The Worst Girlfriend in the World (11 page)

‘Yeah, right.’ Dora, who was wearing leggings, white shirt and a black velvet tailcoat, what she called a ‘casual Wednesday look’, gestured at Sneering Studio Tech, who was standing with his arms folded and staring at the ceiling as Sage and Krystal with a K almost came to blows over the two dress forms that were left. ‘He’s much better looking than Louis.’

‘No, he’s not,’ I said automatically, because my research had been both exhausting and empirical. Louis was the best-looking boy in Merrycliffe. Sneering Studio Tech was, well, he was…

I shuffled round on my stool so I could peer at him over my dress form’s shoulder. He was tall, but not as tall as Louis. He was thin but not rock-god thin like Louis, just thin. He didn’t have Louis’s amazing cheekbones either, but he had one of those thin faces that looked intelligent rather than ferrety. His eyes… well, I couldn’t be sure without making it really obvious that I was staring but Louis’s eyes were blue and Sneering Studio Tech’s eyes weren’t blue. He had mousy brown hair that could have done with cutting to stop it falling in his indeterminate-coloured eyes and he was wearing navy overalls and he played guitar in Thee Desperadoes very badly. Definitely not crush material.

‘Well, I think he has a certain charm,’ Dora said. ‘What do you reckon?’

Paul and Mattie, who had the workstation next to Dora, both nodded and Sage, victorious in her battle over the dress form, came over. She gave me a nasty eye flick, because her and Krystal with a K were still fully paid-up members of the hate club. ‘Reckon to what?’

‘Whether laughing boy over there is fit. Franny says no, but the boys and I think he’s a fixer-upper.’

‘I’d fix him up,’ Sage said immediately. ‘He’s got really nice hands and he winked at me and smiled when I told Krystal with a K that it didn’t matter what dress form she got because she was only killing time until she got a place on a course where she’d learn to make people as orange as she was. So he’s got a sense of humour too.’

I didn’t think smiling at Sage’s bitchy put-down qualified as a sense of humour but then Barbara bustled over with her clipboard. She was rarely seen without her clipboard.‘We need to make arrangements for our field trip,’ she said. In the morning we were getting the train to Morecambe to go fabric shopping because there wasn’t a fabric shop within a ten-mile radius of Merrycliffe. ‘I need you at the train station at ten sharp. I will leave latecomers behind.’ As she started going on about travel vouchers and how much money we’d need, Sage turned to look at Sneering Studio Tech, who was now doing something with the last rickety dress form and a screwdriver.

‘So, anyway, what’s your name, then?’ Sage asked because she was another girl who had no problem getting a guy’s attention.

He didn’t say anything at first – probably because he was doing a tricky bit of screwdrivering – then he looked up. ‘Francis,’ he said.

I wished Alice had been there, because later when I told her that Dora had burst into a shrieking fit of the giggles when we discovered that Sneering Studio Tech HAD THE SAME FIRST NAME AS ME, she wasn’t impressed.

‘He’s Francis with an I and you’re not even a Frances with an e,’ she argued, elbows resting on the counter of the Chatterjee’s shop as I sewed on a shirt button. ‘Officially you’re a Francesca but really you’re Franny so it’s not that big a deal.’

‘Well, it felt like one. I had to stuff my fingers in my mouth to stop myself from laughing and Sneering Studio Tech looked even more sneery than he normally does,’ I explained, but Alice shook her head like she just didn’t get it. ‘I suppose it was one of those things where you just had to be there.’

Alice’s face twisted in a scowl that lasted no longer than the time it took to blink. Then she straightened up. ‘But I’m not there, Franny, because you abandoned me…’

‘Well, I wouldn’t call it abandon and I still can’t understand why you don’t tell your mum that you don’t want to do Business Studies, or go on strike and refuse to do your coursework or something.’

‘Oh, please! Don’t make out that failing your GCSEs was some kind of cunning masterplan,’ she snapped and I gasped in shock. Alice’s shoulders slumped. ‘Don’t look at me like that! It was a joke. I didn’t mean it.’

