My Secret Diary Read online

  I smiled at Mr Jeziewski and savoured my chocolate. I couldn't resist writing a similar scene in my book Love Lessons, in which my main girl, Prue, falls passionately in love with her art teacher, Mr Raxbury. I promise I didn't fall for Mr Jeziewski, who was very much a family man and rather plain, with straight floppy hair and baggy cords – but he was certainly my favourite teacher when I was at Coombe.

  Having Chris for a friend was an enormous help in settling into secondary school life. She wasn't quite as hopeless as me at PE, but pretty nearly, so we puffed along the sports track together and lurked at the very edge of the playing field, pretending to be deep fielders.

  We managed to sit next to each other in maths lessons so they were almost enjoyable. We didn't learn anything, though our teacher, Miss Rashbrook, was very sweet and gentle and did her best to explain – over and over again. I could have put poor Miss Rashbrook on a loop and played her explanation twenty-four hours a day, it would have made no difference whatsoever.

  Chris and I pushed our desks close and tried to do our working out together – but mostly we chatted. We daydreamed about the future. We decided we'd stay friends for ever. We even wanted to live next door to each other after we got married. We could see the row of neat suburban houses outside the window and picked out two that were ours. (I had private dreams of a more Bohemian adult life, living romantically in a London garret with an artist – but wondered if I could do that at the weekends and settle down in suburbia Monday to Friday.)

  We don't live next door to each other now but we did stay great friends all through school and went on to technical college together. We used to go dancing and I was there the evening Chris met her future husband, Bruce. I was there at Chris's wedding; I was there – in floods of tears – at Bruce's funeral. We've always written and phoned and remembered each other's birthdays. We've been on several hilarious holidays, giggling together as if we were still schoolgirls.

  Chris lived in New Malden so she went home for dinner, and at the end of school she walked one way, I walked the other, but the rest of the time we were inseparable. Chris soon asked me home to tea and this became a regular habit.

  I loved going to Chris's house. She had a storybook family. Her dad, Fred Keeping, was a plumber, a jolly little man who called me Buttercup. He had a budgie that perched on his shoulder and got fed titbits at meal times. Chris's mum, Hetty, was a good cook: she made Victoria sponges and jam tarts and old-fashioned latticed apple pies. We always had a healthy first course of salad, with home-grown tomatoes and cucumber and a little bit of cheese and crisps. I had to fight not to be greedy at the Keepings. I could have gone on helping myself to extra treats for hours. Chris's sister, Jan, was several years older and very clever but she chatted to me as if she was my friend too. We were all passionate about colouring. Chris and Jan shared a magnificent sharpened set of Derwent coloured pencils in seventy-two shades.

  After Mrs Keeping had cleared the tea things and taken the embroidered tablecloth off the green chenille day cloth, we three girls sat up at the table and coloured contentedly. We all had historical-costume colouring books. Jan had the Elizabethans and coloured in every jewel and gem on Queen Elizabeth's attire exquisitely. Then she settled down to all her schoolwork while Chris and I went up stairs. We were supposed to be doing our homework up in Chris's bedroom, but we muddled through it as quickly as possible.

  We did some mad projects together. For the first two years at Coombe we did a combined history and geography lesson called 'social studies'. We learned all about prehistoric times, and made a plasticine and lolly-stick model of an early stilt village. We also started to write a long poem about a caveman family. We thought up our first line – Many millions of years ago – but then got stuck. We couldn't think of a rhyme for ago, so Chris looked up the word in Jan's rhyming dictionary. We ended up with:

  Many millions of years ago

  Lived a woman who was a virago.

  perhaps the worst rhyme in many millions of years.

  Mostly we simply played games like Chinese Chequers, Can You Go?, and Beetle, and made useless items with Scoubidou.

  I loved Chris's bedroom, though it was very small and she didn't have anywhere near as many books as me. She had a little stable of china horse ornaments, big and small, because she longed passionately to go horse-riding, and saved up all her pocket money and birthday money for lessons. Her only other ornaments were plaster-cast Disney replicas of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. A few childhood teddies drooped limply on a chair, balding and button-eyed. Her clothes were mostly more childish than mine, though I hankered after her kingfisher-blue coat, a colour Biddy labelled vulgar – goodness knows why.

  Chris's bedroom felt safe. You could curl up under her pink candlewick bedspread, read an old Blyton mystery book, and feel at peace. You wouldn't fall asleep and dream of mad men walking out of your wardrobe or monsters wriggling up from under your bed. You wouldn't wake to the sound of angry voices, shouts and sobbing. You would sleep until the old Noddy alarm clock rang and you could totter along to the bathroom in your winceyette pyjamas, the cat rubbing itself against your legs.

  I'd slept at Chris's house several times, I'd been to lunch with her, I'd been to tea, I'd been on outings in their family car to Eastbourne, I'd been to Chris's birthday party, a cosy all-girls affair where we played old-fashioned games like Squeak Piggy Squeak and Murder in the Dark.

  It was way past time to invite Chris back to my flat at Cumberland House. So Chris came one day after school and met Biddy and Harry. My home was so different from hers. Chris was very kind and a naturally polite girl. She said 'Thank you for having me' with seeming enthusiasm when she went home. I wonder what she really thought.

  Maybe she liked it that there was no one in our flat to welcome us after school. It was fun having the freedom of the whole place, great to snack on as many chocolate biscuits as we wanted. When Biddy came home from work she cooked our tea: bacon and sausage and lots of chips, and served a whole plate of cakes for our pudding – sugary jam doughnuts, cream éclairs, meringues. Biddy considered this special-treat food and Chris nibbled her cakes appreciatively – but all that fatty food was much too rich for her sensitive stomach. She had to dash to the lavatory afterwards and was sick as discreetly as possible, so as not to offend Biddy. When Harry came home from work he was in a mood. He didn't call Chris Buttercup, he didn't say anything at all to her, just hid himself behind the Sporting Life.

  Chris came on a sleepover once, and thank goodness everything went well. It was just like having a sister: getting ready for bed together and then whispering and giggling long into the night. We weren't woken by any rows, we slept peacefully cuddled up until the morning.'

  However, Biddy and Harry couldn't always put on an amicable act. I remember when we got our first car, a second-hand white Ford Anglia. Biddy learned to drive and, surprisingly, passed her test before Harry. We decided to go on a trip to Brighton in our new car, and as a very special treat Chris was invited along too.

  We sat in the back. I was dosed up with Quells, strong travel pills, so that I wouldn't be sick. They made me feel very dozy, but there was no danger of nodding off on this journey. Biddy and Harry were both tense about the outing and sniped at each other right from the start.

  'Watch that lorry! For Christ's sake, do you want to get us all killed?' Harry hissed.

  'Don't you use that tone of voice to me! And it was his fault, he was in the wrong ruddy lane,' said Biddy, her knuckles white on the steering wheel.

  'You're in the wrong lane, you silly cow, if we're going to turn off at the Drift Bridge.'

  'Who's driving this car, you or me? Ah, I'm driving because I'm the one who's passed the test!'

  They chuntered on while I sat in the back with Chris, my tummy churning. I talked frantically, nattering about school and homework to try to distract her from my angry parents. I madly hoped she wouldn't even hear what they were saying. She talked back to me, valiantly keeping up the pr