say, sadly stroking the downy fur above my top lip. It’s all I can see when I look in the mirror at the moment.

‘Fan, you haven’t got a moustache.’

God, I love Al. He is utterly and completely lovely. Although he is rather huge and scary looking. Seriously, if he followed you home you’d poop a brick, I must have been off my knockers that night to have started talking to him by the chip van. Aside from being the tallest man I’ve ever met and having hair like flaming candy floss, the only other striking thing about him is a nearly permanent bruise on his forehead from constantly being hit in the head by lampshades. He’s kind, thoughtful, loyal as a puppy but he does work for the council so is prone to moan. Oh, and he’s also remarkably good in bed for one so clumsy. I have first-hand experience of this because I’ve slept with him once. All right, eleven times. OK, it might have been nearer fifteen. But it was during that incredibly cold spell the year before last and our heating had broken down and I hadn’t had sex for about a billion years, so you can hardly blame me. But please don’t think I’m a floozy. I’m depressingly far from it. I’ve only slept with three people and I’m twenty-seven. It’s a source of endless disappointment.

‘Uh, oh, my God, this cake is amazing,’ I moan.

‘I never thought I’d nail Nigella’s chocolate cake,’ he purrs.

‘Please, I’m getting a picture.’

‘I wouldn’t mind —’

‘Change subject now,’ I say putting a hand up. ‘Right, now, Al, I need your honest opinion. You see, I’ve dyed it blonde…’

Al looks at me blankly.

‘My man-tache,’ I hiss. ‘Don’t you think it looks weirder now? Like a golden guinea pig? I can see it out of the corner of my eye.’ I squeeze one eye closed, look down with the other and stick my lip out to prove my point. ‘I don’t know whether to cream it, or wax it or what. It’s a —’ I’m stopped short in my conjecturing by my mobile ringing on my bedside table. ‘Someone’s up early,’ I say, picking it up. I see my old home number. ‘Oh, no, it’s my dad,’ I whisper, a familiar tight knot forming in my chest.

Wow, that’s quickly felled my early morning chocolate high. I haven’t spoken to my parents for weeks. It could be well over a month. We don’t have the best bond. It’s complicated, as they say.

‘Hello?’

‘Jenny! Oh, oh, dear. Jenny, I’ve got to go, but I’ll see you later!’

The phone goes dead.

It wasn’t my father at all. It was my mother. And this is very, very strange.