The Following Girls Page 3

  The letters page of that month’s Spare Rib had been very anti-seccy: ‘The abuse suffered by the average secretary is tremendous. Making cups of tea, sewing buttons on jackets, booking holidays for the man’s family.’ The writer had signed herself ‘Yours in sisterhood, a discontented secretary, Warwickshire’. Silly moo. Didn’t sound too bad: more fun than just typing all day; more fun than double Biology. And at least you got paid which was more than could be said for the support staff at Spare Rib by the sound of it. There was an ad in the back looking for someone to help with layouts: ‘No pay, no luncheon vouchers but opportunity to work in a non-hierarchical, non-competitive women’s environment’. Thanks a bunch, sisters.

  The supplier of the Spare Rib subscription had only once telephoned her daughter. Once. Christmas Day two years ago – the same year she sent the speculum. Spam was curling butter – or possibly melon – and Dad was on his knees in the corner of the sitting room telling a never-ending rosary of fairy lights in search of a dud bulb, so the thirteen-year-old Baker had answered. The long-distance voice was much posher than she had imagined – very like Grandma’s. She’d expected something more Janis Joplin after all this time, druggier somehow rather than pissed (it was four in the morning in Nassau). Baker had let her rabbit on: Manda darling this, Manda darling that, she must be so tall, on and on about how tall she must be until Baker spoke, another version of the same voice.

  ‘I think you’ve got the wrong number. There’s no one here of that name. No one.’ She hung up.

  ‘Was that Auntie Janet?’

  ‘Wrong number.’

  She hadn’t rung again. Or if she had, Baker hadn’t answered.

  When Dad had finally finished shouting through the details of his meeting with Mrs Mostyn and demanding exactly when was she going to start pulling herself together and God knew he’d done his best, Baker left the study and tiptoed back to the garage to rescue the fallen photo.

  The inquisitive young Baker had first found it in an old suitcase full of junk that had been stowed inside the roof void above the garage door. There was a bundle of solicitor’s letters – ‘The respondent consistently refused to assist in the running of the marital home despite the petitioner working a 50-hour week to provide for her’; ‘In June 1961 the respondent spent the entire quarter’s housekeeping money on paying a local firm to construct a “menstrual hut” in the petitioner’s vegetable garden’ – gripping stuff. At the back of the bundle were half a dozen short, carbon-copied letters on the solicitor’s letterhead: ‘Dear Madam, Our client, Robert Leonard Baker, requests that any further communication be conducted exclusively via this office and that all attempts at contact cease forthwith.’

  Baker had once asked her father if there were any pictures of her mother and he’d said no there weren’t and why did she want one but there were loads in the hidden suitcase: Patsy on a slab at Stonehenge, Patsy in her wedding dress, Patsy with a brand-new non-Jeremy propped awkwardly in her arms like a doll being made to hold something. She had been quite pretty in a wholemeal hippy-ish sort of way: big eyes, light hair like Baker’s, nice and thin. The best snap showed her on her honeymoon between the legs of the Eiffel Tower gazing adoringly at a person on her left, a missing person because the other half was on the sideboard upstairs: Dad staring right into the lens, oblivious to the smiling face at his side, the torn edge masked by the silver frame.

  Baker retrieved the dartboard picture from where it had fallen and tucked it back in its hiding place. Older than any of the other snaps, it showed her father looking young, tanned, slightly cocksure, as if he had just got the photographer to laugh at some stupid joke. Not bad-looking really – if it weren’t for all the little holes in his face.

  Chapter 3

  Bryony and Co. were whispering by the coat pegs again the next morning as they rolled their hand-knitted sports socks down to the ankle bone. There was a fashion for this – fashion? Mary Quant quaking in her boots. One of them had a magazine – some retarded girly thing – and there was a picture of a sissy-looking singer with feathered hair. He was actually quite dishy but Baker and the Mandies would rather die than say so. Bryony kissed the page then rolled up the forbidden comic and fed it into the dangling sleeve of her blazer. Another one of those accusing looks at Baker (as if she’d want the stupid rotten thing).

  A herd of girls was storming up the cloakroom steps but their stampede was checked by a breathless fair-headed figure who charged through the group waving a sopping scarlet umbrella.

  ‘Baker? Where are you, you slag?’

