The Four of Us (6 page)

‘Interesting,' Geraldine had said, and had then changed the subject to the one that dominated most of their conversations; boys – and how to attract them.

That their parents would all have pink fits if they knew just how boy-fixated they were was, Kiki reflected, the only thing their parents had in common. Artemis's father would, they had all generally agreed, lay violent hands on any boy he caught taking his precious only daughter out on a date. Geraldine had been of the opinion that it was
her
her father would lay violent hands on if he caught her out with a boy at fifteen and Primmie had said that if she were caught she would never be allowed to sleep away from home again.

She turned away from the window in order to turn off the alarm of her bedside clock before it shrilled into life and then threw one of her pillows on to Primmie's bed.

‘Hey, Dormouse,' she said, impatiently. ‘Wake up, it's seven thirty, it's Friday and I've got plans for the four of us.'

Primmie groaned and humped herself a little further under the bedcovers. Kiki unceremoniously tugged them off her. ‘What say we organize a night of freedom for tomorrow?'

Primmie swung her legs to the floor and pushed a tangle of mousy curls away from her face. ‘How? I'll be in Rotherhithe.'

‘You don't have to be.'

Kiki padded barefoot into the en-suite bathroom. ‘It's the sixth form school play tomorrow night.' She turned on a cold tap and squeezed toothpaste on to a toothbrush. ‘If you say you want to go to it, it'll be the perfect excuse for your sleeping here an extra night.'

‘But I don't want to go to it.'

Kiki's response, as she spat and gargled into the sink, was, perhaps fortunately, unintelligible.

‘And Geraldine and Artemis won't want to go to it either,' Primmie continued, shedding her pyjamas and stepping into the shower. ‘It's
A Midsummer Night's Dream
and I saw them at rehearsal the other week when I had to stay behind for tennis practice.' She turned the shower on, revelling in the pleasure of it. Even after living so long at the Lanes', there were still some things she was unable to take for granted. ‘They were dreadful,' she said, speaking more loudly so that Kiki would be able to hear her over the sound of the water. ‘Truly.'

‘Lord, but you're dense!' Kiki wiped her mouth on a towel and paused long enough in front of the mirror to see if her breasts were making much of an impression against the thin cotton of her pyjama top. They weren't. ‘The school play would just be the
excuse
for your sleeping over on Saturday night. We wouldn't actually
go
to the silly, sodding thing. Simon's at a conference over the weekend. It's an ideal weekend for arranging for Geraldine and Artemis to sleep over with us because when he's away Mummy always takes advantage and has a binge and she won't have a clue what time we come home. Savvy?'

‘Y-e-s.' Doubtfully Primmie stepped out of the shower so that Kiki could step into it. ‘But it's a bit deceitful, isn't it? I mean we're all going to have to lie, aren't we?'

Kiki closed her eyes in exasperation and began soaping herself, wondering why it was she was still so flat chested when even Primmie was wearing a bra and Artemis's cup size was an awesome 36C.

‘No, we're not, Primmie,' she said, with as much patience as she could summon. ‘We all four tell our parents that it's the sixth form play on Saturday – and you three then ask if it's OK for you to sleep at my house. None of us will have said that we're
going
to the play. It will just be
assumed
that we are. So we won't have fibbed at all. Get it?'

‘It's a great wheeze,' Geraldine said later that morning as they all four made their way to the science laboratory. ‘We'll all have to leave home wearing school uniform, though. It's obligatory for any school event and all our parents know that.'

‘Just hide some trendy gear in with your night things.' Kiki flashed a wicked grin. ‘We'll stow them in a couple of carrier bags and change in the loos at Bickley Station. Easy peasy.'

‘And then where will we go?' Breathlessly Artemis heaved her pile of science textbooks from one arm to the other, struggling not to be left behind as they clattered up the steep flight of stairs leading to the science laboratory.

‘We'll cruise the coffee bars in Bromley High Street.' Kiki looked across at Geraldine. ‘You OK with that, Geraldine? All the boys from Dulwich College and St Dunstan's hang out there and there's live music in the Two Zeds coffee bar – and that I
really
want to check out.'

