Just a Girl, Standing in Front of a Boy (2 page)

‘Arrrrggghhhhhhhhhh!’ I scream like I’m experiencing some very intimate depilation. ‘Arrrrggghhhhh!’

‘Fan, should I be concerned?’ Al yells, banging on the bathroom door.

‘No, I’m all right,’ I shout over the shower.

‘Sure?’

‘Yeah, I’ve just had a lot of sugar this morning and my mum called and uttered the dreaded words “see you later”. Arrrrggghhhhhhhhhh!’

‘Fair dos, Fan, fair dos.’

This isn’t an unusual reaction to a potential parental visit. I try to see Mum and Dad as little as possible. I realised a long time ago that it’s kinder on my mental health not to see them too much. There’s only so many times I can hear my father ask, ‘Have you achieved anything since we last saw you, Jenny? Have you found anyone to marry you? No? And why doesn’t that surprise me?’ It’s also kinder on my liver, because I normally need an entire bottle of wine and a DVD of something very, very funny to recover from a parental sighting.

‘Arrrrggghhhhhhhhhh!’

Growls in the shower are very cathartic. Although it’s unusual for me to need them on a Friday. I love a Friday, me. People smile on Fridays, something they tend not to do on any other weekday. But the best thing about Friday is something called Fashion Friday, which Philippa invented. Every Friday at 8 a.m. on the dot, Philippa and I take it in turns to text each other with a dress code for the day. At first the texts would say ‘floral’ or ‘gothic’ but over the years they’ve got more and more extreme. Last week was ‘Rainy Ladies’ Day at Ascot’, the week before was ‘Yoga Teacher with Penchant for Tantric Sex’. We live in Tiddlesbury, a small town in the middle of England, so we need all the excitement we can get.

‘Arrrrggghhhhhhhhhh!’

The bathroom clock says 7.57. That will have to be my last growl. I climb out of the shower and into a bathrobe, and then I perform my first daily act of the Smiling Fanny Manifesto. I water Matilda, my plant.

‘Morning, beautiful,’ I say, because there is a school of thought that believes talking to plants helps them grow and, if you ask me, this school of thought is onto something because Matilda is practically the size of a fully grown cow. She used to live in the lounge but there was nowhere she could be without blocking a doorway or the view of the telly. So now she resides here, in the bathroom. We had to take out the free-standing set of drawers to accommodate her, which was a shame. You don’t get much back on the conversation front with old Matilda so I don’t go overboard. I just like to leave her with these few uplifting words. If someone was only going to say just two words to me a day, I’d be happy with ‘morning, beautiful’.

I wander back into my room. I sit on the bed, place my mobile phone on my lap and await the Fashion Friday instructions. I pick up my book, planning to grab a few minutes reading prior to the arrival of Philippa’s orders. The book I am reading at the moment is brilliant. It’s about a woman called Rosie who’s thirty and has her own drive-time radio show; yes, she’s very cool is Rosie, although she does keep accidentally making libellous statements on air, so I’m a bit worried about her job, and her relationship too, actually. She goes out with this lovely bloke who is in a soap opera but she’s ballsing it up with him because she’s desperate for him to propose. I’ve barely been able to put the book down, but this morning, before I’ve even started to absorb the words, I’m looking out of the window and blowing breath through my lips like a horse. Have I forgotten that I was supposed to be meeting my parents later? No. Definitely not. I know this because Matt, my boyfriend, is taking me somewhere special tonight on a date. I definitely wouldn’t have double-booked. I breathe out through my lips again. My mother calling is very strange. My mother never even uses the phone. My father has always been funny about her using the phone. He didn’t like her answering it, and he used to scrutinise the monthly itemised bills, quizzing her about her calls. As a result she stopped using it. All of which makes my mother calling today so extraordinary.
See you later,
she said. She definitely said it. I wouldn’t mind seeing my mum later. My mum is nowhere near as ghastly as my dad. On the whole we got on well together when I lived at home, although we haven’t been as close since I left. But I have some nice memories of her from my childhood. She tried as best she could to stand up for me against my dad, she made the best roast chicken and shepherd’s pie you’ll ever taste and on Thursday nights when Dad played squash and we had the telly to ourselves we’d sit laughing at
Only Fools and Horses
together. But my dad hates her going anywhere without him, so if I’m seeing my mum today it means I’ll be seeing him too.

