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  “Told you, didn’t I?” Chick mutters at Lucy.

  “Looks nice, though.” Lucy suddenly remembers that my mum is dead and she has to be kind. The thought pops up in her eyes like cherries on a fruit machine. She is smiling a big, fake, caring smile.

  I eyeball Chick waiting for her to say something nice about my hair, even if she doesn’t mean it. But no. The line’s definitely been drawn. Her and Lucy are on one side, I’m on the other. Chick is a ‘Fake Friend’. What now? Dump her?

  “Sorry about your mum,” goes Lucy, all twangy, not meaning one single word of it.

  “S’all right. It’s not your fault.” I refuse to keep talking up at her so I talk down at Lucy’s shoes instead. They are pixie boots that need a new heel.

  “I knooooowww,” drawls Lucy, in her big, fake, caring voice.

  I stare at Chick, who couldn’t back up any further against the wall if she tried.

  No one says anything. I’m not going to tell Chick she’s dumped, I’m going to wait for her to tell me that I’m dumped. I want to see if she’s got the guts to do it. I stand there, waiting. I watch Chick silently begging me to push off. Lucy tries to fake-smile me to smithereens. Still no one speaks. We listen to the school grounds fill up. Feet on gravel. Snatches of conversations. Talk about football and who’s slagging off who and homework and what’s happening where after school tonight. Lucy never stops with the gift-wrapped smile. I smile back. This is a smile-off.

  Chick starts to look like she might vomit. She knows she has to say something.

  “Mum said you weren’t coming back to school.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yeah.”

  I see Lucy out of the corner of my eye, chewing her lips, eager for things to kick off. For the first time ever, I feel like giving Lucy what she wants.

  “Shows what your mum knows, doesn’t it?” I say it really friendly, which makes it all the nastier.

  Chick meets my gaze. Big eyes. She looks really hurt. She thought she’d come out of this on top, with her shiny, new, unbereaved friend, and now here she is feeling small. Little rabbit is going to get squished.

  Lucy raises her eyebrows at my last comment. In admiration, probably. It takes one bitch to know another.

  “Come back to do my GCSEs, haven’t I?”

  Chick nods.

  “That’s sooo brave,” goes Lucy, stirring up the pot.

  “Nothing to be brave about. I’ve done loads of revision. When I was staying at Chick’s house.” I get ready to give the poor, trampled rabbit a kick in the ribs. “Nothing much else to do when I was staying there.”

  Lucy pouts away a laugh. Chick looks strangled. She won’t retaliate. She has no clue how to – she’s never been in an argument in her life. Also, Chick knows that if you’re a good girl you can’t be nasty to someone whose mum has just died. And Chick is definitely a good little girl. Chop her in half and it’s written through her bones.

  “You two are the ones who’ll have to be brave in the GCSEs,” I go on. I’m not being horrible, this is just useful advice. “You two are the ones who aren’t that clever.”

  If you cut Lucy Bloss in half, you wouldn’t find the word ‘good’. She isn’t standing for that. She narrows her eyes, turns spiky.

  “Is it true you’re shacked up with your mum’s black boyfriend?” She takes her time with the word ‘black’, really enjoys it, makes it sound sticky and sordid. She never would have said it like that if Dionne Agu – her friend – was here. Suddenly ‘black’ is something that matters. Suddenly it’s something dirty. I think about Paul. A nice man in slacks. Lucy makes him sound like a gangster, a Mr Lover-Lover. The idea is hilarious but I don’t laugh. I glare at Chick, the only one who would know about Paul, the one who has obviously been spreading this story around, letting it grow into something it’s not. Chick won’t look at me. She fiddles with the hair-slide that’s doing a hopeless job of keeping her wispy bits back from her face.

  Lucy Bloss is all triumphant on her perch. She’s not expecting me to answer the question, but I want to.

  “Yeah,” I say, firmly. “Me and Paul. That’s right.” I will not look weak. I will not crumble.

  I have Chick’s full attention now. Lucy’s face fills with colour. She licks her lips at the thrill of hearing what she wants to hear.

  “Really?” She is unblinking, double-daring me to say it’s definitely true. “You’re shacked up?” She pops the ‘p’ at the end of her sentence. Grins.

