Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others
It was meant to be a summer full of boys. The ones who worked at the funfair on the pier, their tans deepening as the weather got hotter and they took off their T-shirts to spin squealing, sunburnt kids on the Waltzers. The packs of guys down for the weekend to our dreary little seaside town, who wanted to steal kisses behind the amusement arcade. The boys from school who’d suddenly got taller and fitter and learned how to look at you as if you were the only girl in the world.
Which was why me and Jules had got summer jobs at the ice-cream parlour on the pier. Before my dad left we used to spend two weeks in Magaluf so my parents could hurl insults at each other in a Mediterranean setting. But now money was tight and if I had to spend summer at home then I needed to be where the boy action was. And when we turned up the first day in our matching white short shorts, the owner, Big Don, increased our pay to £5.50 an hour and all the sprinkles we could eat.
Yeah, it was going to be the best summer ever. And then three things fucked it completely and utterly up. Jules got appendicitis and was rushed to hospital. Her parents were so relieved that she didn’t die that they took her off to Fuente Vera to convalesce. And Jules asked Louise to go with her because I’d insisted her stomach pain was trapped wind. Also I look way better in a bikini than her.
Then it started to rain and never stopped. The skies were permanently dark and the sea was an angry, bubbling grey cauldron. Big Don wasn’t too bothered that his only customers were geriatrics making a small vanilla cone last an hour while they waited for the rain to die down to a light drizzle, but I was devastated at the lack of cute boys coming in for a Cornetto.
Then the summer went from sucking to officially sucking like no summer had ever sucked before. Because one morning there was Rosie cowering under the parlour’s jaunty awning when I arrived to open up.
‘Oh, hi, I’m Rosie,’ she whispered so quietly I could barely hear her over the relentless drip-drip of the rain.
‘Cath,’ I said, giving the door a hard shove because it tended to stick. She was looking at me funny because we’d been at junior school together, but Rosie had gone on to the posh girls’ school and she was wearing mum jeans and it seemed easier to pretend that I didn’t know her.
But she was still the same quiet Rosie who crept round the edges. She looked around the ice-cream parlour nervously, as if she expected the metal scoops to spring to life and start attacking her. I opened the store cupboard and grabbed a handful of yellow cotton.
‘Here, put this on,’ I ordered. ‘Loo’s over there.’
Rosie reached out to catch her regulation ‘I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream’ T-shirt, and I realised that she had changed. I mean, she was still small and round and her messy, mousy hair still obscured her pink cheeks, but Rosie had grown up. Or at least her breasts had. They were huge. And when she emerged from the bathroom in the figure-hugging T-shirt, her tits entered the room half an hour before she did. Large breasts were wasted on a girl like Rosie.
‘It’s a little bit tight,’ she bleated forlornly, staring down at her chest in dismay.
‘Yeah, sucks to be you.’ She’d bogarted all the breastage so no way was she getting any sympathy from me. Then I launched into her orientation. ‘It’s pretty easy to figure out, apart from when someone wants to build their own sundae,’ I finished. Rosie nodded and waited at the counter eagerly like we were about to be besieged by hungry customers.
Surprisingly we settled into a comfortable routine over the next few days. I’d serve if a hot guy came in but the pickings were pretty slim and I always got the mint choc chip and the pistachio mixed up. Rosie had way more patience at dealing with people and when it wasn’t raining, she actually volunteered to hand out flyers because she was a loser.
But mostly I sat reading magazines and Rosie sat reading books. Proper books with tiny letters and fugly paintings on the front of girls who looked all swirly and watery.
We didn’t talk at all. Until the day the guy who worked on the face-painting booth came in for a sundae. I rushed to serve him because he was under fifty and passably fit apart from the whole geek chic thing with his hipster specs and Jack Purcells and, OMG, a cardigan, but Rosie was already brandishing one of the scoops purposefully.
I watched in amazement as he took the Build Your Own Sundae promotion to scary places that it was never meant to go. Chocolate ice cream, double chocolate ice cream, chocolate fudge ice cream with chocolate sauce and a Flake was against all laws of God and WeightWatchers.
‘I saw you handing out flyers this morning,’ he remarked to Rosie, who blushed more furiously than usual. Boys probably didn’t talk to her that much, except to comment on her mammoth appendages. ‘I could take some for the face-painting booth if you wanted.’
Rosie did want. She wanted so badly that she even gave him an extra helping of chocolate sauce.
‘Do you fancy him?’ I asked when he’d left with his sundae perched precariously in one hand as he shifted the box of flyers under his other arm.
‘I fancy not handing out flyers in a sudden downpour,’ Rosie muttered. Her voice dropped. ‘‘Sides, boys like that don’t fancy girls like me.’
