‘Urgh!’ Michelle yelled, for the second time in so many minutes, seemingly finding nothing wrong in sharing suddy, hairy water with her friend, but the addition of blood was apparently quite repulsive to her. ‘You’ve cut your leg!’
‘Thanks, Cagney and Lacey, I can see that.’ It stung.
There was a gentle knock on the door. ‘You all right in there, lovey?’ her mum asked. ‘Thought I heard a kerfuffle?’
‘No kerfuffle, Mum, all good. Just cut my leg a bit.’ She pulled a face, worried that she might be in trouble and doubly worried about being scolded in front of her friend.
‘What do you mean, you’ve cut your leg? How have you done that in the bathroom?’ Her mum’s tone carried the beginnings of frantic.
‘It’s okay, Mrs Worrall – it’s not too bad,’ Michelle said reassuringly.
The pair of them stifled their giggles and, with razors held aloft, threw their heads back to laugh silently towards the ceiling.
‘Why are you in there with her, Michelle? What are you two up to? Can you open the door a sec, please, girls?’ It was phrased as a question, but her stern manner and clipped tone left Bessie in no doubt that this was an instruction.
Michelle hitched her top lip and made a face towards the door. Bessie wanted to laugh again but felt the pull of loyalty. She grabbed the hand towel from the metal loop by the sink and held it to her shin before hobbling to the door and opening it.
‘Hi, Mrs Worrall!’ Still in her knickers, Michelle waved from her perch on the corner of the tub.
‘Hello, dear. What are you doing, apart from ruining my hand towels?’ She looked down. ‘Have you been shaving your legs?’ she asked a little curtly.
Bessie nodded and bit the inside of her cheek, embarrassed at her mum’s tone.
‘For the love of God, Bessie! I told you not to! You have fine down that’s not noticeable and, once you’ve shaved it, it grows back thicker and then you have to get rid of it! Fancy doing that on your birthday, of all days,’ she tutted.
Bessie couldn’t figure out why it was worse to shave her legs on her birthday rather than on any other day.
‘Remember your eyebrows?’ Her mum glanced at Michelle, on whom Bessie knew her mother laid the blame for the whole famous eyebrow incident. ‘You had lovely glossy brows, and now? Two thin little lines way up on your forehead, wispy spider’s legs that you have to keep plucking and plucking – I wish you’d never started that! You’ll regret it one day.’
She and Michelle exchanged a brief look; her mum clearly didn’t understand fashion. They had both wanted the brows of Cyndi Lauper and not Brooke Shields.
‘Stay there, don’t drip blood on the carpet, and I’ll go and see if we’ve got any plasters in the first-aid tin,’ her mum sighed, and trotted off along the landing.
The girls got dressed and made their way down the stairs. Michelle’s shins, now enviably shiny and hairless, looked fabulous beneath her baggy rolled-up dungarees. Bessie’s, on the other hand, not so much. She only gave her hems one roll, trying to hide the three round plasters that sat like traffic lights on her shin, permanently set to red from the seeping blood.
‘We should wear jeans tonight with our new sweatshirts,’ she declared, thinking that at least they might hide her injuries. Both she and Michelle had purchased hot-pink cropped sweatshirts from Chelsea Girl at the top of the high street only the day before, the result of months of saving, and vital to them matching for such an important social occasion as the party tonight.
‘Yep. Good idea.’
After a big birthday squeeze from her dad and an excited smile of encouragement from her mum, the girls linked arms as they walked past the posh, newish estate off Branch Road and headed towards school.
‘You nervous about seeing Lawrence tonight?’
‘Nope.’ This was the truth. ‘I’m not, actually.’
Michelle looked at her with wide eyes. ‘What, because you don’t like him? Have you changed your mind?’ she said quickly.
‘Not exactly.’ This felt easier than to confess that her nerves were minimal because she knew exactly what sex with Lawrence Paulson would be like.
The first time, it had been unplanned, spontaneous and fantastic. They had met by chance at the bus stop, both a little late finishing school, her because of volunteering to litter-pick, trying to curry favour with Miss Carter, who had organised it, and him because of football practice. It was only later that Bessie would swap the word chance for fate, thinking that this meeting had surely been written in the stars . . . They had sat on the bench chatting, the bus had come and gone, and they had flirted. He had kicked at her leg playfully, she had touched his hair with the excuse of restyling his fringe – and the next thing she knew, they were kissing frantically and he was pulling her body on to his. They had grabbed each other’s hand and then, without too much planning or forethought, she had whispered into his ear, ‘Come on!’ and they had hurried to the alley that ran up the side of the school playing field, where she kicked off her pants and stood on the step to a garage, and they had done it. Quickly. And that was that. The virginity ship had sailed.
It wasn’t romantic or chaste or gentle or loving or anything like she had imagined it might be. But then most of what she knew about sex was gleaned from reading The Thorn Birds under the covers with a torch or from the Endless Love video she and Michelle regularly rented from the petrol-station video shelf. In fact, it was nothing like she had imagined it might be. It had felt wonderful, exciting, exhilarating, and to see Lawrence’s face in the throes of submission had made her feel nothing short of powerful. Lawrence Paulson, the good-looking boy who had made the football team, was a prize that made her feel less ordinary. He had chosen her – her! And she had chosen him. Familiar were the tales around the kitchen table of how her parents and grandparents had met, and their stories were truly non-eventful, and so why could her and Lawrence’s love story not start at the bus stop? In the wee small hours, her mind leapt ahead and she saw him taking her little case from her hand after a trip and admiring her red suit – before welcoming her home with a cup of tea, open arms and a need for sex. The thought thrilled her.
What did make her nervous, however, was the fact that this was a secret from Michelle, the girl with whom she shared everything.
After leaving the alleyway, she and Lawrence had giggled and run back to the bus stop and she had felt changed in the subtlest of ways, having cast off the last vestige of childhood and taken control of a situation that she had at some level feared.
As the number seventy-two bus pulled into the stop, Lawrence had whispered in her ear, ‘You’re special, Bessie, and so cool. I think about you before I fall asleep.’
Bessie had thought her heart might burst through her chest. Her first thought was that she couldn’t wait to tell Michelle. His wonderful admission had been almost as intoxicating as their physical act. Turning to him, she had beamed, and he had leant in with his end-of-day breath and the whiff of sweat clinging to his skin and said, ‘We should keep this between ourselves. Let’s not tell anyone.’
‘No one?’ she had questioned, wondering initially how she might keep such a thing from her friend.