Dancing with Mr. Darcy Part 7

'Less than what?'

'Than MEDCs. It's on the front of the exam paper.'

'So, they're, like, poor.'

The girls rounded the corner by the post office and the school gates slid into view. Charlie read the latest from Lucy's phone.

'Josh is getting a car.'

Josh was big and dark and beautiful, with hair down to his shoulders and a b.u.m in his rugby shorts that might have been carved from teak. During the winter they'd all taken to watching rugby on Thursday nights, parading their handwoven scarves and slouch boots along the touchline. They'd learned phrases like drop goal and forward pa.s.s. There was a bit of a frisson about walking into the boys' school, from all the hormones that got mixed with the floor polish in the corridors. Little boys at the lockers gawped as they went past. Sometimes the teachers did too, but they never said anything, not if you'd come to watch sport. Boys' schools encouraged that kind of thing.

'He wants a Mini Cooper. One of those new ones.'

Josh was also Lucy's unreachable stepbrother. He occupied a separate and unimaginable stratospheric orbit, coddled by other grey suits and yellow-striped sixth form ties, worn wide and loose and s.e.xy. Kelsey, Lucy, Bex and Charlie picked out names to decorate their school planners in highlighter pens and Tipp-Ex. Ben, Josh, Grant, Callum. They sought information from Facebook but none of the boys added them as a friend.

Worse, the rugby season had ended months ago.

Eighty-four girls in damp white s.h.i.+rts huddled in the school foyer, clutching biros and rulers.

'Hey. Megan looks scared.' Kelsey nudged Bex.

'Scared she'll get less than ninety-nine percent.'

Charlie turned to glance at Megan, who sat behind her in maths and barely spoke. Megan had waist-length hair that no one remembered ever being cut. It was as greasy as chip fat and had a halo of split ends.

'No time to shower when there's LEDCs to learn,' Bex murmured, but somehow loud enough for everyone to hear.

Charlie knew, because her mum talked to Megan's mum they lived on the same estate and had younger siblings who walked to the primary school two streets away that Megan washed her hair sometimes twice a day, and took medication for her acne. The drugs she'd been prescribed were so dangerous you had to do a pregnancy test before they let you have them. Even if you'd never had a boyfriend.

She hadn't mentioned any of this to Kelsey and Lucy and Bex.

From her corner Megan smiled at Charlie, the sort of woebegone little smile that made Charlie want to team up with Bex and squirt superglue into Megan's ponytail. Although of course there were days when she thought of rallying Megan so that together they could gather all the Ugg boots and designer handbags and chuck them in Lost Property with the old gym shorts and rancid lunchboxes. Occasionally Megan walked to school with Charlie, but usually her dad gave her a lift so she didn't have to walk anywhere with anyone. Charlie held up crossed fingers and grinned non-committally, jiggling her pens.

'Don't encourage her,' Kelsey hissed.

Afterwards, numbed by Geography, they reeled into Starbucks. Bex and Lucy ordered iced cappuccinos. Charlie, who had to rely for cash on her Sat.u.r.day job at the newsagent's, leaned on the counter and read a message from her phone.

What did u think? Last q was murder r u @ kelsey's?

Megan was the only person Charlie knew who used apostrophes in her texts. She flipped the Back b.u.t.ton to hide the screen and watched Lucy rearranging her hair in a fresh cascade of glossy cliches. Vibrant. Glowing. Because She Was Worth It.

Sometimes Charlie managed to think of her own hair as pre-Raphaelite. Days like this it was just frizzy, and badly conditioned to boot.

'There was this top in Monsoon,' Bex began loudly. Charlie sighed.

'Come with me to look at that dress?' she said to Kelsey.

Charlie's mum worked in the Oxfam shop on Wednesday afternoons and gave Charlie a lift home at the end of the day if she didn't mind hanging around for an hour, helping with the stock. Today was Thursday.

As Kelsey crossed the threshold her face actually puckered, like she needed a pomander to stuff under her nose. It seemed to Charlie, annoyingly, that the clothes in the shop were thinner and more lifeless than usual. Granny garments, and not in the nice, retro, antique sense, like twenties lace or a real cloche hat. This stuff was more printed polyester and jersey knits in poisonous patterns. She hooked the blue dress off its rail.