‘What, dorky boys in cardigans?’
‘Whippet thin, arty boys with a casual insouciance,’ Rosie said, which seemed like brainiac speak for dork. It also seemed like we’d used up our allotted word quota for the day.
I soon realised that Rosie really didn’t like me. Like, she would never speak to me about anything not ice cream related. She’d either bury her head in one of her boring books or willingly serve customers without waiting for them to cough pointedly first.
I tried everything. I asked her about music but she only liked whiny emo bands. I asked her about her favourite TV shows but she was a freak who didn’t have her own TV. By the time I asked her what her favourite colour was, I was officially desperate, but she just mumbled, ‘green’, as Cardigan Boy walked in.
He stood there trying to catch Rosie’s eye but she was steadfastly gazing at the syrup bottles until I gave her a theatrical nudge. ‘I don’t serve dorks, so he’s all yours,’ I drawled.
If I’d been Rosie, I’d have engaged in some flirty talk involving the word ‘vanilla’, but Rosie just waited silently until Cardigan Boy decided on a praline and peanut butter combo. She dropped the first scoop on the floor and because I’m a saint, I offered to mop it up, while she tried again. Her legs were totally shaking and when I finally straightened up it was in time to hear him say, ‘Nice badge,’ as Rosie handed him his change.
The door had barely had time to close behind him, before she burst into tears.
Rosie wouldn’t say why she was crying. She just ran into the loo. When she came out, her eyes were pink, like she’d been scrubbing at them with the scratchy toilet tissue that Big Don got from the cash and carry instead of the posh stuff we had at home.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, but Rosie simply sniffed a bit and picked up her book.
It was much, much later when I’d just locked up and was gazing at the bulging sky and waiting for the first fat drops of rain to start plopping down, that Rosie spoke.
‘I thought he was different,’ she said, trying to yank the zip of her cagoule over her breasts. ‘But he’s the same as all the other boys.’
‘He is different from other boys. He wears a cardigan, for God’s sake.’
‘No, I mean, it was just about these, wasn’t it?’ She gestured at her chest. ‘He wasn’t looking at my badge at all.’
I looked at her badge, which was hard because her breasts really were attention hoggers. ‘Reading is sexy’, it proclaimed, which it so wasn’t, but if Cardigan Boy really had been looking at her badge and thought it was cool, then they were, like, kindred spirits or something.
‘Maybe he was looking at your badge but your boobs are in the same area so he had to look at them too. They are kinda…’
‘Big?’ Rosie suggested coldly. ‘Ginormous, don’t get many of them to the pound, could have someone’s eye out – whatever you were about to say, don’t bother. I’ve heard it all before.’
‘I was going to say gazeworthy,’ I snapped because she could just get over herself. Lots of people would pay good money for a pair that weren’t even half as impressive. ‘How big are you anyway?’ I heard myself asking. ‘Like 40DD?’
‘Oh, piss off,’ Rosie hissed in a very un-Rosie-like manner and stomped off.
‘I was only asking,’ I pointed out, following her because I wanted to get off the pier before the heavens unleashed. ‘Boys like boobs. Deal with it.’ Which was precisely why I had a pair of rubber chicken fillets stuffed into my bra cups.
‘Well, I like boys who can see beyond my chest to the person underneath,’ Rosie muttered. ‘If he doesn’t like me for my personality then he’s not worth it.’
‘Do you want to know what your problem is, Rosie?’
‘Apart from the way you keep haranguing me with rhetorical questions?’ She folded her arms over the offending areas. ‘What is my problem, oh wise one?’
‘You think everything is about your breasts; but they wouldn’t be so noticeable if you stopped tugging at your clothes and drawing attention to them every five seconds.’ Rosie’s hair was in her face and I couldn’t tell whether my words were having any effect. ‘You don’t make the best of yourself. You should do something with your hair and stop letting your mum buy your clothes.’
‘She doesn’t buy my clothes … ’
‘Well, it looks like she does.’ I tried to soften my voice because we were getting off topic. ‘Look, Rosie, you might read lots of books but they’re not teaching you important boy-getting life skills. Twenty-five per cent of your problem is obviously low self-esteem and the other seventy-five per cent of your problem will disappear if you let me work on your wardrobe, grooming and getting you a bra that actually fits.’
Rosie took the bait at last. ‘What’s wrong with my bra?’
I came right out with it. ‘You have a mono-boob. There’s meant to be two of them, not one long sausagey thing hanging there. I’m not a lezza or anything, Rosie, but I’d really love to know what’s going on under your clothes.’
I hadn’t even finished my sentence before Rosie bolted across the road and narrowly avoided getting mown down by a bus.