My mobile phone vibrates with a text. I gasp as I always do. It’s 8 a.m. It’s today’s dress code from Philippa.

It’s a wind-up. At least I hope it’s a wind-up. Philippa is peeved that I’m going out with Matt tonight. Normally Matt spends Friday night having beers and a curry with his workmates, so Philippa and I go out together. However, much as she’d love me to go out on my hot date this evening dressed as a dinner lady, she will also be going out later too, to our favourite club night, Bomber. Philippa will definitely be intending to pull and even Philippa would find it hard to pull dressed as a dinner lady. She’d get mistaken for a cleaner. She’d get asked to sort out a mess in the toilets. I keep hold of the phone, waiting for the next, more glamorous, option. Ah, here we are.

I text quickly back.

The Child of Destiny is what Philippa and I call the esteemed girl band Destiny’s Child. We love Destiny’s Child and have since school.

I hop out of bed and scan my room hoping for inspiration. I love my room, but it is crammed to the point of probable pain with clothes; most purchased from charity shops, some donated to me and a few special items bought new from proper shops or websites. Clothes cover the entire room and are colour-coded, creating a pleasant, trippy rainbow effect. Behind the clothes my walls are pale pink woodchip but only I know that. I tidied last night. I always tidy on Thursday because every Friday the room gets massacred when I have to come up with an outfit and be at work by 8.45. As is happening now. I’m already in the silver corner and have thrown some possibilities onto the bed. It may sound extreme that I have so many clothes, and it may well be. But Philippa’s the same. So at least I have company in the realms of extremity. This is why we introduced Fashion Friday, so we could get the chance to air some of our more outlandish purchases without having to wait for, say, a special occasion or a fancy dress party.

The third dress I try on is the one. A long-sleeved minidress, in pewter sequins. It’s tight on the bottom and baggier on the top, which is ideal because I work in a doctor’s surgery and people mainly see the top part of me as I sit behind the front desk. I stand and look at myself in the mirror. And then I sigh. Some days, it’s just hard to look in the mirror. Today is evidently one of them. Although that might be because thinking about my father makes my eyes droop and my mouth set to a frown, the combination of which doesn’t create the prettiest face.

‘Come on, JT, it could be worse,’ I say to my reflection, forcing a little smile. ‘That’s better.’

I don’t want to feel glum about how I look. I’ve got this face and body for my whole life. I may as well make some sort of peace with them. And I definitely look a lot better than I used to. When I was a child people would say that I was funny looking. They weren’t wrong. I’ve got the pictures to prove it. I had big sticking-out ears, with a huge mouth and long limbs, which I couldn’t quite control and which meant I was always knocking into people and things, something that infuriated my father. Nowadays, I don’t look like the girl I used to. No one’s called me funny looking, at least not to my face, for years. Although, once you’ve been called funny looking you always feel a bit funny looking, to be honest. Maybe that’s why I love clothes so much. And dying my hair, I’m a big fan of that too. Maybe it’s just to disguise the fact that beneath it all I’m just a funny-looking gangly girl who had her ears pinned back. Who knows? Bit of a morbid thought that.

Moving on. My hair is a mousy brown colour, or it was when I last looked, seven years ago. Right now, it’s a raspberry red colour in a fifties-style bob with a little fringe. I have slim legs. Yay. But no waist to speak of. Boo. And one of my small breasts is obviously bigger than the other. Apart from that, I have brown eyes and, although I still have a big mouth, I don’t really mind much any more. Sometimes people tell me that they like my lovely big smile, and I love hearing that so much. No, I don’t mind my mouth, it’s useful for talking and eating too, both of which I do a lot of, and it’s useful for other things, if you know what I mean, which I do a fair bit of too, now I have a boyfriend. So I can’t be a complete minger because my Matt is buff. Happy days.

Or at least today would feel like a happy day if I didn’t have this nagging suspicion that my mother and father are going to make a surprise visit. And if there’s one thing I know about my father it’s that he won’t be impressed by my pewter sequin minidress and will tell me at passionate length why not. Urgh. Stop thinking about your dad, Jenny. Think about your boyfriend. That’s much more fun.