She'd remembered it as silky, but now she saw that the fabric was cheap and stiff, its colour an electric ultramarine rather than the pale indigo she'd held in her head. Which was annoying because Charlie had a knack for recalling shades. She'd arrive at art lessons with colour schemes memorised and ready to put to paper. She got them right, too. Charlie was hoping to do Art for A level. They all wanted to, but in Bex's and Kelsey's and Lucy's cases it was because there was nothing else they liked. And they thought Art was easy.

'Well?' Charlie draped the dress over her arm, knowing that Art was actually impossible. How could anyone look at something you'd created for an exam and give it a mark? A mere number? Kelsey shrugged. 'It's up to you.'

'I think,' Charlie retaliated archly, 'that I may as well buy it.'

Behind the cash desk were pictures of African people with goats and spice baskets and piles of woven blankets in sunburned colours. The a.s.sistant reached forward and Charlie noticed too late that it was Malcolm, the work-experience boy with the speech impediment, whose mouth didn't ever seem to close properly. He always had a fine thread of drool running down the side of his chin. Malcolm used to be Special Needs and now Charlie's mum supervised him at work. Sometimes he helped Charlie with the stock check. It took ages longer.

'Pretty,' Malcolm declared, running the fabric of the dress across his hand. 'It'll suit y-y-you.' The expression on Kelsey's face drilled loudly through the back of Charlie's head.

'Working Thursday this week, Malcolm?' She pulled her shoulders into line. Vital not to show weakness.

'Ei-Ei-Eileen's off. She's at a we-we-wedding.'

Charlie wrenched her purse from her blazer pocket.

'It's in I-I-Ireland.'

'That's nice.' She realised now that the dress was dreadful, beyond any hope of resurrection through minor means such as a change of b.u.t.tons or a new neck insert of cotton lace. Why had she ever imagined that might work?

'Seven pounds p-p-please,' said Malcolm. He was staring at Kelsey without apprehension. He carried on staring.

It struck Charlie like a giant paper dart soaked in cold water. He fancies her. The idea was so awful she thought the whole room might actually implode. They'd all be buried neck-deep in hideous garments and ethically-sourced chocolate bars.

Worse, any moment now poor Malcolm would be telling them about his newest computer game, or even the buses he'd spotted in his lunch hour. Charlie had a ten pound note in her hand, practically her entire remaining earnings from Sat.u.r.day. She banged it down on the counter. 'I don't want the change.' Then she bolted for the door, ushering Kelsey's attention towards a poster in the window.

'"Ten pounds buys three sacks of seeds for a poor farmer."'

'Oxfam shops. Good places to spend money.'

It was Josh. Impossibly just there, on the pavement, ranged with Ben and Grant and Callum. Looking like they'd dropped off the cover of Cool Guys Monthly.

You could hear Kelsey's brain changing gear. She gained three inches in height and more in chest size. 'It's, like, you're giving them a donation,' she declared. 'For poor people in LEDCs.'

Josh nodded. 'What did you buy?'

Charlie rearranged her grip on her bag and relaxed into the spectacle of Kelsey's orange face working overtime while her mouth remained obstinately slack.

Charlie's phone buzzed.

'Megan?' Instead of relief at the change of topic, Kelsey's lower lip displayed asymmetric derision.

Revise quadratic equations tonite?

Then Josh they were still here, Josh and Ben and Grant and Callum kicked thoughtfully at a bit of gravel. 'Megan Edwards?'

'Yes.'

'Paul Edwards's sister?'

Kelsey glanced at Charlie.

'Yes.' Charlie realised that Kelsey, Bex and Lucy had no idea of Paul's existence. Megan's older brother was barely seen in real life. He was thin and gangly and had rosy, hairless skin like a toddler.

'Going to Cambridge,' Josh went on. 'Natural Sciences. Fast bowler.'

