Authors: Cathy MacPhail
But I could tell Mum knew the answer already. Erin’s mum and her nippy voice had told her. ‘You’re going about with that awful Wizzie’s gang. I can’t believe it. I won’t have it, do you hear me? I won’t have it.’
Now it was my turn to sigh. ‘You’ll not have what, Mum?’
‘I’ll not have you going round with that lot.’
‘I’ve been going around with them for a couple of weeks now, Mum, and I haven’t got into any trouble.’
She shook her head so violently I was waiting to see it spin across the room. ‘It’s only a matter of time.’
‘So what am I supposed to do, Mum? They’re the only friends I’ve got now.’
She slapped her head dramatically. ‘How sad are you? They’re the only friends you can get? You must be desperate.’
‘I was,’ I reminded her.
‘Well, you won’t be seeing them again. I forbid it. I’ll ground you.’
‘You can’t ground me. I’ve not done anything wrong!’
She ranted on until I couldn’t listen any more. She was going to ground me till I was sixteen, she yelled at me. But I knew she couldn’t ground me at all. The way her shifts worked, half the time she wasn’t home at night. I’d never really defied her before – never had to with the Lip Gloss Girls. Everything Erin did was just fine, according to my mum. But I would defy her now.
I strode into my room and slammed the door shut. Then I texted them all.
HELP. CRAZY MOTHER.
Wizzie’s answer made me laugh.
W8 TILL U MEET MINE. SHE DFNITLY FLU OVR THE CUCU NEST
.
I didn’t care if it made my mother mad, or if the teachers were annoyed. So Erin’s mum thought I’d sunk low. So the teachers thought I was running with a bad crowd. Why should I care what they thought? For the first time in ages, I was enjoying myself. And I hadn’t been in a fight once with the Hell Cats. Why couldn’t anyone else see that?
Lauren suggested we all meet at her house next night. It was Mum’s night for her aerobics class, so she wouldn’t be in till later. I’d be back before she was.
I’d never been to any of their houses before. All I knew was that they lived on one of the worst estates in the town. Half the houses were derelict, windows boarded up with steel shutters, yobs running wild, causing chaos. The local paper was always full of stories about the place. I took the train from the station at the top of my street and two stops later I was in another world. I was a little afraid even venturing on to the platform.
‘Just wear a bulletproof vest and carry a gun and you should be OK,’ Wizzie had warned me on the phone, trying to be funny. I didn’t laugh. If I’d had a bulletproof vest it would have been on me. ‘That’s why everybody’s got a Rottweiler up here,’ she went on. ‘Or
keeps a baseball bat behind the door. Safety precaution.’
But Lauren’s house was a total surprise. Set in a little cul-de-sac, it was a two-storey semi-detached council house that her parents had bought. The windows sparkled clean and the lights inside were warm and welcoming. The garden was tidy too and well kept, except for an army of garden gnomes. Erin would have laughed at that, called it ‘common’. I thought they were kind of cute.
Lauren’s mother opened the door and I could see right away where Lauren got her fashion sense from. Her mother’s hair was tied up on top of her head with a multi-coloured scarf, and she was wearing some kind of flowery top, tight jeans and orange slippers. She had a wooden spoon in her hand as if she was in the middle of cooking something. Lauren came hurrying downstairs as I came in.
Her mother swung round as Lauren tapped her on the shoulder. Then Lauren started signing to her.
‘I’m telling her if she’s cooking something we don’t want it,’ Lauren explained to me. ‘She always manages to drop in some strange ingredient – thinks it makes it taste better. It never does.’
Her mother hit her with the spoon. Lauren grabbed
at her head as if she was in pain, and her mother began signing at such a speed I had to laugh. Lauren laughed too.
‘Oh, shut up, Mum. You talk such a load of rubbish!’ Her mother kept signing away. Lauren turned to me. ‘Honestly, see when she starts with those hands of hers, you can’t get her to shut up.’
Her dad appeared on the scene then, still in his working clothes. He was a plumber, Lauren had told me. ‘What’s all this noise?’ he said, though there was complete silence. It made me giggle. He winked at me. ‘Never marry a woman that talks as much as this! Get in that kitchen, woman, and make me a cup of tea!’
He grabbed Lauren’s mum by the shoulder and she started hitting him with the spoon. Tapping him really. He pretended to be mortally hurt, clutched at his arm and shouted, ‘Domestic abuse! Call the police!’