That evening Kiki threw the doors of her wardrobe wide and stood in front of its contents in deep thought.

The trouble was that though she had clothes aplenty they were all clothes her mother deemed suitable for her age, which meant they were entirely unsuitable for her purpose. She dragged an Op Art sleeveless shift dress out, wondering if she could get away with slicing three inches off its length. The zigzag patterning was in stark black and white – a sophistication she'd had to fight hard for – and if she wore it with her black knee-high boots and her black leather baker-boy beret she might just look sufficiently groovy to pass as an up-and-coming pop star.

She was still standing in front of her open wardrobe, pondering whether if she sliced three inches off the bottom of her dress she would be able to successfully re-hem it, when her mother walked into the room and sat down heavily on the bed.

‘Wha'are you doing, darling?' she asked, her speech already slurred. ‘You're not going out tonigh', are you? I thought the school play was tomorrow nigh'?'

‘It is.' Kiki closed her wardrobe door, fiercely hoping there'd been no sign of inebriation in her mother's voice when, a little earlier in the evening, she had responded to Artemis's mother's query as to whether it really was all right for Artemis to sleep over on Saturday night.

‘Then come and keep me company downstairs,' her mother said, sounding abjectly forlorn.

‘OK. But you have to watch
Ready, Steady, Go
with me.'

‘I always do watch it,' her mother said, surprising the socks off her. ‘Cathy McGowan reminds me of Primmie. She's always so bright and zesty.'

Kiki, usually always moody and sulky in both her parents' presence, erupted into giggles. Long-haired Cathy McGowan was known as Queen of the Mods and that was hardly a title that fitted Primmie.

‘Come on, Mummy,' she said, drawing her mother to her feet and sliding her arm companionably through hers, an action so alien she couldn't remember when last she'd done it. ‘You know what Cathy McGowan always says when the programme begins. The weekend starts here!'

‘Evening, Mrs Lane. Thank you for letting us stay the night,' Artemis and Geraldine chanted in unison as they trooped into the house a little after six o'clock the following day, each carrying an overnight bag.

‘That's fine,' Kiki's mother responded, far more animated than usual, ‘there's no problem as long as you don't want me to go with you to the play. An amateur production of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
is a joy I can easily forego.'

Laughing and saying nothing, in order not to have to blatantly lie about their plans for the evening, they clattered up the stairs after Kiki.

‘Where's Primmie? Isn't she here yet?' Artemis asked as she dumped her overnight bag on one of the twin beds.

‘Nope. We're meeting her at Bickley Station at half past six. What have you brought to wear, Artemis? We need to look as if we're seventeen if the evening's to be a success.'

Artemis clicked open her overnight bag, turfed out a pair of pyjamas and, from beneath them, rather hesitantly lifted out a sleeveless, fuchsia-pink mini-dress. ‘It's a Mary Quant,' she said before anyone ventured an opinion. ‘Daddy bought it for me to wear at my cousin's christening. It isn't
micro
-short, but it is OK, isn't it? I mean, I will look at least seventeen wearing it, won't I?'

‘It's ravishing,' Geraldine said, adroitly fudging the issue of exactly how Artemis, whose legs were just as plump as the rest of her body, was going to look wearing it.

Artemis, always anxious for Geraldine's opinion, beamed with relief. Behind Artemis's back, Kiki pulled an agonized face. Artemis was quite obviously going to look a disaster and Primmie almost certainly would look no better, though for different reasons.

‘I did offer to lend Primmie something to wear,' she said now to Geraldine, ‘but she wouldn't have it. She said she had a new crocheted top with a scalloped neckline.'

‘And what is she going to wear it with?' Geraldine asked dryly, well aware, as all three of them were, that money for clothes was in short supply in the Surtees household. ‘Her school skirt?'

‘Probably.' There was irritation in Kiki's voice. Why Primmie was so adamant about not borrowing any of her clothes she couldn't imagine. It made no sense. And if Primmie turned up at the Two Zeds looking like a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl then the rest of them were going to find it exceedingly difficult to pass as seventeen-year-olds, no matter how stylish their clothes or how much make-up they wore.