And that was that. If Rosie wanted to spend the rest of her life being a mono-boobed freak, it was nothing to do with me.
But three days later after Big Don had been in to give us our wages, Rosie sidled up as I stacked my magazines in a neat pile. ‘It’s late-night closing, isn’t it? Will you help me buy some new bras?’
Rosie had a long list of acceptable behaviour for our bra-buying expedition. She refused to have her boobs measured. I wasn’t allowed in the changing room. The words ‘knockers’, ‘bristols’, ‘norks’ and all other variants were banned and I wasn’t to speculate on what her size might be.
I agreed to everything because even walking to the main shopping drag together was a big thing for Rosie. Acceptance was the first step to recovery, blah blah blah. And I almost shed a tear as I saw the light dawn on Rosie’s face as I extolled the virtues of underwire bras and she snatched a handful and hurried to try them on. She was actually figuring out the basic rules of girl stuff before my very eyes.
When Rosie reappeared, and headed towards the cash register with her hands full of new bras and one greying old one, she was walking very oddly, as if her centre of gravity had totally shifted. Maybe it was because her boobs were no longer one weird roll propped on her chest, but like actual proper breasts. They were still enormous but at least they didn’t look like they should have their own national anthem any more.
‘You have a waist now,’ I told her in amazement after she’d paid. ‘You look super fierce.’ I expected Rosie to give me another speech about how she only wanted to be judged for her lame personality, but a tiny, pleased smile played around her lips.
‘I’m having this major epiphany,’ Rosie confessed. ‘I always thought it was superficial to care too much about clothes and hair and it was the inner me that counted. But maybe the outer me should look more like the inner me.’
She really needed to come with subtitles.
‘What does the inner you look like,’ I asked.
Turned out that Rosie’s inner me looked like the girls in the books she read; quirky and mysterious, which I translated as a muted colour palette and lots of V-necks and wrap tops to minimise her mammaries. We trawled through New Look, Primark and H&M and Rosie tried on everything I suggested. I wouldn’t say we were becoming friends, more like teacher and pupil.
Every day the skies got darker and the rain got more biblical and we’d camp out in one of the booths, so I could impart all the wisdom I’d acquired in my sixteen years.
Rosie took notes and when I was done imparting she made me laugh by inventing this whole other life for Big Don where he ordered girlfriends off the internet. She was dead sarcastic and funny once you got to know her.
There were hardly ever any customers but when Cardigan Boy came in, Rosie would hide from view and whisper: ‘You serve him, Cath, please.’
But on Thursday when the bell above the door jangled I’d just given my nails their second coat of The Lady Is A Tramp, so with a long-suffering sigh, Rosie hauled herself up.
‘Hey, I haven’t seen you for ages,’ he said and she almost tripped over her feet.
Then his eyes widened at new improved Rosie in a black V-neck sweater that fitted properly with a little felt corsage pinned to her shoulder and a pair of jeans that didn’t give her a mum bum. And game on, because Cardigan Boy was looking at Rosie in exactly the same way that he’d looked at his Tropical Fruits sundae. Mind you, he’d looked at her like that pre-makeover too.
‘I hope this doesn’t sound sketchy, but I’ve got something for you,’ he said nervously, reaching into the inner depths of his anorak while Rosie looked intrigued but nervous, because Cardigan Boy was coming over all stalker-y. ‘I saw you reading Bonjour Tristesse, and then the other day I found this in a charity shop.You’ve probably already got it, but the cover’s really cool.’
He pulled out a mouldy paperback, its pages tinged yellow. Rosie took it and turned it over carefully like it was some holy relic, as I squinted over her shoulder to see the book title: To Esme, With Love And Squalor. Whatever. But Rosie’s face lit up and in that split second she was so beautiful that it made me blink rapidly until she looked like she usually did.
‘That’s so weird, this is on my to-buy list,’ she said. ‘And I love old editions of books. If I really like the book, it makes me kinda sad that they gave it away. Do you know what I mean?’
Cardigan Boy knew exactly what she meant. ‘I have this hardback of The Collectible Dorothy Parker from the 1940s that I found in Cancer Research. Why would someone get rid of that?’
It was all very well bonding over books but they still weren’t getting the basics sorted. Not unless I did it for them. ‘I’m Cath, this is Rosie and you are … ?’
‘David,’ Cardigan Boy said. ‘Never Dave or Davy or Id.’
And Rosie totally laughed, even though it was the lamest joke I’d ever heard. It was adorable in the dorkiest, geekiest way possible.