  She wants me to backtrack, to scrabble around with words, try to make it sound innocent. Lucy knows that there’s nothing going on. She knows I’ve never even had a boyfriend. She knows I’m the person least likely on the whole earth to start an affair with an older man. She just wants to make me sweat. She wants me to look like a stupid, trembling virgin.

  “Yes,” I say again, even more confident this time. “Me and Paul. That’s right.”

  “Oh. My. God.” Lucy’s voice is breathy. She leans back away from me, swaps a look with Chick.

  She believes me. She really is that stupid. I’ve got her. I’ve got them both. Mum’s words come into my head and before I can think about what I’m doing, I’m saying them out loud.

  “And you know what they say about black men’s cocks, don’t you?”

  Lucy’s mouth drops open. Chick, I swear, does a cartoon gulp. I can hardly believe I said it either. No one speaks.

  “Well?” I snap, before I lose my nerve. “Do you know what they say, or not?”

  “Well . . . um . . . yeah,” splutters Lucy.

  I eyeball Chick.

  “Yeah,” she says, a tiny, choking, rabbity sound.

  They both glare at me, startled. I gesture for Lucy to bend down and come closer. She does. I lean in, cutting Chick out of the conversation with my shoulder.

  “Well,” I whisper to Lucy, “it’s all true.”

  Lucy backs away from me, as if sleaziness is catching. This is more gossip than even Lucy Bloss knows how to handle. Her smile has gone. I still have mine.

  I win.

  Chick is looking at me like she has no clue who I am. The sounds of the school grounds take over again. Football, who’s slagging off who, homework, trivial stuff.

  “Like your hair, Melon.”

  Dionne Agu has walked up behind me. She starts eyeing my head as if it’s a bizarre art installation. She’s arm in arm with Emily Winters.

  “It’s really short,” goes Emily. “Do you like it?”

  Their chatter sounds weird after the stuff me and Lucy have been saying to each other.

  “Yes,” I go before anyone else can answer. “Yeah, I do. Don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I never said I didn’t.” It doesn’t take much to make Emily huffy.

  “What’s going on?” asks Dionne. She can sense that something’s wrong. Lucy’s trap is shut for starters.

  “Ask Lucy,” I go. I want her to tell Dionne, see if she bothers mentioning the thing about Paul being black. Lucy drills into me with her eyes. She looks so funny, so desperate, so silly. I start laughing. And that really freaks everyone out – the bereaved girl is laughing!

  “You’re lying,” Lucy goes, cutting me down. She’s angry. It’s all fallen into place for her now. Three cherries dropping into the slots – bing, bing, bing.

  “What if I am?”

  “Why would you lie about that? You’re sick in the head.”

  “Why cos he’s a black man?”

  “I never said . . .” Lucy snatches a look at Dionne. Dionne huddles closer to Emily, looks lost.

  “I can’t believe you lied about that,” Lucy attacks again.

  “What does it matter to you?”

  “You’re not even sixteen!”

  “So?”

  “So that’s sick to make out that you’re . . .”

  “That I’m what?” This is hilarious. Lucy is fit to explode.

  “You could have got him arrested.”

  “Why, because you wouldn’t ha
ve been able to keep your stupid mouth shut?” I’m laughing again. I’m laughing in Lucy Bloss’s ridiculous face. She jumps down from the wall and pushes her nose right up to mine.

  “You’re fucking mental.” She taps the side of her head. “You’ve fucking lost it, you sick bitch.”

  I don’t want her close to me. Her face powder smells sickly sweet. I put my hands against her chest bone and shove really hard. It feels great to lash out at someone at last. Really great. I wonder why I haven’t gone and punched someone before now. I am ready to fight. Lucy skips backwards. Dionne pulls Emily out of the way and Lucy trips on her bag, landing on her backside. Dionne and Emily stifle giggles.

  Plenty of faces in the school grounds are turned our way now.

  “Shut up!” snaps Lucy. “You will fucking pay for that, Melon.” My name sounds heavy in her mouth. “You’re going to so regret doing that.”

  She gets up, brushes down her skirt. I want her to try to hit me, but Lucy Bloss isn’t going to fight. She won’t get dirty.

  “I never believed it for a second.” Lucy’s face looks hot, sweaty, close to tears. “As if anyone would want have sex with you, you fat bitch.”

  We all let that insult land.