I don’t know whether it’s me being oversensitive but I think that people often look surprised when they learn that I have a boyfriend. They can’t be as surprised as I am. Matthew Parry is his name. Jenny Parry. Jenny Parry. Not that he’s proposed. But it’s been a year, so you never know. Jenny Parry. No genital connotations at all. A fact that never fails to make me smile. Not only is he six foot two with sandy blond hair, he goes to the gym and hence has arm muscles. But he’s also driven. Yep, driven. He works for a big finance company, and is tipped to be a partner. I know! And he’s mine. He has just taken up golf though, which proves that you can’t have everything.

If it wasn’t for the Smiling Fanny Manifesto we would never have met. Although it wasn’t what you’d term a romantic first meeting. You’d have been forgiven for not noticing the fervent sexual chemistry, what with him threatening to call the police on me.

I should first explain that although point nine on the Smiling Fanny Manifesto is without a doubt the point that brings the most joy into my life, it is also by far the point on the list that is the biggest pain in the bottom. There are 365 days in a year. I’ve been following these rules for over six years. I’ve done over 2,000 good deeds.
Over 2,000 good deeds
. Day in, day out, with no vacations, I have to find a way to help someone. Hence, I always keep a stash of pretty notelets in my handbag so I can write a kind, anonymous note for a stranger should the situation arise. I love note writing. I love the thought of a slightly insecure-looking pretty young girl coming home and finding a card in her bag telling her that she looked beautiful tonight in that pink jumper, and that all the boys were clocking her twice and all the girls wanted to look as good as her. Recently Philippa and I have even tried setting people up with our note giving.

Anyway, back to the first time I met Matt. It was one Friday evening and, contrary to his usual practice, Matt wasn’t having beers and a curry with his workmates, he was in a pub in Nunstone. Now, Nunstone is a small town that lies seven miles from, and bears an uncanny similarity to, Tiddlesbury. Like Tiddlesbury it has:

Philippa and I go out in Nunstone on the first Friday of every month, as she will be doing tonight, because its nightclub, Original Sin, hosts a night called Bomber where Jägerbombs are half price. Philippa and I love the Jägerbomb. A shot of Jägermeister dropped into a small glass of Red Bull is the perfect nightclub beverage. It’s quick to drink, meaning you’re hands free on the dance floor, you don’t consume too much liquid so reduce the need to visit Original Sin’s terrifying toilets and it doesn’t make your mouth smell manky like wine, or make you feel as though an HGV has crashed into your head the next day like wine also does. I’m digressing, Jägerbombs make me do that. Back to the story.

Philippa and I were in Nunstone, having a drink in Nunstone’s premier (premier because it’s the only one) gastropub before we went to Bomber. As it was a Friday we were dressed as ‘Air Hostesses Who Work for a Budget Airline’. We were dressed as air hostesses largely because we’d found two matching military-style jackets in a charity shop and thought if we teamed these with miniskirts, high heels and a lot of Jägermeister we might pull.

So there we are in Nunstone’s premier gastropub, dressed as air hostesses and scanning the room for a suitable person on whom to bestow a well-meaning note.

‘Her!’ hissed Philippa, leaning over the table and tapping me on the arm with a pointed finger and then using the same finger to draw my attention to a pretty girl sitting opposite a handsome young sandy-haired man.

‘Oh.’ I sighed. ‘Oh, the poor thing.’

She was probably my age and was wearing a lovely flowered shirt-dress. She was exquisite, her skin was creamy and unblemished and her hair was thick and chestnutty with what looked like a natural wave in it. But I didn’t even have natural-wave envy because the poor girl didn’t look at all happy. Her eyes were heavy and her mouth turned down. She reminded me of me before the Smiling Fanny Manifesto. I shivered a little, remembering the scared me at eighteen who would cry in Philippa’s spare room and didn’t like to leave the house.

‘Philippa, you do know that every night you’re my first blessing, don’t you?’

‘Yep.’

‘Cool.’

‘So what we going to write?’

‘I might write out the Smiling Fanny Manifesto for her.’

‘Nice,’ said Philippa with a smile. ‘I hereby lend you the copyright.’

‘Much obliged.’

So I went into my bag. I call it a bag, because that’s what girls do, however, holdall might be more appropriate given the size of it. Another byproduct of point nine on the Smiling Fanny Manifesto is the amount of ‘might come in handy for helping people stuff’ (some might call it crap) I constantly carry around. I don’t leave home without painkillers, plasters, a local map, pens, two macs in sacs, sweets, mints, gum, bottle opener, and, my pièce de résistance, an array of pretty stationery. I pulled out a small postcard I’d been carrying around for months and on it I wrote,

I then somehow managed to cram all ten points onto it. Towards the bottom my writing had gone from beyond minuscule to that which might well be deciphered with only a microscope. Anyway, I managed it, whether or not she’d be able to read it or not, I didn’t know.