‘Are we really going to have to put our clothes in carrier bags when we leave the house?' Artemis asked, fretting over yet another aspect of their evening of freedom. ‘If my dress is put in a carrier bag it'll get terribly creased.'

Kiki sucked in her breath, about to blow her top at such nit-picking carping.

‘It'll be OK if it's folded properly,' Geraldine said swiftly. ‘And I'll do the folding, so take that anxious look off your face or you'll get frown lines, Artemis.'

As Artemis rushed to take a look at her forehead in the dressing-table mirror, Kiki gave a hoot of laughter, her irritation vanishing. ‘I bet we wouldn't have to go through all this palaver if we lived in Rotherhithe,' she said, flopping down on the bed next to Geraldine. ‘Primmie only has to endure it because we do. She says all the friends she went to junior school with go out at night pretty much when they want to – and not only are there more coffee bars in Rotherhithe than there are in Bromley, but there's a working men's club there as well.'

‘A working men's club?' Artemis turned away from the mirror. ‘
A working men's club?
Why on earth would you be interested in a place like that?'

‘Because if you're with a member they let you in under the age of eighteen,' Geraldine said, intervening between the two of them yet again. ‘And because they have entertainment, singers and comedians …'

‘And amateur singers and comedians,' Kiki said, bouncing from the bed, impatient for it to be time for them to set off to meet Primmie. ‘In the north, amateur singers can become very well known by singing in their local club. Here, the only place there's a remote chance of being able to get up and sing is in a couple of coffee bars in Bromley. Which is why tonight is so important. There'll be live music tonight at the Two Zeds, and whatever the group playing there I'm going to do a number with them.'

‘But they'll have a singer, won't they?' Artemis, as usual, sounded bewildered. ‘Why would they let you sing with them when they'll have a singer already?'

‘Because I'm going to sing with them whether they want me to or not.'

‘And what if they throw you – and us – out?' Geraldine asked, an eyebrow quirked.

Kiki's grin almost split her cat-like face in two. ‘They won't do that, Geraldine. Not when they hear me. Tonight is going to be a historic occasion. Tonight, Kiki Lane is going to make her public debut, even if she has to chain herself to the mike in order to do so. It's going to be a blast and absolutely, utterly,
searingly
unforgettable!'

The evening at the Two Zeds had certainly been everything Kiki had promised it would be. Even two weeks later the memory of it was, for Artemis, sickeningly vivid.

She yanked off the dress she had put on only five minutes earlier, searching her wardrobe for something that would make her look less fat, wondering why, when she was about to go with her father and Primmie to see a show in the West End, she was again brooding about what she always thought of as ‘the Bromley nightmare'. It hadn't started off disastrously, despite her tension and nerves. At first, when they'd changed out of their school uniforms in the loos at Bickley Station, it had been fun. Giggling fit to burst they'd tarted themselves up with all the make-up they'd been able to lay their hands on. Geraldine's contribution had been her mother's lipstick and her mother's perfume. The perfume had been OK, but the lipstick had been bright red and crashingly old-fashioned.

Geraldine hadn't thought it old-fashioned, though. When she and Kiki and Primmie had opted for the Max Factor pearlized pink lipstick that Kiki had bought out of her spending money, with Kiki rudely telling Geraldine that she couldn't wear the red, because only old women wore red, Geraldine had merely quirked her eyebrow and said, ‘Really, Kiki? Just watch me.'

Hauling a tapestry skirt out of her wardrobe in the hope that she might look less of a porker in it than she had in the dress, Artemis wondered why it was she could never respond to Kiki's acidly sharp remarks in the languid, indifferent way Geraldine always did. No one, not even Kiki, ever got the better of Geraldine. And when the four of them had finished plastering make-up on, it had been Geraldine – who had been much lighter-handed with it than the rest of them – who had looked head-turningly sensational.

Kiki had looked mesmerizingly hip – which was the effect she had wanted. Wearing knee-length black boots, a black and white zigzag-patterned shift dress given extra shape by the cotton wool stuffed down the bra she'd borrowed from Geraldine, a black leather baker-boy beret on her flame-red hair and with her eyes soot-dark with the help of lashings of black eye liner and mascara, she had looked years older than her actual age.