Girls in Love Read online

  So we’ve been this best-friend threesome ever since, right through Years Seven and Eight. Now we’re Year Nine, thirteen – well, Magda’s nearly fourteen, and Nadine is fourteen in December, but I’ve got to wait all the way round till next June.

  It’s irritating. I really look the youngest now, because I’m still so small and roly-poly with these revoltingly chubby cheeks. I have dimples, for goodness’ sake. I’m used to Magda looking older, especially now she’s highlighted her hair. But Nadine used to look really young for her age with her heart-shaped face and her long black hair tumbling round her shoulders like an Alice in negative. Now she looks . . . different.

  ‘Come on, then, I haven’t seen you both for ages! What have you been up to?’ says Magda, but she doesn’t pause for breath. She tells Nadine and me all about her Spanish holiday, and how all these waiters kept waylaying her and this guy at the pool kept picking her up and throwing her in the water and this other much older guy kept trying to buy her drinks at the poolside . . . This is the standard Magda stuff and I don’t always concentrate because I’m watching Nadine. She doesn’t look as if she’s listening either, bending forward so that her hair hides her face like a black velvet curtain. She’s inking a tattoo on her wrist with a black felt-tip pen, a careful heart with an elaborate inked frill. This is a change for Nadine. Her tattoos are usually skulls or spiders.

  ‘What about you, Nadine?’ I say the second Magda shuts up.

  ‘What about me?’ says Nadine. ‘You mean my hols? I saw you after. Before you went to your cottage. It was hell. Relentlessly cheery. And you had to queue for hours and all the kids had Mickey Mouse ears and there were all these giant cartoon characters waving at everyone. It was all so bright. It made my eyes ache.’

  ‘Crawl back to your coffin, Ms Vampire,’ says Magda, laughing. ‘I bet Natasha loved it.’

  Natasha is Nadine’s little sister. Nadine and I have never been able to stand her, but Magda is extraordinary, she actually likes little kids. She’s even fond of Eggs. She’s always going on about how she’d like to have little brothers and sisters herself.

  ‘Natasha ate four ice-creams and then was very sick all down her brand-new pink Minnie Mouse T-shirt,’ says Nadine. She painstakingly inks a name across her heart.

  I lean forward to read it. ‘Liam?’ I say.

  Nadine blushes. Nadine never blushes – she doesn’t look as if she’s got enough blood – but now I can see bright pink beneath the fronds of black hair.

  ‘Liam?’ says Magda. ‘I didn’t know you were an Oasis fan.’

  ‘Not that Liam,’ says Nadine.

  Magda looks at me for enlightenment. I shake my head. We both turn back to Nadine.

  ‘So who’s this Liam then?’ Magda asks.

  ‘Oh,’ says Nadine. A tiny pause. ‘He’s my boyfriend.’

  We stare at her. ‘Your boyfriend?’

  I nearly tip over backwards down the steps. Nadine has a boyfriend. I can’t believe it! How come Nadine’s got a boyfriend before me? Before Magda? Magda has loads of guys fawning all over her – well, so she says – but she doesn’t actually go out with anyone yet.

  ‘A real boyfriend?’ says Magda, and she sounds just as shocked as me.

  ‘But you don’t even like boys, Nadine,’ I say.

  ‘I like Liam,’ says Nadine. ‘And he isn’t a boy anyway. Not really. He’s seventeen. At college.’

  ‘So where did you meet him?’ says Magda, sounding suspicious. ‘How come you’ve never even mentioned him before?’

  ‘Yes, you didn’t say a thing about this Liam in your letters, Nad,’ I say.

  I wrote lots of letters to Nadine and Magda when I was cooped up in the cottage. Magda never bothers to write back properly. She just sends postcards with ‘Love and Kisses, Magda’ on the back – which is sweet, but not exactly informative.

  Nadine is a much more satisfactory correspondent – several pages in her carefully printed italic script, with little showers of star and moon sequins scattered inside the envelope. But all she wrote about was this weird new band she’s keen on and how she’s trying to teach herself to read the Tarot and a whole long moan about her family. Her dad’s forever on at her to work harder even though she’s always in the top three at school. He can’t see why she can’t come top in everything, which is crazy because Amna is always way in front of everyone and she’s got this mega IQ, like she’s a total genius andno-one could ever beat her no matter how hard they tried. Then her mum hates Nadine’s clothes and make-up and hairstyle and wants her to smarten up and wear these chichi clothes and smile like an American cheerleader. And Natasha is just Awfulness in Ankle Socks, acting the Angel Child whenever Mummy and Daddy are around but being the Brat from Hell whenever Nadine is forced to look after her.

  So, there was all the usual stuff but not a single line about a Liam. I can’t help feeling outraged. Nadine and I always tell each other everything. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I say. My voice cracks, almost as if I’m going to start crying.

  ‘I’ve only just met him,’ says Nadine, stretching her arm out to admire her completed love-token tattoo.

  ‘Ah!’ says Magda, her eyebrows arching. ‘So he’s just this guy you’ve seen around, right? Not an actual boyfriend?’

  ‘An “I wish” boyfriend,’ I say, cheering up considerably, getting all set to tell them about the blond guy I saw coming to school this morning.

  ‘No, no. Liam and I went out together Saturday night,’ says Nadine. ‘We met in Tower Records that morning. I was sorting through the indie section and he was too, and we were both looking for the same band and there was just the one CD so he said I could have it.’

  ‘And then he asked you out, just like that?’ I say incredulously.

  ‘Well . . . we chatted a bit. He did. I couldn’t think of a thing to say, actually. I was just standing there dying, wishing I could come out with something, anything. Then he started asking me about this other group who had a gig at the Wily Fox that night and he said did I want to go. So I said yes. Though I’ve never been to the Wily Fox. Well, any pub. You know my mum and dad, they’d go crazy if they ever found out, so when I got back I said you’d got back from the cottage early, Ellie, and we were both going round to Magda’s for this little party, and then your dad was going to take me home. I had to say that, because I guessed I’d be back really late from the Wily Fox. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘So you went there on your own?’ I say, astonished. I still can’t believe it. Nadine’s always so quiet. She generally stays shut up in her bedroom playing her loopy music night after night. She never goes anywhere.

  ‘And he turned up OK, this Liam?’ says Magda.

  ‘I didn’t think he would. I was so scared of going in there by myself. I was sure they’d chuck me out for being under age,’ says Nadine.

  ‘Why didn’t you phone me? I’d have come with you,’ says Magda.

  ‘Yes, but it might have put him off. Or he might have liked you better than me,’ says Nadine.

  Magda nods.

  ‘No, I thought I’d just put my head round the door and have a look and then I could always run home if I wanted. But he was there before me and he paid for us to go into the back room where the band were playing and then he took me home after. Well, to the end of the road. I didn’t dare let him come further in case my mum and dad saw. And then I’m seeing him again next Saturday so can I say I’m spending it with you, Ellie?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure,’ I say, still stunned.

  ‘So what’s he like?’ says Magda.

  ‘Oh, he’s really cool. Dark hair, moody dark eyes, hip clothes.’

  ‘Did you tell him how old you are?’ I ask.

  ‘Not at first. I made out I was fifteen. And he said “Nearly old enough”,’ says Nadine, giggling.

  ‘Oh, God,’ says Magda.

  ‘Yeah, OK, but later I was talking about you two, and I said I’d been friends with Ellie for ever and friends with Magda the two years we