Philippa and I finished our drinks and stood up. We had to hurry because they started charging on the door of the club in a minute. We didn’t even need to discuss the next bit, we’d been perfecting it for years. She got up from the table and walked over to where the pretty girl was sitting with her boyfriend on the banquette. I followed. I saw that the girl’s bag (also a holdall) was nestled next to her, open and waiting for me to slip the letter in. This would be easy.

‘Am I being stupid?’ Philippa started while I hovered next to the pretty girl’s bag. ‘I can’t find the loos in here.’

‘Oh,’ the unhappy girl starts. I lean down to drop the card into her bag. Seamless.

‘Oi! Oi!’ Sandy-coloured-hair man shouts, getting quickly to his feet. ‘What are you doing with her bag?’ He challenged us. We stared back, open mouthed, we’d never been caught before. I couldn’t help but be impressed and I found myself thinking how nice it would be to have someone watching out for me in that way. A wingman. I had a wingwoman, of course. I had the best wingwoman in the world in Philippa. But as this handsome man leapt to his feet I couldn’t help but feel a longing for a man who cared for and wanted to protect me too. I was getting those urges a lot at that time. I suppose I was lonely for love. He’s gallant, I thought, and it struck me that gallant wasn’t a word that got used much any more. In Nunstone, anyway.

‘It’s the oldest trick in the book that, “Where’s the toilet?” distraction. Thieves! Thieves!’ he shouted. ‘I’m calling the police!’

Now, I would like to say here, in my defence, that I didn’t start the laughing. It was Philippa. She always starts the laughing. She’s been like this since school. We’d be hauled into the headmaster’s office for causing some sort of uncool ruckus like trying to smoke oregano and setting off the smoke alarm. We’d be sheepishly receiving a bollocking when I’d notice, out of the corner of my eye, that Philippa was silently rocking back and forward. Uncontrollable laughter always starts with silent rocking and once it starts, it generally takes around four and a half seconds for me to be laughing too. I am powerless to keep a straight face once Philippa starts with the silent rocking.

So the sandy-haired gallant bloke mentions the police and Philippa starts doing some really rather dynamic rocking.

‘Check your bag! Check your bag!’ he’s shouting now, and jumping from foot to foot. ‘I thought air hostesses were well paid!’

Four and a half seconds are up. Philippa snorts. I have to sit down, the laughs come so hard. A barman comes over. The girl simply sits quietly squinting at the card.

‘It’s all right, Matt, they didn’t take anything. They left me a note. Let’s go.’

‘Left you a note?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘Just a girly note. Saying they like my dress.’

Sandy-haired man shakes his head as though he’s never heard anything so ridiculous. The pretty girl nearly smiles but not quite. Philippa and I nod to each other and head for the door.

I had absolutely no idea that six months later sandy-haired man would have seen me naked. Mind you, there would be a few more fateful meetings before we got to that point.

Don’t whatever you do get Philippa talking about my meeting Matt. She doesn’t think Matt’s right for me. She thinks that because cherubs didn’t appear and fireworks didn’t start flying out of my bottom the first time I met him, he’s not The One. She says, ‘If he doesn’t make your bits twitch then you’re banging a square peg in a round hole.’ She talks about bit-twitching a lot.

It’s strange. My best friend Philippa is the wisest person I know. Her father is a doctor in Tiddlesbury and her mum lives in America and is a life coach/sexual therapist (it actually says that on her business cards), and Philippa herself works for the local paper, so she knows practically everything about everything. She delivers top-notch advice on a whole range of subjects, but bless her, she hasn’t got a clue about love. She thinks it exists like it does in a romance novel or a film starring Hugh Grant or Sandra Bullock, she believes that it’s possible to totally gel with another person and exist in an unpoppable bubble of bliss with them. I know. Ridiculous.

But I love having a boyfriend. I really do. Matt’s my first ever boyfriend, which is a bit embarrassing. But it could be worse, I got there in the end. And at least thinking about him stopped me dwelling on my father, as I carried on getting ready for work.