How was I going to get Rosie and David away from ice cream and on an actual date? I needed to try to fathom out the geek mindset but, God, that was so hard. Then on Tuesday Rosie was banging on about her latest boring book while I was flicking through the local paper and I had such a genius idea that I almost fell headfirst into the strawberry ice cream that I’d left out on the counter to soften.
When David finally came in, I elbowed Rosie out of the way, so I could get to him first. We went through the usual sundae business while he cast longing glances in Rosie’s direction, then I moved in for the kill.
‘Hey, have you ever read The Great Gatsby?’ It was a perfectly natural question for me to ask so there was no need for him to smirk.
‘It’s one of my favourite books,’ he replied and Rosie opened her mouth to start wordgasming about it too but I rustled the paper as a diversionary tactic.
‘You know they made a non-musical film of it ages ago, right? It’s playing at the Rep Cinema tonight.’
‘I’ve always wanted to see it,’ David enthused, walking into the clever trap I’d set and making himself right at home.
‘Really?’ I smiled sweetly at Rosie whose eyes were promising a little light torture. ‘Rosie’s dying to see it too but she hasn’t got anyone to go with. I refuse to watch any film that wasn’t made this century.’
If David paused for longer than five seconds I was going to brain him with a box of Cornettos, but he was already turning to Rosie with a casual smile that I knew masked the fear of rejection. ‘You probably already have plans, but if you fancy going with me … ?’ He tailed off and stared down at his Jack Purcells. Which was just as well because Rosie was doing a good impression of a slack-jawed yokel.
‘Um, if you don’t mind, I guess that would be er, like all right,’ she muttered.
‘No, I don’t mind. If you’re sure you don’t … ’
It was like watching some nature show on the Discovery Channel about the mating habits of geeks. Watching two bears clawing each other into bloody shreds would have been less painful. ‘Jesus!’ I snapped, pushing his sundae at him. ‘Come and pick her up after work. Six sharp so you’ve got time to get the tickets. Now go away. We might have some other customers in a minute.’
As soon as he was out of the door, Rosie turned on me furiously. ‘You’re absolutely unbelievable, Cath,’ she began, her face flushing. ‘You pimped me! He was obviously just being polite because you forced him into … ’
‘You’re welcome,’ I said when she had to pause for oxygen. ‘If I were you I’d start doing your make-up because you’re still crap at applying liquid eyeliner.’
‘He paid extra for the superior comfort seats,’ Rosie told me the next day, as we shivered behind the counter. It wasn’t actually that cold but the rain was thudding against the window and it felt like we should shiver. ‘And then we shared a tub of popcorn and he squeezed my arm in a really sad part of the movie, but it wasn’t in a lecherous way. It was a very empathetic squeeze.’
‘And then what happened?’ I prompted, eyes wide.
‘We went for a coffee and talked about the movie and Scott Fitzgerald’s other books, and loads of things and then he walked me home,’ Rosie finished with a smile that was verging on smug.
‘And did he kiss you? Like, with tongues?’ It came to something when I had to get vicarious snogging thrills from Rosie.
‘Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t,’ she said coyly. ‘But I’m seeing him tonight. We’re going to a gig. You should come,’ she offered, because she was a sweet but totally naïve girl who thought it was polite to invite friends along on dates.
‘Nah, you’re OK,’ I shrugged. ‘The music you like hurts when you listen to it.’
‘Some of David’s friends are going to be there.’ Rosie’s face squinched up. ‘Maybe they won’t like me. They’re all at university or art school and they’ll think that I’m fat … ’
‘You are not fat,’ I interrupted angrily because at least she didn’t go straight up and down like me. ‘You’re curvy. Big diff. And you’re really smart and funny and you should stop judging yourself about what you think you look like. It’s pathetic. And don’t you forget it.’
Rosie didn’t forget it. Maybe that’s why she was a such big hit with David’s friends. She even went bowling with them later in the week, then turned up for work in this old-fashioned dress that hugged her curves like she’d just stepped down from one of those 1950s pin-up girl pictures. Her boobs were still mighty but it was like she’d grown into them.
‘David’s friend Kara gave me this,’ she said, twirling so I could see how the circle skirt foofed out. ‘She said I had the perfect figure for vintage clothes.’
I was happy for her. Really I was. That’s why I folded my arms and pouted. ‘You could get something in H&M that’s practically identical,’ I noted savagely. ‘And no one would have died in it.’
Rosie’s face fell and I felt like a bitch for raining all over her vintage parade, but I could tell she was leaving me behind and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
We still hung out at work but it wasn’t the same. Rosie was kicking it freestyle these days and now that I had nothing left to teach her, there wasn’t really a lot to talk about.