It was so crazy I couldn’t stop myself laughing.
‘They’re mad, Hannah. I should have warned you.’
We managed finally to escape to Lauren’s room. The rest had already arrived and were lolling about on Lauren’s bed. She shared the room with her sister – the one who had been the waitress at the wedding, Ellen. She was getting ready to go out, slipping on a coat. She
smiled a greeting to me as I came in. If she knew I’d suspected her, she didn’t show it. She told us all to have a nice night, talking in that thick way that deaf people have. ‘She makes Mother Teresa look like Adolf Hitler,’ I remembered Wizzie telling me. I felt ashamed. How could I have suspected her?
Lauren’s room was a dream. The bedcovers and the curtains matched, pale green and cream.
‘Mum made them,’ she told me when I remarked on how nice they were. ‘She’s really handy. She made them for Grace as well.’
‘So your mother thinks we’re beneath you?’ Wizzie said, bouncing on the bed, not caring about how creamy the covers were.
‘Scum, I think she called you.’
‘So glad we’ve got a good reputation,’ she said.
Lauren’s mother popped her head in the door and started signing again. Lauren shook her head furiously.
‘What was that about?’ I asked.
‘She’s asking if we want some cheese on toast.’
Cheese on toast sounded nice to me. But the rest of them groaned. Wizzie pretended to be sick under the bed.
‘It can’t be that bad,’ I said.
‘The last time she made us cheese on toast, she sliced some oranges into it “to add flavour”, she said.’ Grace shivered at the memory. ‘It added something, but it certainly wasn’t flavour.’
The wind suddenly howled through the trees outside.
Lauren sat on the floor. ‘Who says we’ll play Light as a Feather? It’s a brilliant night for it.’
You could have knocked me down with one. ‘You play that too?’
‘Thought it would be too scary for the Lip Gloss Girls,’ Wizzie said.
‘Bet you don’t get it to work,’ Sonya said.
‘Every time,’ I told them.
‘Bet your ghost stories are all about little girls screaming and running away from bad people and having handsome hunks save them,’ Wizzie said. And she began screaming like a tiny baby.
‘You’d never beat me with a ghost story,’ I said. A challenge, and I was always up for a challenge.
The room was in darkness and the ghost stories began. Wizzie was first – liked to be first in everything, I suppose. Her story was all slash and blood and horror, about a headless zombie cannibal that kept chasing
everybody and eating them. It didn’t so much scare you as make you sick.
‘How could it chase you if it didn’t have a head?’ Grace wanted to know. ‘It would keep bumping into things, wouldn’t it?’
Wizzie rolled her eyes. ‘It’s a story, Grace. It doesn’t have to be logical. Anyway, how would it eat people if it didn’t have a head either! You’ve just got to use your imagination.’
That made us all giggle, except Grace, still trying to work it out.
Sonya told a vampire story, not very well, and Grace’s story was so mixed up she forgot the ending. Then it was my turn. I began the video story, speaking in a soft voice, full of atmosphere. I wanted them to know that I was the master storyteller, just as I had been with Erin. I drew them in, told them of the figure in the fog striding towards the shack, even mentioning Mary Brown, a real name, a real girl. I had them mesmerised, listening to my every word. I had almost reached the climax …
‘Then, I heard the back door of the video shop creak open …’
All of a sudden a cupboard door in Lauren’s room
flew open, and a dark hooded figure leapt out.
Total panic! We all screamed, fell back in complete confusion. Grace was almost out of the window. Sonya was under the bed. I grabbed a lamp, ready to hurl it at whatever demon was attacking us.
‘What’s that?!’
‘Blinkin’ hell, the story come to life.’
Lauren jumped to her feet, switched on the light. The hooded figure whipped off his mask with a flourish.
It was Lauren’s dad.
He was laughing so much I thought he was about to burst. ‘Gotya, lassies!’
Lauren threw a cushion at him. ‘Dad! That could have been fatal!’
‘Where did he come from?’ I asked.
In answer, her dad, still chuckling away, opened the cupboard door he had leapt from and stepped inside. He pushed another door that opened on to the landing in the hallway. ‘Gotya!’ he said again. ‘Nobody ever remembers I can get in from the landing that way! Especially on a dark night … with the lights off, and the wind blowing.’ He began to howl like a wolf.
Grace flopped on to the bed. ‘See you, Mr Winters!’
She said it as if Lauren’s dad always got up to tricks like that.