Thus was Paul Edwards alternatively defined. Ben's and Grant's and Callum's feet sc.r.a.ped the pavement in agreement.

There was a pause, and Charlie waited for some recollection from Kelsey of best friends.h.i.+p with Megan and Paul. Aligning herself for reflected glory was an accomplishment, sometimes jaw-droppingly effective.

And it was always a mistake to underestimate her.

'Last exam tomorrow,' Kelsey began, her utterance of the word knocking Charlie off-balance. 'Maths. Anyone like to help me out?'

Charlie fingered her phone. 'Actually-'

'Josh,' Kelsey rounded on him, chemically aglow. 'You're a maths bod.'

He smiled back. 'We have nets this evening.'

'What?'

'Cricket practice. Team selection for the weekend.'

'Oh. Yeah.'

Charlie blinked as Kelsey failed to grasp the implications. The boys turned to walk away and jagged lines appeared around them. The sun became unexpectedly brighter. Charlie imagined a migraine would be like that. Or an acid trip.

Cricket. Why hadn't they thought of it?

She flipped open her phone, scrolled to Megan's text and pressed Reply.

Warm, gra.s.sy afternoons. Cold beer. No more exams. Leg before wickets and no b.a.l.l.s and silly mid-offs. It surely wasn't rocket science to mug up on this stuff. You just had to have some working brain cells. The right connections. A plan.

With enough determination, tables could be turned. Flipped right over if your friends.h.i.+ps were already fatally flawed. Thinking hard, Charlie twisted a strand of uncooperative red hair around her forefinger and yanked it tight.

Ouch.

Kelsey, Lucy and Bex always knew what they wanted, and grabbed it.

Four doors further down the street Charlie skipped into the Age Concern shop and dropped the blue dress into a box by the counter. After a moment she did the same with her school blazer. Recycling, she thought happily. Setting things in motion all over again, somewhere around the loop.

My inspiration: An apparently anachronistic scene from Pride and Prejudice in which the Bennet sisters are discussing a shopping trip. Lydia defends her impulsive acquisition of a bonnet: 'I thought I might as well buy it as not...there were two or three much uglier in the shop...' My story puts a modern day spin on such essential teenage issues as vanity, flirting and the ill-considered purchase of unattractive garments.

MARIANNE AND ELLIE.

Beth Cordingly.

Ellie sat, book in hand, trousers around her ankles, momentarily winded by the familiar words: A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind; A lover's ears will hear the lowest sound.

They came like bad news in an unexpected phone call, disarming her. Flicking to the front page of the book she saw her father's shambolic scrawl and felt a pang of envy that it was in her sister Marianne's possession. Simultaneously she heard his voice in her head reciting the lines like a mantra. It was he who had underlined the section and placed the red leather bookmark within those pages: he who had taught his daughters to be open to love and to 'never settle,' quoting from Shakespeare to ill.u.s.trate his point. And Marianne, despite breaking off her engagement and fleeing to a rented bedsit, had dutifully placed The Hundred Greatest Love Poems Ever somewhere it would be seen daily as reading material in her new bathroom. To stay open to love, Ellie supposed.

She washed her hands thoughtfully; the words ringing like a melody stuck in her head; her father's lilting tones both a comfort and a menace. She couldn't work out how to be now, on leaving the bathroom. She had thought to find a laughable cliche about love and emerge triumphant, chastising her sister for keeping such a silly book in her loo. Yet here she was, disrupted by Shakespeare and gulping back tears. It had brought something back, a value: a benchmark. Now was not the time. Ellie was supposed to be the sensible one. Her sister looked to her for answers.

Marianne sat slumped by the kitchen table in the same position she had shuffled to at ten o'clock that morning, a cloudy cup of tea beside her, cold. A blue towelling dressing gown hung limply about her and her bed-head fringe stuck up like a shoot from an onion. The bedsit was small, a waist-high part.i.tion dividing the bed from the kitchen and the curtains were still drawn despite it now being past noon. As Ellie re-entered the room, inhaling the stale air of unwashed feet and sleep, Marianne lifted glazed eyes to meet hers. For a moment, with her spindly fingers, grey skin and sorrowful, helpless look she reminded Ellie of ET.