So it was a huge relief when it stopped raining and the sun came out. Big Don dragged the Mr Whippy machine outside to take advantage of the daytrippers and I volunteered to man it. I couldn’t quite master the necessary twirling action but I really needed to start on my tan and scope out the talent.
The sunshine had made the boys emerge from wherever they’d been hiding and I remembered what summer was meant to be about. I’d lost too much time for sticky kisses and holding hands with out-of-towners. I needed to think about who’d still be around in September when everyone at school was bragging about Pedro the cabana boy and François the deckchair salesman. If I had a boy in the bank, so to speak, rather than living off memories, then I wouldn’t need any sympathetic looks because newly one-parent families couldn’t afford luxuries like package holidays to Corfu.
First I considered Jimmy from the Waltzers because he was really fit, but he had dirty fingernails and everyone knew he’d done really gross stuff with a girl from the doughnut stall under the pier. Loz from the Ghost Train always winked at me when he came to beg for change, but he had a zitty back and he spent off-season in a spliff haze. I needed a boy who was way more thrusting and dynamic.
Eventually I settled on Kieran from the bumper cars because he played football for the local club’s youth team, drove a black Jeep, and when he sauntered bare-chested along the pier with a cocky smile, his muscles rippled and it was like having a religious vision. He was perfect for me.
I pulled out every single weapon in my arsenal. I went two shades lighter on the blonde scale, fashioned my T-shirt into a bandeau to show more skin and smiled flirtatiously every time he walked past. Nothing seemed to work, and the skanks from the café opposite had set up a tea stall outside the front door and weren’t above whistling at him. I could have been invisible for all the notice Kieran took of me.
Summer was limping to a halt and I could feel the weight of going back to school already crushing down on me. I needed a Plan B on the boy front, I thought as I served up 99 after 99. And as soon as I thought it, a voice in my ear roughly enquired, ‘You all right, then?’
It was Kieran. I mean, of course it was Kieran, and all of him was twinkling at me: his eyes, his smile, the bleached tips of his spiky hair. I stuck out my chest and fluttered my eyelashes. ‘Yeah,’ I said, staring at his mouth. ‘You all right?’
‘You’re Cath, right?’ Kieran asked and I forgot the impatient queue of customers and the girls from the café trying to kill me with their collective dirty looks. Because Kieran was all there was and his eyes were running up my legs, over my tummy, lingering slightly at the boobs then coming to rest on my mouth as I poked my tongue slightly between my lips like I was deep in thought.
‘Yeah,’ I said after about five seconds. ‘And you’re Kieran. Your cousin knows my mate, Jules.’
‘So, like, do you want to go to the Pier Summer Party with me on Friday?’
I had to stop myself from squealing because we were so on. Every summer, the business owners who rented space on the pier held a party for their under-paid, over-worked summer staff. It was at some cheesy club in town but it was just about the most exciting event of the season. And Kieran wanted to walk in with me in full view of those jealous ho-bags from the café who’d taken to shouting rude remarks at me in their quiet periods. Result!
‘Sure, that sounds cool,’ I said casually as Kieran asked for my number. And it was that easy to get the guy you fancied – if you weren’t Rosie.
I was in torment most of Friday as I tried to dish up ice cream and beautify myself. There was a hairy moment when I spilled a glob of body shimmer in the chocolate chip but I smooshed it around with a scoop and I don’t think anyone noticed. Well, only Rosie and she didn’t count.
Once we’d finally closed and I was carefully applying glittery eye-shadow, I saw her mardy reflection in my compact. ‘Rosie, you are going to this party, right?’ I asked suddenly, because I hadn’t thought to check.
‘Why would I willingly spend time in a room full of people I’d normally cross the road to avoid?’ Rosie said, though a simple ‘no’ would have done. ‘It’s not my scene.’
‘But you have to come!’ I yelped, closing my compact with a snap and fiddling with the neckline of my dress so it didn’t dip down low enough to reveal my darkest secrets. ‘Is David going?’
‘It’s not his scene either,’ Rosie sniffed, like they were too good to get down and dance to songs that had an actual tune. ‘Anyway, you’re going with Kieran, so what’s the problem?’
How could Rosie not know this stuff? ‘Because I don’t want him to think I’m some friendless loser who spends the entire night clinging to him,’ I all but wailed. ‘Look, just come for a couple of hours.’
‘I can’t,’ Rosie said firmly. I’d preferred her when she’d been a total pushover and had no social life to interfere with my plans. ‘We’re going to see a band and we have to catch a train and –’
‘God, I can’t believe you’re one of those girls who dumps your mates as soon as you get a boyfriend,’ I burst out. ‘You wouldn’t even have hooked up with him if it hadn’t been for me.’