  ‘Bunty? Oh, thank God you’re back. Where the bloody hell have you been?’

  ‘Squitters. Practically death’s door. Hardly left the loo in three days: nass-ty. And all those loo books: Pick of Punch? What can the rest of it be like?’

  Bunty’s shoes flew to the far corners of the cloakroom as she kicked them off and two stray fourth formers scurried like puppies to retrieve them, picking up skirt, shirt and jumper as they fell.

  ‘Thanks, doll. Really don’t worry. They’ll be fine on the floor.’ But they picked them up anyway. It was a gift she had, like remembering birthdays and always keeping track of what your parents last said.

  The lace on Baker’s tennis shoe snapped as she tied it so she rummaged in her bag for her black plimsolls – same difference surely.

  ‘How did it go last night?’

  ‘Car-nage. The Mostyn told him about the front lawn and asked for another forty-seven offvences to be taken into consideration, so I’m not allowed any telly and he’s confiscated my make-up bag for some bizarre reason.’

  ‘He’ll have forgotten by Thursday. They always do. Mummy says if I don’t pass the mocks I’ll have to drop RE and Chemistry. Suits me, but the old man went ape. Money down the drain, old-old story. Meanwhile, much more importantly: did the wicked queen finally flog the piano?’

  ‘Didn’t dare. Came bloody close on Saturday though. Had three people phone up about the ad, but Dad put his foot down so Spam had to ring them all up and pretend one of the others had beaten them to it. She’s not best pleased.’

  The piano was a bête noire for Baker’s stepmother. The brilliant white instrument had been bought for Baker at vast, unasked expense from a Bond Street showroom. Baker and Pam had both wanted the ebonised lacquer but that was before Dad’s padification of the front room: orange raw silk lampshades, pearl grey emulsion, a solitary panel of William Morris wallpaper (just the one wall: like they’d run out of money halfway) and a trio of onyx boxes: tipped; untipped; extra strong mints. The piano was stuck there like a great big musical freezer, sheet music (‘Imagine’, ‘The Entertainer’) strewn casually across the lid. Not that Dad played the sodding thing, and now neither did Baker. She could play by ear well enough, and was always surprised at how easily her fingers could pinch out the sketch of a melody, but ‘Für Elise’ was a very different story.

  ‘Liberace she’s not,’ said Dad when she first played it. Supposed to be funny.

  ‘You won’t be safe until it’s out of the house,’ warned Bunty, ‘mark my words. Some busybody at work will recommend a Mr Whatifski “who’s made such a difference to young Melanie’s fingering”,’ Bunty made a circle with finger and thumb and waggled her hand lewdly up and down ‘and that’ll be that. “Harder, Amanda! Faster! More eggs-pression!” Every Tuesday afternoon till you leave home – or shoot him.’

  Bunty had got her kit on – all bar the socks, ‘too bloody cold for socks’ – and was rifling through the five pockets of her blazer in a panic.

  ‘Bugger. Got any fags? Oh, thank God. Got a nasty, nass-ty feeling mine are on the dressing table. Mummy will be pleased. Oh well, lung leaflets here we come: lovely, lovely lung leaflets. I could paper a bloody house with lung leaflets. Be quite nice in a way . . .’ She mimed the pattern repeat with the palm of her hand. ‘Or beagles smoking – or beagles’ lungs . . .’

  She smiled at Baker and Baker beamed happily back. Not especially pretty – or so Bry
ony and that lot always decreed when they were doing their ‘marks out of ten’ thing. Looks was their main category – ‘pretty’ all the way down to ‘nice personality’ (consolation prize in life’s lottery) but if you didn’t rate as ‘pretty’ there was always ‘interesting bone structure’. ‘Wossat mean?’ Bunty had demanded when she heard this. ‘Like Quasimodo or something? Bloody cheek.’ After looks came the rest of the marking scheme: dress sense; sense of humour; technical merit; artistic impression; sustained tempo; and God knows what. Bryony had given Bunty’s looks a grudging seven. Deep-set blue eyes (piss-holes in the snow, Bunty said), ratty hair still half-brown, half-blonde from her family’s expensive winter holidays and unstraightened teeth. One of the front ones was slightly whiter and fatter than the others where her big brother Dominic had smashed her face with a cricket ball but it didn’t detract from her appearance because it simply made you conscious of how very often she was smiling.