'What am I going to do?' the piteous figure whispered for perhaps the fourteenth time that morning, cras.h.i.+ng her forehead down into her palms. Cloistered away here for two days, Ellie was running out of tactics with which to distract her from The Disaster. They had been over and over the positives: Marianne hadn't sent the invites out, she hadn't been humiliated at the altar, it was better than a divorce in three years time, Uncle John hadn't been asked to give her away yet. Lawrence's backtrack decision that he 'wasn't ready' had not come as a huge surprise to anyone except Marianne but that was probably not a helpful observation at this point.

It could not be said that Ellie shared her sister's distress at the prospect of no longer embracing Lawrence into their family. A charming yet flirtatious actor he owned an air of expectancy that Ellie found exhausting. One was expected to be eternally grateful for the sprinkling of stardust Lawrence might occasionally cast in your direction. Marianne had found this self-importance enigmatic and alluring but to be fair, Ellie reasoned, there was something of their father in his charisma that would appeal to her sister. Lawrence lacked a sense of the world having any meaning other than how it did or did not serve him. But so, in a way, did Marianne. The main problem, Ellie was sure, and the reason the relations.h.i.+p was doomed from the start was encapsulated by something her father had once said. It was the reason he gave for marrying their mother, a schoolteacher with no theatrical ambition.

'Actors shouldn't go out with actors,' he'd decreed, 'It doesn't work. You can't have two centres of the universe.' Unfortunately Marianne disregarded this part of her father's legacy, being naturally drawn to the drama that only intense personalities can invoke.

Over yesterday's mugs of tea Ellie had tentatively tried to suggest to the blue-gowned form that perhaps what she needed was the opposite to a 'Lawrence'. Someone she wouldn't have to compete with, who was attentive and happy to rest in her shadow. Someone firm but not a threat. And not an actor. Someone, it occurred to Ellie in a moment of clarity that she did not mention out-loud, like a male version of herself.

It proved too early to introduce the concept of moving on. Marianne had listened and nodded sagely but on opening her mouth to speak she had managed only a wail and the same four words to which she had gained a firm attachment, "But I love him".

Rocking her sister gently, Ellie was pondering whether it would be insensitive to ask if she could open a window when Marianne raised her head and asked her a question she could not answer.

'I am twenty-eight years old,' she announced solemnly, 'and I was thinking... if I were to meet myself when I was eighteen, say, in the street or in a cafe, what would she think of me?'

Ellie blinked but said nothing, unsure whether Marianne was about to enlighten her or if this was a partic.i.p.atory exercise. It was sometimes difficult to tell whether Marianne was genuinely interacting or on the verge of a great soliloquy. She was staring straight ahead, leading Ellie to believe that it was indeed a rhetorical question when suddenly she turned, grasping Ellie's hands and glaring with a crazed urgency into her eyes.

'What would she think of me?' she repeated and then, more alarmingly, 'and what would yours think of you?' It was not so much the question itself that concerned Ellie as the tone of disgust with which it was delivered.

'What do you mean?' Ellie asked, frowning slightly.

'Oh, don't be like that, El,' Marianne's eyes began to twinkle, 'Don't go all wounded soldier. I'm just saying. You are fine. You are always fine. Good, sensible Elinor with your sensible, proper job and your lovely, cosy boyfriend. And your Borough Market coffee.'

There was a pause. Marianne had a unique way of making a compliment sound like an insult.

'And?'

'And... look at what you were like when you were eighteen!' Ellie shrugged, blankly.

'Oh come on,' persisted her persecutor, 'you were anti-establishment, anti-men, a commitment-phobe...you were terrified of everything!'

Ellie looked away. It was generally easier to go along with a.s.sumptions Marianne made about her life than to contradict her with the truth. Whatever part of her soul her sister was attempting to dissect, the event would pa.s.s quicker if she didn't engage.

'And now, silly, you're the happiest, most secure person I know. It's... well, it's wonderful.' Tears welled in Marianne's eyes and she squeezed Ellie's hand, willing her to agree.