‘That’s not fair,’ Rosie protested, her voice throbbing like she was getting teary. But she was still picking up her bag like she intended to abandon me. ‘That’s a really unkind thing to say, Cath.’
I was about to say a lot more really unkind things when there was a tap on the window and I whirled around to see Kieran raise a hand and shoot me one of those wolfish smiles, which made my knees shake. ‘Oh, why don’t you just go home and read one of your mouldy books,’ I hissed. ‘That’s the closest you’ll ever come to having a life.’
‘I can’t believe that I actually thought you were my friend,’ Rosie choked as she hurried to the door and almost knocked Kieran off his feet. And he could take his eyes off her tits too.
‘We were never friends,’ I stated clearly. ‘I just felt sorry for you.’ And before Rosie could put a complete damper on the evening and to get Kieran’s attention away from her scene-stealing mammaries, I dragged him down for a long, tongue-y kiss until she was just a fat, round blob in the distance.
The party was fantastic. When I walked in with Kieran, everyone turned to look at us like we were this golden couple or something. I kept a tight hold of Kieran’s hand and maybe it was that and the kiss we’d had before that made him so, like, demonstrative.
‘You’re so hot, Cath,’ he kept saying, while rubbing his hand against whatever part of my body was nearest. ‘You’re the fittest girl here.’
Technically I wasn’t, because Lizzie who worked on the rock stall had got through to the semi-finals of this TV modelling competition, but whatever. Kieran was totally acting like we were officially dating and kept the Barcardi Breezers coming. And he only let me leave his side to go to the loos, where I adjusted the fillets and applied more body shimmer to give me the illusion of cleavage. When I got back to the bar, Kieran was hemmed in on all sides by those cows from the café. I staggered over so I could simultaneously wrap myself around Kieran and shoot death stares at them.
The party was winding down by then and Kieran and I ended up on a sofa at the back of the upstairs bar. Normally I don’t like getting off with someone in public but it was dark and there wasn’t much to see; just Kieran sprawled out on top of me while he tried to hump my leg. It reminded me of the fight between my mum and dad when she’d taken the dog to the vets to have his balls chopped off. The dog, not my dad. And I was so busy thinking about castration and poor old Muttley that I wasn’t paying any attention to where Kieran’s hands were going, which was straight into my bra cups.
‘What the fuck is that?’ he muttered in my ear and before I could process the full horror of the moment, he’d yanked out one of my rubber fillets and was staring at it in bemusement.
‘S’nothing!’
I tried to make a grab for it but Kieran was already jack-knifing off the sofa so he could look down and see one breast all perky and firm while on the other side there was nothing but gaping material. He laughed. He actually laughed. ‘Are you really a girl, Cath, or are you just a bloke in a dress?’
‘Give it back!’ I squealed, trying to make a lunge for him, but he took a hasty step back and I fell off the sofa and landed in a heap on the floor. Which would have been Kieran’s cue to apologise, scoop me up in his arms and kiss me better.
He didn’t. Kieran just gave the chicken fillet a tentative prod and sniggered again. ‘I heard you were tight and now I know why.’
OK, Kieran wasn’t the most sensitive specimen that boykind had to offer, but I’ve always had a weakness for the rugged bad boys. So I should have known what would happen as Kieran’s pack of bumper-car mates tripped up the stairs.
‘Look what Cath was packing under her dress,’ he shouted, as he threw the fillet at them.
I cried the whole way home. And then my mum wanted to know what had happened and when I told her she said that all men were bastards, then she started to cry, which made me cry even harder. Then I cried because I’d ripped my new Zara dress and I missed my dad and there was no one to say that it would be all right because nothing was going to be all right ever again. Not until I got my new boobs and I met some rich guy who’d take me away from this stinking town and everyone in it and I never had to come back.
In fact, I spent most of the night crying, when I wasn’t throwing up, and the next morning I really wanted to call in sick. But I had a new appreciation for my £5.50 an hour and the bigger boobs it would buy me so I stuck on my fake Gucci shades and my longest skirt, which just skimmed my knees, and staggered to work.
Rosie was already waiting for me to open up and I just couldn’t deal with her right then. Especially as the first words out of her mouth was, ‘You were vile last night.’
‘Don’t talk to me,’ I spat and tried to ignore the way her face sort of collapsed in on itself. It was raining again, which suited me just fine because sunny skies would have made my head hurt even worse. I sat at the counter and ignored Rosie. By some sheer feat of inner strength that I didn’t know I possessed, I managed not to cry for a few hours. Not even when some cow started moaning about the chocolate-chip ice cream tasting funny. I scooped and assembled cones and asked people if they wanted ‘sprinkles or sauce?’ in a drone-like voice.