I hadn’t laughed like that in so long. And here I was laughing again with the Hell Cats.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Light as a Feather was forgotten. The mood gone. Even the wind had died down.
Lauren put on her music and we all began singing along with our favourite tunes. Wizzie was leaping about on the bed. I waited for Lauren to tell her to stop, but no one said a word to her. I’d like to see my mum allowing that!
Then I stopped singing. I listened. One of us had a beautiful voice, and it certainly wasn’t me.
I looked at Lauren.
She looked back at me. Stopped singing too. ‘What?’
‘You’re a really good singer,’ I said.
‘You don’t have to sound so surprised.’
‘She is, isn’t she?’ Wizzie said, flopping on the bed at last. She said it as if it was something they had told Lauren lots of times. ‘Her brother’s got a band. When she’s older she’s going to sing in it. We’re always telling
her to go for auditions.’
But I had a much better idea. ‘Why don’t you go in for the school show? They’re doing
Grease
. You’d make a great Sandy.’
Lauren looked at me as if I had two heads. ‘Me?’
‘Well, we know you can be a Pink Lady.’
Grace interrupted. ‘What’s a Pink Lady? Is that not some kind of cocktail?’
‘The Pink Ladies is the name of the girl gang in the film,’ I told her. ‘They’re rough and tough and common … a bit like us.’
Wizzie grimaced. ‘And they call themselves the Pink Ladies? That’s really rough and tough, that is.’
I ignored her. I turned to Lauren. ‘I think you might brush up quite well and be a Sandy. Sandy’s the sweet and innocent one that ends up in the Pink Ladies.’
Now they all laughed.
‘Lauren, sweet and innocent!’ Wizzie threw herself back onto the bed, holding her stomach, killing herself laughing. ‘That’s a good one!’
‘What’s
Grease
?’ It was Grace who asked.
‘
Grease
, the film. The musical. You must have seen it.’ I burst into song. ‘Summer Lovin’. Everybody knows that song. Even my out-of-tune version.
Grace nodded at last. ‘Oh aye, I remember that one.’
‘Wonderful film,’ I went on. ‘Olivia Newton Mearns and John Revoltin’ are in it.’
Wizzie’s chewing gum flew out of her mouth. Lauren swallowed hers. Sonya fell off the bed.
Grace just looked blank. ‘Aye, right!’ she snapped at me. ‘His name’s not John Revoltin’. You’re winding me up.’
‘And her name’s not Newton Mearns either, Grace. Newton Mearns is a small town near Glasgow.’
Wizzie threw a pillow at me. ‘Show off!’
I smiled at Grace. Didn’t want to annoy her. I was still trying to win her round, but honestly, sometimes it was such fun winding her up.
Sonya flopped beside Wizzie. ‘Whoever heard of one of us getting a part in the school show? The teachers hate us.’
Lauren shrugged. ‘What would be the point of going for an audition?’
Wizzie stood up. ‘Aye, what would be the point? Whoever heard of a Hell Cat trying for the school show?’
‘Yeah,’ Grace agreed. ‘Would never happen.’
‘Never want it to happen. School show’s for muppets.’
If there was a real edge in Wizzie’s voice, I must have missed it. Maybe I was too excited at what I was already planning. I knew I couldn’t let this pass. This just had to happen.
I made sure I was last to leave Lauren’s that night.
‘You’ve got to promise me you’ll go in for the school show, Lauren.’
She stood at the door and shook her head. ‘Me? They’d never give the part to me.’
All Lauren needed, I was sure, was a little bit of persuasion. I’d be there to give that. ‘But you’re a great singer. I’ve never heard anybody sing as well as you.’
And I hadn’t. Not even Rose. She thought the part was hers. She was sure of it. We all were.
Now I intended different. And wouldn’t that be sweet revenge on Rose?
It felt as if Lauren and I had been friends all our lives.
I went to her house often after that first night, doing my very best to persuade her to audition for the show. I knew I was doing it behind Wizzie’s back, but Wizzie was so set against it. ‘We’re not the Lip Gloss Girls, you know,’ she would say whenever I mentioned it. So I stopped mentioning it in front of her.
I loved going to Lauren’s. Everybody was welcomed here, even Wizzie. I loved the way her family all joked with each other. It was like walking into a comedy show every time I went there. It was the quietest house I had ever been in, yet it never felt like that. It always seemed to be filled with chatter and laughing. Why couldn’t I have fun like that with my mum? I said as much to Lauren one night.