  So, not especially pretty, maybe, but definitely attractive. Even Bryony conceded that – couldn’t not: the evidence was inescapable. Bunty had meaningful relationships: boyfriends, several boyfriends, boyfriends with cars, older boyfriends who took her for dinner in trendy Chelsea hamburger places, gave her LPs or bottles of duty free scent. One had even bought her a camera.

  ‘I rang loads of times. Did you not get a message?’

  Bunty re-twanged the elastic on her ponytail while looking past Baker via the cloakroom mirror.

  ‘Not a peep, but then Mummy’s not a huge fan, let’s face it.’

  ‘Said you were out with “a friend” on Saturday. Anyone I know? And you can’t have been at death’s door if you were out. I thought you said you were ill.’

  Bunty looked thrown then seemed to remember not to, a funny, keeping-a-straight-face look in her eye, the look she used when Mummy was being told lies about trips to the cinema or when homework had been left on the bus. Stupid lies for stupid people, not Baker.

  Bunty’s lips wriggled into a saucy grin.

  ‘Only old whatsisface.’

  ‘Anywhere nice?’

  ‘We had lunch at some Italian dive near Harrods then he drove me back to his place.’ Her voice lowered to a whisper, confiding suddenly – almost in spite of herself. ‘His flatmate was away for the weekend.’

  Baker made her eyebrows waggle up and down and waited for Bunty to answer her unspoken question, edging slightly closer so that Bryony, still over by her peg pretending to re-tie her shoelaces, wouldn’t hear, but Bunty didn’t elaborate, just pouted in a ‘wouldn’t you like to know?’ sort of way and fiddled some more with her elastic. Baker so wanted to be cool but curiosity was building up inside her, like trying to hold your breath for three minutes under water and the whispered questions burst out before she could help herself: did you let him, what did he say, will I like it? But instead of answering – or even promising to tell all at break – Bunty carried on pulling at her ponytail.

  ‘Come on. Stop playing hard to get, you silly moo.’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you everything. Besides, bit tacky. Nick asked me whether I would – obviously assumed I’d go gushing to the whole hockey eleven first chance I got and I said no, actually, I wouldn’t and he thought that was quite mature actually.’

  She looked back to the mirror, twisting her hair into a bun and skewering it in place with a hard-bitten HB pencil.

  ‘Bunty!’ there was the threat of tears in Baker’s voice. Bryony was still lurking by the coats, obviously relishing the row even if she couldn’t catch the words themselves.

  ‘Nick calls me Amanda . . .’ She turned to Baker. ‘Get your own dirty stories.’ And flounced from the room.

  ‘Lovers’ tiff?’ sneered Bryony.

  The cloakroom chatter dimmed as a big, cross prefect’s voice boomed into the room. She was wearing her blazer over what were said to be her own clothes (a sixth-form privilege): grey serge skirt, grey tank top, white blouse – like a black and white photo of her fifth-form self.

  ‘Get a move on, you lot.’ She glared at Baker. ‘Might have known you’d still be here.’ Only seventeen but she wasn’t a girl any more. She’d caught the tone of voice perfectly, like a toddler in a playgroup home corner moaning about mess in fluent mummyspeak. ‘Pull your socks up. You’re going to be late for Registration. Do me five hundred lines by Thursday: “I will not be late for Registration”.’

  ‘But we will be late for Registration,’ countered Baker, happy to have any row that would jar her out of her shocked state. ‘You just said.’

  ‘Seven hundred lines. One More Word and I’ll make it a thousand.’

  ‘Make it two thousand. Enjoy yourself. Keep the change.’ Baker looked archly up at her. ‘Go on. I dare you.’

  Always a lovely moment. Like a hand of poker in a film. The prefect longing to throw her weight about but knowing that she’d reached maximum what with Mocks coming up. Next week maybe, the Baker girl had been asking for it . . .

  ‘I’m watching you. We all are.’

  Stottie had finally tracked down the precious Maths master and was copying zeros and ones onto a sheet of graph paper. Once upon a time Amanda Stott had been rather good at Maths (she’d got her scholarship for being the only ten-year-old in the exam room who could multiply fractions), but she had wrestled in vain with the matrix business. Her mum hadn’t left off about last night’s bad report and was demanding to be told every grade from now on. The Maths monitor was grumpily gathering the last few sheets of prep.