I just needed to last until six and then I could go home and go to bed and cry a bit more but time had slowed down to a crawl and there were still two hours until I could herd the last ice-cream guzzlers out of the shop. I stared at the clock on my phone, then gave a little start as it beeped. Then I gave an even bigger start when I saw that I had a text from Kieran.
It was a bit late to apologise but at least he was apologising. That was something. I eagerly opened the message and then I really did burst into tears and six o’clock be damned. Once I started crying I couldn’t stop and was only dimly aware of someone guiding me into the storeroom where they sat me down and tried to dab at my face with a damp tissue.
It took a long while for the sobs to die down to hiccups and Rosie was still crouched down in front of me with a concerned expression on her face.
‘What about the shop?’ I spluttered.
Rosie shrugged carelessly. ‘I put the “back in five minutes” sign up on the door about half an hour ago,’ she said breezily as if Big Don’s profit margins weren’t her problem. ‘Is this about Kieran? What’s he done?’
I tried to explain what had happened but every time I opened my mouth, a fresh volley of sobs emerged. In the end I handed over my phone so she could see the picture of my rubber fillet stuck to a wall and the text: ‘Feel like chicken tonight? Call Cath on 077557 … ’
She gave a little gasp, stared fleetingly at my chest, which was as flat as my mood, and then narrowed her eyes. ‘I knew he was no good,’ Rosie announced. ‘You can’t trust a boy who bleaches his hair. It shows a lack of character.’
It was such a Rosie thing to say that I actually smiled. Until I looked at my phone and my face crumpled again. ‘I bet he’s sent it to everyone in his address book and they’ll have sent it to everyone in their address book.’ I hunched over as the enormity of the situation dawned on me. ‘I’m going to be a flat-chested freak of a laughing stock. Oh God, it will be all round school too. This must be how Kim Kardashian felt when her sex tape got leaked.’
There was nothing else to say so I decided to start crying again.
She totally didn’t have to, but Rosie was really cool about it. She let me skulk in the storeroom so I could come up with a convincing argument to persuade my mum to get a bank loan so I could have my surgery before I went back to school. Then I could pretend that the rubber fillets weren’t mine and also start a vicious rumour that Kieran wore a codpiece. It was a long shot, but it might just work.
My musings were interrupted by a knock on the storeroom door, which burst open to reveal Kieran standing there, Rosie’s hand around his wrist in a vice-like grip, if the ouchy expression on Kieran’s face was anything to go by.
‘I can take it from here,’ she called out and over her shoulder I saw David and a couple of face-painting-booth geeks fade into the distance. ‘Kieran has something he wants to say to you,’ Rosie told me in a sing-song voice and I couldn’t understand why Kieran was letting her treat him like a bitch until she did something with her nails and his wrist that made him yelp like the spineless wanker that he really and truly was.
I lifted up my blotchy face and wished that I still had my shades on. ‘What could you possibly want to say to me?’ I asked dully.
‘I’m sorry,’ he spat sullenly.
‘Why don’t we try that once again with more feeling?’ Rosie suggested pleasantly. ‘Like we discussed after David threw your phone off the end of the pier. Or I’m digging my nails in again, and I don’t care if it is your throwing arm.’
‘I’m sorry that I acted like a Nean … like a Nean-der … like a tool last night. It was really disrespectful of me to treat you so objectively and … ’ Kieran faltered and Rosie hissed something in his ear. ‘I need to appreciate women for their minds and not just their individual physical attributes.’ He broke off from the script to shoot me a reproachful look. ‘I was only having a laugh, Cath. Why you being so touchy about it?’
‘Because you humiliated me in front of all your friends,’ I hissed. ‘And I bet you sent that text to everyone on the south coast and now I’m going to have to be home-schooled or something.’
Rosie let go of Kieran, who rubbed the back of his hand and flushed. ‘Actually I ran out of credit after I sent you that text,’ he admitted. ‘I didn’t send it to no one else, I swear. And I don’t mind that you’ve got no tits, I still fancy you.’
The huge wave of relief swept away everything else in its path. But if there was a footballer in my future who’d lead me by the hand to a world where I was special and important and there was a never-ending supply of designer handbags and spa memberships, it wasn’t Kieran.
‘Well, I don’t fancy you,’ I confessed flatly. ‘Not any more. Not after what you did.’
He stumbled out after that, mumbling something indistinct, though the word ‘bitch’ was loud and clear. Rosie raised her eyebrows at me and sort of shrugged.
‘Thanks,’ I said, even though it was really inadequate because she’d just saved my life.
But Rosie seemed to understand because she gathered up my bag and shades. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here,’ she said decisively. ‘You need junk food.’