  Dionne, Emily and Chick stare at me, waiting to see what I will do. But Lucy has finished with me now. She’s picking up her bag. And she knows that I am done with her too. She has spoken the final truth of it all. I am a fat bitch who no one would have sex with. Where do we go from there?

  Lucy looks to the others. “Come on.”

  They fall in behind her like soldiers. Chick too. Loser.

  “Let’s go,” hisses Lucy. They walk off. Lucy is smoothing down her long, blonde hair. “And your hair looks shit!” she yells back over her shoulder.

  The others are nervous about laughing at me, the girl whose mum is dead, but they do it anyway.

  I watch them head off towards the science block. Chick doesn’t look back. Not even once.

  3 DAYS SINCE

  Ian and the others get off at Highgate station. I stay on until Tottenham Court Road, change to the Central Line and then get off at Oxford Circus. I was worried I wouldn’t remember where to find the place, but here I am. Not far from Regent Street. I feel sick – still. The Cherry Coke and Cherry Drops were a bad substitute for breakfast. I stand on the pavement for a while willing the sick feeling away. I stare through the glass doors at the marble floors inside. I imagine a massive puddle of pink sick in the middle of the shop spreading across the shiny floor. Gross.

  This is definitely the place. All the perfect staff in their perfect black outfits. Me and Chick had walked right up to the doors with Mrs Lacey that day. She had told us we could go off and do whatever we wanted while she was in there, but we must meet her in the café at the end of the street in exactly two hours. No excuses, thank you very much. She’d checked Chick’s digital watch to make sure it said the same time as hers. She’d actually made Chick take it off so she could fiddle with the buttons and change the time by two minutes.

  “There,” she’d gone when she plonked it back in Chick’s hands. “Now there’s absolutely no reason for you to be late.”

  Before Mrs Lacey went inside, Chick had asked if she could spend some extra money on her credit card as a special treat.

  “No.”

  “But Dad said you –”

  “I said ‘no’.”

  Chick’s parents are loaded but they don’t like sharing it about. You’d expect Chick’s pocket money to be huge but it’s not. It’s bigger than mine ever was, of course. Chick’s credit card has her name on it, but it’s not really hers, it’s just an extra card on her mum’s account. Mrs Lacey pays the bill. Chick knows she can’t spend any more than her allowance.

  Once Chick’s mum had gone inside, Chick said she’d share her credit card money with me all the same. I was really embarrassed by that. What was I, some sort of charity case? I just mumbled a ‘thank you’ and hoped it wouldn’t get mentioned again.

  We had stood outside the doors for a while deciding where to go, Chick sticking her nose in her A to Z. Inside, a man was kissing Mrs Lacey on both cheeks and helping her out of her coat. It had a fake fur collar. Cruella De Vil. Mrs Lacey told us we weren’t to go anywhere on the tube, we had to stay close. She said, “The tube is a dangerous place – unless I’m with you.” Being with Mrs Lacey made us bombproof.

  “She never said we couldn’t get on a bus,” I’d whispered, leaning in over Chick’s A to Z.

  “Better not,” said Chick.

  Mum wouldn’t have cared less if I’d tubed it from High Barnet to Morden on my own ten times over. She wanted me to feel free. She wanted me to be the proper Londoner she never really was. Not with that Greek voice of hers. Mrs Lacey is like a normal parent: she wants to keep Chick locked up and protected. Chick might be a nervy tourist in her own city but at least she knows someone is keeping her safe.

  We’d walked to Carnaby Street that day and tried on shoes. We’d bought a little pot of lip balm each that cost too much money. I’d made sure I paid for mine. When we got back to the coffee shop (ten minutes early, just to be sure) we’d tested out each other’s flavours. Chick had bought mint, I’d bought cherry (of course). Mrs Lacey was late.

  If Chick isn’t allowed to go into central London on her own until she’s sixteen, I guess I fall under those rules, now that I live with the Laceys. I am officially breaking the Lacey law.

  I put my hand in my jeans pocket and rub my finger over the rounded corners of Chick’s credit card. Money burning a hole in my pocket. I want to get inside. The sick feeling isn’t going to shift, no matter how much fresh air I puff in and out, though I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be actually sick. That’s what it feels like when you’re pregnant, Mum said. Constant nausea.