But it wasn’t a joke. It was Alice saying something nasty to hurt me. ‘I don’t know what’s going on with us,’ I said. ‘Look, I’m at college and I spend all day with Dora and the others. What do you want me to do? Not speak to them at all?’

‘Yes, that’s exactly what I want you to do,’ Alice said and she sounded deadly serious.

I didn’t know what to say, which was a first, and it was a relief when Rajesh swaggered through the door. ‘Franny to the B! Wassup? You feeling breezy, innit?’ He finished it off with some weird hand gesture that I was sure was big in da ’hood. Then he saw Alice standing there and his hand stilled in mid-air. ‘Oh, you’re here.’

‘And so are you,’ she said without much pleasure. ‘Time I wasn’t.’ Alice gathered up her bag and folders and sniffed contemptuously as Raj made a big deal of holding the door open for her.

‘I’ll call you later, ’K?’ I called out but she was already out of the door.

It was bright and sunny for our field trip to Morecambe when we caught the little cross-country train that went from Merrycliffe’s tiny station every two hours.

Barbara spent most of the journey suggesting, but really telling us, that we should buy cotton because it would be the easiest material to work with. I was making an A-line sixties shift dress, a very simple design (so it had to be executed
perfectly
because there would be nowhere to hide shoddy sewing)
but I’d altered my pattern to add a pair of half-circle pockets, which I wanted to edge in a contrasting band.

My head was full of fabric possibilities as I took out my patterns and made sketches and wrote notes in my
Designers I Have Met And Liked
notebook.

Once we were off the train, it was a short walk to the fabric shop, which was just off Morecambe’s seafront. The promenade had been swanked up a few years before, but was still mostly the domain of old people using the new cycle paths to bomb along on their motorised scooters. I kept my eye out for the vintage ice cream van that bore the legend
Every Day Is Like Sundae
because hopefully there’d be time for a walk and a 99 before we got the train home. Morecambe also had several excellent charity shops. I always found that towns full of OAPs had really good stuff in the chazzas because there was nobody cool around to pick over it first.

Morecambe was quite grim and run-down once you left the seafront but at least it had a huge fabric shop. Once we got inside I had a rummage around the cotton but none of it was talking to me. Dora was having a tizzy as she wanted to make a huge billowy skirt but it would take metres upon metres of fabric for full billowyness and she didn’t have that much money. Sandra and Karen were discussing something called a colour wheel and saying things like ‘I still think you’re a Spring, love. You’re definitely not an Autumn,’ and Paul, Matthew and Sage had disappeared into the furthest reaches of the shop.

I stared up at the bolts of fabric, willing one of them to reach out to me, speak to me, be worthy of being worn by me, but I got a big fat nothing.

‘Everything all right, Francesca?’ Barbara asked as I disconsolately fingered a bolt of black and white polka-dot brushed cotton. ‘That’s a fun print.’

‘I’m not really feeling it,’ I muttered, because I’d done the whole polka-dot thing when I was, like, thirteen. ‘Not sure what I’m in the mood for.’

Barbara must have realised I was a hopeless case because she left me to hurry over to Krystal with a K, who was eyeing up some neon-pink velour. ‘If she thinks she’s making a tracksuit, I will kill her,’ I heard Barbara mutter and I was grinning as I wandered further into the depths of the shop, which was actually about six shops knocked together.

There was nothing really lovely that caught my eye, though there was a lot of sparkly spandex to make dance costumes with. There probably wasn’t much call for patterned silk or a lovely drapey wool jersey in Morecambe, I thought as I headed for the little alcove where a big red
Bargains
sign was hanging.

I burrowed through grubby polycotton remnants and nasty, shiny lengths of polyester that would burn like a firework if they came within fifty metres of a naked flame. Then I heard Barbara asking everyone to take their fabric to the till because our time was up.

My dreams of a sleek, stylish sixties shift dress were yet to be realised and then I saw a sliver of something grey in one of the bins. I investigated further. It was leather. A thin, buttery soft leather in a beautiful dove grey. It wasn’t cotton and…

‘You can’t make something in leather,’ Barbara said from somewhere behind me. ‘Let’s not do a marathon before we can even walk.’