It wasn’t until I was tucking into a huge basket of fries in the nearest pub that didn’t ask for ID that Rosie remembered to text David to let him know I wasn’t going to top myself or anything. I felt a pang of envy because when would it be my turn to have a devoted boyfriend?
‘See, it’s stuff like this whole Kieran business which is exactly why I’ve spent my summer dishing up ice cream so I can save to get my tits done,’ I blurted out before chugging down a whole glass of Diet Coke because I was never drinking alcohol again, not even when I was eighteen and legally old enough.
Props to Rosie because she didn’t chew me out for letting her rattle on about her own breast issues without ever fessing up. ‘Maybe it’s not your tits that’s the problem, maybe it’s the guys you go for,’ she said mildly.
That was so typical of her! ‘I can’t help if it I’m genetically programmed to only fancy boys who want the whole package; blonde hair, long legs, big boobs.’
‘But you said it was all about confidence,’ Rosie pointed out. She was starting to sound a little peeved. ‘That I should stop worrying about what other people thought of me.’
‘Well, maybe I kinda lied,’ I admitted. ‘Confidence only gets you through the door – doesn’t get you into the VIP room though.’
Rosie threw her hands in the air like I was getting on her last nerve. ‘You know if you used your powers for good, not evil, you could totally eradicate world hunger in six months,’ she said, as she pinched one of my fries. ‘Seriously, Cath, don’t you think if you stopped concentrating on making your hair super shiny and chatting up creepy boys, you could use all that determination to do anything you wanted?’
‘But all I want is to have super-shiny hair and actual breasts so I can attract a really cute boy with lots of money who’ll take me away from this shitty little place,’ I said round a mouthful of hot potato. ‘Ain’t gonna happen any other way.’
‘Well, you could study hard, go to university and get a really well-paid job,’ Rosie suggested, but my face scrunched up because I was that close to crying again.
‘That would take way too long,’ I moaned. ‘And I’d make an ace trophy girlfriend … ’
Rosie’s eyebrows shot up so high that I thought she’d need surgery to remove them from her hairline. ‘You have to figure out who you really want to be, then make sure the people in your life are going to help you achieve that. Like you helped me see beyond my 36Fs.’
It wasn’t that simple but now I was distracted by Rosie’s true bra size. 36F? F? How could such a thing be possible when I was a 32AA? Before I could ask Rosie, she was digging in her bag and pulling out a notebook and pen.
‘You need a proper plan for the future,’ she said firmly. ‘One that doesn’t involve invasive surgery.’
‘You sound like my careers advisor, except he thinks my only future is working in a call centre,’ I grumbled.
Rosie ignored my whining and held her pen poised over a snowy-white page. ‘You’re very goal orientated, love a challenge and we’re going to come up with a project to make the most of that potential. Now, what do you really want to be when you grow up? And if you say footballer’s wife, I’m going to smack you.’
‘We’ll keep in touch,’ Rosie insisted on our last day when we were helping Big Don out by eating our way through the last of the Flakes. ‘I’m still going to need tons of fashion advice.’
But we weren’t and she wouldn’t. Rosie had her own sense of style now and she was doing a gazillion A-levels and had plans to visit David in London. While I’d be stuck retaking the GCSE’s I’d spectacularly failed, because it was hard to revise when your parents were throwing crockery at each other. Which was why I’d thrown her bullet-pointed list of my future goals and aspirations in the trash. And I was thinking about buying bigger boobs again because finding a rich boyfriend seemed more doable than ever passing English.
‘Yeah, for sure,’ I sighed, but Rosie didn’t even notice my utter lack of conviction because she was dragging out a huge brown-paper parcel from the back of the storeroom.
‘I prepared some audio-visual aids for your project,’ she said, thrusting it into my hands and smirking when I nearly collapsed under the weight. ‘No peeking until you get home.’
When I got home my mum was well into the first bottle of wine of the evening so I carried the package upstairs and ripped into it. I sifted through the collection of CDs and yellowing books that smelt of damp until I found a note written in Rosie’s crabbed scrawl.
Dear Cath
Before I met you, these were the people who showed me that there’s a whole big world out there and that who I am isn’t who I’m always going to be. I hope they do the same for you.
Love Rosie
It was really sweet of her, but I wasn’t Rosie. We were completely different people. Like, the huge diff in our breast sizes wasn’t a big enough clue. I shoved the package to one side and then Jules called me and I forgot about it.
I kept forgetting about it until one night in October when there was nothing on TV and I’d just dumped another lad from the school football team because he only spoke in grunts. I groped about under the bed and pulled out the first book from the package I could reach: Madame Bovary by some bloke called Gustave Flaubert.
I took a deep breath, turned to the first page and began to read.