Girls Under Pressure Read online

  “Just once, Ellie. Please. Pretty please.”

  So I say I will. Just once.

  I spend most of the evening peering at myself in my awful old swimming costume, convinced I cannot possibly expose myself in all my horrible wobbliness. Plus, what should I do about all my hairy bits? I try shaving under my arms, snaffling Anna’s razor, and cut myself, which smarts terribly.

  I phone Magda to call the whole thing off. She tells me that swimming tautens all your muscles, and points out that even the biggest beefiest serious swimmer has a washboard stomach, tight bum and taut thighs. I miserably feel my flabby flesh as she speaks. I agree to go after all.

  I feel like death getting up at quarter past six but the cold air revives me a little. I jog-shuffle most of the way to the leisure center, deciding I might as well get in a little extra exercise on the way. I make good progress and get there at three minutes to seven, before the doors are even open. There’s a little group of fitness freaks waiting, huddled into the hoods of their track tops. Magda isn’t here yet. There’s no dark dishy hunk that could be Mick, either. I stand in my school uniform, clutching my duffel bag, feeling horribly out of place. People will be wondering what on earth this squat blobby schoolgirl is doing at a fitness center—fatness center, more like. There’s an enviably thin girl in a green tracksuit staring at me right at this minute.

  “Ellie?”

  I stare back, startled. The thin girl is smiling. It’s Zoë Patterson!

  Zoë is famous at our school. She’s a real brainbox. She should be in Year Ten but she’s been put up a year to take all her university entrance exams a year early. God knows how many she’s doing—ten, eleven, maybe even twelve. I bet she gets As in all of them. Zoë wins her class prize every year. And the art prize too.

  That’s how I know her. We both spend a lot of time in the art room doing all sorts of stuff, and when Mrs. Lilley, the art teacher, wanted a special mural to brighten the room up she asked Zoë and me to work on it together during our lunch hour.

  We hardly spoke to each other at first. I thought it was because Zoë was older than me and might be a bit snobby, but then I realized she’s actually even shyer than I am. So I got up the nerve to start talking to her and she soon got ever so friendly and funny. By the time we’d finished our mural (a crazy summer camp scene of all different creative women through time: we had Virginia Woolf with her skirts tucked in her drawers paddling in the stream, Jane Austen in an apron peeling potatoes, all the Brontë sisters with their sleeves rolled up sizzling sausages on the barbecue, Florence Nightingale pitching a tent, Billie Holiday picking flowers, Marilyn Monroe hanging out the washing, Frida Kahlo painting pictures on her welly boots) it seemed like we were firm friends.

  But this school year Zoë hasn’t been coming to the art room and whenever I’ve bumped into her in the corridors or the cloakroom we’ve just said hi and hurried on. I wondered if she’d gone off me or thought me too babyish or was maybe just too busy to be friendly when she was swotting for all those scary exams.

  “Hi, Zoë. I never expected to see you here,” I say.

  I assumed Zoë thought along the same lines as me when it came to sport.

  “I come here every day,” says Zoë. “Are you here to swim too?”

  “Yes. I said I’d come with Magda. You know, my friend. The blond one. Though goodness knows when she’s going to get here. I bet she’s slept in.”

  The doors open. I say I’d better wait for Magda so Zoë goes hurrying down to the changing room. She didn’t used to be anywhere near as thin. She’s got amazing cheekbones now. Her tracksuit bottom is all baggy. Zoë was never fat—not like me—but she used to be a bit pear-shaped with a biggish bum. Hey, maybe swimming really works!

  I think I might start going every day too. Though not with Magda. She doesn’t arrive until twenty past.

  “Hi, Ellie. God, isn’t it awful getting up this early,” she mumbles.

  “You’re not early, Magda, you’re late.”

  She’s not taking any notice, peering all over the place as we go into the center and pay for our swim.

  “Have you seen anyone that looks like Mick, Ellie? You know, dark and truly dishy.”

  “I don’t know. Heaps of people have gone in. I didn’t see anyone that fantastic—but we’ve got different taste when it comes to boys.”

  “You’re telling me,” says Magda. “You’ve got Dan for a boyfriend.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I say.

  “Well, what is he, then?” says Magda.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  Dan was so keen on me it was embarrassing. We’ve fooled around a bit together in a totally chaste sort of way, but it’s not been the Love Match of the Century. Or the year, month, week, day, minute. Scarcely Love Match of the Second. Though Dan’s always insisted he loves me. I’ve never worked out whether he was totally serious. I’m even less sure now. He hasn’t written to me recently. And he hasn’t phoned me back since that time I phoned him and he was watching some stupid rugby match.

  Maybe I need a new boyfriend.

  Ha. Who would ever want to go out with me?

  Plenty of boys want to go out with Magda. I can see why she was so late getting here. She’s fully made up and her hair’s freshly washed and styled. She wriggles into a new slinky scarlet Lycra costume. It’s so tight it must feel like wearing a full-size elastic band—but she looks incredible.

  I turn my back to take off my clothes, embarrassed to strip off even in front of Magda. My hair sticks up in a giant bush, my face is all blotchy from the cold and yet in the sudden heat inside my glasses steam up so I can’t see. It feels better when I take them off and shove them in my locker. If I can’t see anyone clearly I can kid myself that maybe they can’t see me.

  I grope my way to the poolside and slide in as quickly as possible so that I’m hidden, up to my neck in sparkling turquoise water. It’s beautifully warm, but Magda takes forever to get in, standing on the side of the pool, dipping her toes in and squealing. It’s obviously just to show herself off. It works. I swim two fast and furious laps and when I get back to the shallow end there are five boys surrounding Magda, laughing and jostling and offering her advice.

  I swim off again. I’m trying not to mind. I’m not here to get off with boys, anyway. I’m here to lose weight.

  So I plow backward and forward, ten lengths breaststroke, ten lengths freestyle, ten lengths backstroke. Then repeat. Thank goodness I’m quite good at swimming so I don’t look too stupid. Some of the boys are faster than me but I’m quicker than all the women—apart from Zoë.

  We’re about even-steven and find we can’t help racing each other. First she steams ahead so I concentrate fiercely and push myself that little bit harder so that I’m gasping every time I take a breath. I draw closer, closer—and then I’m suddenly in front, and I whiz off even faster, but it’s hard to keep it up. I’m slower the next lap, floating a little, and Zoë suddenly flashes past.

  We carry on this mad competition and end up neck and neck, laughing at each other.

  “We’d better get out now or we’ll be late for school,” says Zoë.

  “Right,” I say, scarcely able to draw breath.

  Magda got out ages ago. She was barely in. She swam about ten measly lengths, keeping her head artificially high out of the water so that her hair wouldn’t get messed up, and then she was off back to the changing room to replenish her makeup.

  She’s hogging the mirror now, applying the finishing touches.

  “Right, Ellie. See you in the café, OK?” she says. “I don’t want to miss Mick—if he’s actually here.”

  Zoë and I take a shower. We’re very modest, looking away from each other as we soap ourselves under the streaming water, but once we’re toweling dry and stuffing damp bodies into underwear I take a quick glance at her when I’ve put my glasses on. I stare.

  Zoë is thin. Not just slender. Not even skinny. Her ribs are sticking out of her skin, he