‘I’ll need to get something for a lining. Polyester would do, don’t you think?’ I asked Barbara. She looked surprised that I even knew that much. ‘I was going to use ribbon for contrast banding on my pockets but maybe piping instead and for the cuffs, maybe the hem. Oooh! This!’

I yanked out about half a metre of leather in a pretty sky blue, which would be a perfect foil for the grey.

‘Leather is very difficult to work with even for an experienced seamstress,’ Barbara said.

I wasn’t experienced but I’d never get to be experienced if I didn’t challenge myself.

‘But it’s very thin, very soft leather. Not like biker jacket leather,’ I said, holding it out so she could take it between thumb and forefinger. ‘I’m going to get it anyway and I could work on it at home but I’d really like to use it for my first piece so you can get an idea of my design aesthetic. Sharply tailored dresses made of leather are very on-trend. Martin Sanderson did them in his last collection.’

‘Martin Sanderson.’ Barbara sniffed. ‘He might be a successful designer now, but once he was a very silly fashion student with ideas above his skill set who made the most mangled pair of trousers I’ve ever seen.’

‘No,’ I breathed. ‘What? You… Martin Sanderson?’

Barbara allowed herself a small smile for rendering me about as speechless as I ever got. ‘We were both fashion students at the very same college where you’re driving your poor lecturer mad.’

‘Shut. Up.’

‘No, Francesca, I won’t shut up.’ Barbara was loving this, I could tell. I was kind of loving it too. I knew Martin Sanderson was about the only Merrycliffe boy to make good but I hadn’t realised he’d started out at Merrycliffe Technical College. With Barbara! My brain could not compute. ‘Anyway, back to this leather…’

I might have been almost speechless but I wasn’t budging. ‘If Martin Sanderson can make a leather dress that isn’t slutty then so can I. Or I can try at least.’

‘Don’t tell me, Francesca, you also read
Vogue
from cover to cover every month,’ Barbara said with a sigh, but then she actually smiled at me, like she read
Vogue
from cover to cover every month too. Like, we were totally having a moment.

I nodded. ‘And
Vogue Italia
if I can get hold of a copy and any other foreign edition of
Vogue
too.’

‘Oh dear, I can see that I’m going to have my hands full with you,’ she said, as she gently nudged me out of the bargain corner with the leather clutched to my chest. On the way out I saw some stretchy silver fabric that was just what I needed for my Halloween costume and I grabbed hold of that too. Who would have thought that Barbara and I would have bonded over our mutual love of
Vogue
? I made a solemn vow that I would suck up to her like she’d never been sucked up to before so she’d dish all kinds of dirt on Martin Sanderson. Then she cleared her throat. ‘That is,
if
you manage to pass your GCSEs when you retake them.’ It was obvious that our bonding moment was gone.

Barbara gave us an hour to amuse ourselves before we got the train back to Merrycliffe, so I hurried off for a trawl of the charity shops. I bought a lined dress for fifty pence – not because I wanted to wear it. No way, it was strictly Mother of the Bride, but I was going to take it apart to see how the lining was constructed. I also found a pair of white kitten heels that I could dye another colour and a really rancid-looking teddy holding a heart that said
Best Friends Forever
. Whenever Alice or I found a particularly hideous piece of best friend tat we bought it for the other one. This was a worthy addition to the pile of shame and it was a much-needed reminder that we
were
best friends forever.

Then, as I was about to head for the station, I saw the
Every Day Is Like Sundae
ice cream van. Clutching a toffee crunch 99 with flake, I had to run all the way back to where the train was already pulling into the platform. Barbara was standing at the door to one of the carriages and waving furiously at me. ‘Serve you right if you’d been left behind,’ she said, as I heaved myself up on to the train, like it was the only train leaving Morecambe that week, which it so wasn’t.

I snagged two seats to myself – Dora, Matthew, Paul and Sage were sitting across the aisle from me. I frantically licked my rapidly melting ice cream and pulled out my phone one-handed so I could send Alice a picture of the bear, and it was then my mind was blown.

Louis Allen has accepted your friend request.
 

I felt all colour drain from me, as if the blood in my head had decided to plunge to my feet. Then it raced all the way back to the top to heat up my cheeks in the biggest, most painful blush I’d ever experienced.