  ‘Come on, Stott. I’ve got to get this lot downstairs.’

  Stottie crossed out one of the mysterious numbers and inserted a neat figure seven in its place.

  ‘Can’t have it too perfect or she’ll smell a rat.’

  ‘She’ll smell a bloody rat anyway, you silly moo,’ insisted Queenie, looking over her shoulder. ‘You can’t have sevens in matrices.’

  ‘You can’t? Why can’t you? Is it just sevens? Can you have eights?’

  ‘I don’t know. You just can’t. Or maybe you can but not in this prep you can’t and if she finds out you’re playing silly buggers then she’ll twig it was copied and that’ll knacker it for the rest of us. Cross it out again; put a one instead. One’s safe – or zero. Zero’s always good; they like zero.’

  Stottie smiled gratefully at her friend and scribbled another ‘O’ into the inky mess: noughts and crosses played by a dangerous lunatic.

  Baker spotted Bunty at the far end of the room but pretended she hadn’t seen her. Strolling across to the classroom blackboard, she was about to pull a tissue from her pocket in order to update the chalk count in the corner (eighteen days to go till the end of term) when she spotted that their form mistress, Mrs Lorimer, a practical-minded woman, had brought in an off-cut of knitted dishcloth to wipe the board with since the real thing had disappeared. That was her little game, was it? Baker picked up the dusty white rag and dropped it down the back of the bookcase en route to her locker. The original felt brick thingy was still hibernating beneath a pile of dead leaves directly under the classroom window. Astonishing the amount of nuisance you could create with the simplest act of sabotage: the hunt under desks, the search for tissues, the selection of a volunteer to go next door (‘Sorry, Mrs Rathbone, but Mrs Lorimer says can we borrow your board rubber?’). Hours of fun.

  Amanda McQueen had, entirely against her will, been designated classroom noticeboard monitor and was standing on a desk posing menacingly with a staple gun like a lost Bond girl. The class next door had a trendy-looking collage of sunsets culled from back numbers of the National Geographic. Queenie’s current display was composed of pages torn from the London A–D telephone directory with ‘Call me’ scrawled across the lot with one of her mother’s old red lipsticks. Downright embarrassing, or so Mrs Lorimer felt as she made her way to the front desk and frowned for the hundredth time at the solitary blue carpet tile set in the otherwise grey floor. The room directly above had blue but none of their floor tiles was missing when she
went to look (none you could see, anyway: Bunty had taken enormous care to pinch one from underneath the corner lockers). The form mistress looked up and noticed yet another drawing pin in the ceiling: a good twelve feet away. How did they do that?

  ‘Amanda!’

  Mrs Lorimer let out a wincing ‘tut’ as she remembered too late that all four heads would turn. Odd the way girls’ Christian names washed in and out of fashion. Three of her grandmother’s five brothers had married Dorothies: Dot; Dot; Dot.

  ‘Amanda Baker. I daresay your father has spoken to you about yesterday evening?’

  And Baker placed a bet with herself that she’d say ‘new leaf’ and she did. Good as gold.

  Bryony and Vicky and Patricia were all admiring a centrefold inside Bryony’s locker – same singer, different picture (different denim shirt, anyway).

  ‘Excuse me, lads,’ said Baker, squirming past the metal locker door. ‘Oozat then, Brian?’

  Brian. Tee hee. But it was their own fault really. Samantha started it – her and ‘call-me-Jo’ Josephine. As if you could just choose your own nickname. Well two could play at that game. And now the whole lot of them had a boy’s name: Paddy, George, Brian, Vic. All except Natasha. Natasha could easily have been ‘Nat’ but she wasn’t. Natasha had only arrived a year ago, just after the Christmas holidays. She had been at some swanky ‘international school’ in Brussels or Bruges or Belgium or somewhere and had breezed in on her first day very, very full of herself, face and hands dry-roasted by a radioactive ski tan.

  ‘I’m Natasha – Natasha Baldwin,’ she gushed, ‘but you can call me Stash.’

  Except no one did of course. Bunty christened her ‘Tash’ and it stuck (what with the dark hair and everything).