  I shove one of the glass doors. It’s stiff and doesn’t budge. I have another go, really barge at it this time, and I’m in. The air is blow-dry hot and clanging with music and chat. I’m in one of those dreams where I’m walking around school wearing nothing but shoes, but no one has noticed yet.

  The woman on the reception desk has hair that looks like it’s been ironed flat then sealed in plastic. She gives me a massive smile.

  “Hi! You okay this morning?”

  I wasn’t expecting nice. I was expecting suspicious.

  “Hi, um, I don’t have an appointment but I wondered if . . .”

  The woman eyes my hair quickly and nods. She buries her concentration in her computer screen.

  “Hmm, I can maybe . . . fit . . . you . . .” She’s clicking and scrolling like this is the most important request she’s ever had.

  “Scott!” Suddenly she’s turning and yelling above the music, some chill-out album being played really loud. “You okay for a cut after this?” She flicks back to me. Her hair doesn’t move like normal hair. “It is just a cut, isn’t it?”

  I nod.

  “Just a cut!”

  Scott is wearing skinny grey jeans and a tight black v-neck. His hair is styled so it looks like he is standing sideways in a wind tunnel. He is doing a blow-dry on a woman, yanking her neck each time he stretches out her hair with a big, round brush. Scott steps back from the woman to give a thumbs-up, then goes back to inflicting his torture, bobbing along with the music as he does.

  The plastic hair girl throws me another massive grin.

  “Take a seat. Scott will be over in a minute.”

  It’s that easy. I was expecting a lecture on how expensive it is here. I was expecting the third degree on how I was thinking of paying. I’m disappointed that I haven’t had to put up a fight. I sit down in the waiting area. Really I wanted them to say, ‘no, go away’, so I wouldn’t have to go through with it.

  The middle-aged woman sitting next to me on the leather bench smells luxurious and has skin that’s stretched too tight across her face. She’s reading one of the magazines that have been put inside leather folders and stacked up on the glass table. On the p
age that the woman is reading, there are bits of other people’s snipped hair in the crease of the spine.

  Also on the table in front of me is a menu of prices in a plastic stand. I pick it up and scan down for the cost of a haircut. It’s more than Chick’s monthly credit card allowance. On the back of the hair menu there is a list of coffees and sandwiches, all at silly prices. I think about what I will order to make the sick feeling go away.

  “All right, I’m Daniel. D’ya wanna come with me?”

  A boy in a black T-shirt and black cardigan, all covered up with a black apron, is hovering over me. He looks my age. He has acne on his neck.

  “No,” I tell him. “I’m with Scott.”

  “Nah, nah.” He’s grinning like this is hilarious. “I’m just gonna wash your hair for Scott, ain’t I.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Gis ya jacket.” I wonder if he’s putting on the East End accent just to be cool.

  We walk over to the cloakroom and I realise I’m still holding the plastic menu.

  “Want me to take that, yeah?” He smirks at me again and puts the menu back on the table. I don’t know what he thinks is so funny. He’s as out of place in here as I am.

  “Stick your arm in there.” Daniel holds out a floaty grey smock. I turn my back as if I’m putting on a coat. “Nah, nah, this way. Forwards. It does up at the back, dunnit. That’s got ya. Sorted. Follow me.”

  We walk through the middle of the salon, watched on both sides by the faces of customers reflected back by the mirrors. We go down some stairs to a low-lit area filled with armchairs and sinks. ‘Womb-like’, that’s what they would call it on one of those poncey interiors programmes. A bit dark is what they really mean.

  Daniel points to one of the chairs and I sit down. He hands me a TV remote control on the end of a spiral cable. There are no TVs. I’m confused.

  “For the chair, innit.” Daniel snatches back the control and presses a button. A footrest takes me by surprise and starts to lift up my legs. Daniel skips to one side to avoid getting kicked.

  “Wey-hey. There you go. This one does the head rest, dunnit. Lean back. Get comfy.” He hands me back the control. I pull the ponytail band out of my hair and have a last feel of the curls. Past my shoulder blades. A couple of years and it would be long enough to sit on. But what’s the point of that now? I drop my head into the neck rest of the sink behind me. I wonder whether I’m supposed to keep my eyes open during the whole thing or keep them shut. I once overheard Lucy Bloss telling Emily Winters that you should close your eyes when you’re having sex otherwise you look like a prostitute. Daniel turns on the water. It makes me jump.