I WAS SEVEN when I met Precious Alice, and my mother was over the moon. ‘Alice is such a nice girl,’ she told me, glad that the years of having a daughter that nobody liked had finally come to an end, or so she thought. ‘A best friend is forever, Gemini,’ she said. She wasn’t wrong.
I’d met her at the playground, soon after we moved to town. I was on my new bike, a sleek crimson machine with gleaming chrome that was my only pride and joy. I may not have had anyone to play with, but at least the other kids turned their heads my way when I sped past, frantically tinkling my bell.
Afternoon was turning to evening, and the last of the sun, as golden as a pool of urine, was slipping down behind the dark green hills in the distance. The white sand was cool and powdery beneath the almost deserted roundabouts and slides, while the Norfolk pines rustled above us, swaying over the border between playground and beach, where the little waves were wiping their foamy lips down on the wet sand.
The sight of Precious Alice sailing backward and forward on the swings made me skid to a halt. It was her long auburn hair that attracted me; drawing me like a magnet as she flung her head back and the rich, thick curls swept through the air. They were deep red, with just a hint of brown, and the final rays of sun were as mesmerised by them as I was. I sidled over furtively, unable to keep my eyes off her. Knowing that I was watching her, Precious Alice made the swing go as high as she could before letting herself drift to a stop.
She stuck her tongue out at me. ‘Don’t stare,’ she said. ‘It’s rude.’
‘Your hair’s so beautiful,’ I mumbled.
Precious Alice preened. ‘Would you like to touch it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, please,’ I whispered, my heart aching with jealousy. My own hair was limp and brown, and always oily, no matter how often I washed it. For some reason, it refused to grow more than a few centimetres past my shoulders. I would have given anything to have had hair like hers.
‘I’ll let you touch it if you give me your bike,’ she said cunningly.
I tightened my grip on the handlebars. ‘It’s mine. I got it for my birthday,’ I explained.
‘I’ll let you be my friend too,’ she said. That was my introduction to Precious Alice’s persuasiveness. I loosened my fingers. ‘My name’s Alice,’ she said. ‘But my daddy calls me Precious Alice. If you want to be my friend, you’ll have to call me that as well.’
‘You’ll really let me touch your hair?’ I asked, unable to believe my luck.
Precious Alice nodded her head, sending her curls rippling. ‘Give me the bike,’ she said, jumping off the swing. I leaned it up against the metal pole and crept closer to her. Stretching my hand out, I cautiously patted that dark, silky red glory. When she didn’t pull away, I got braver, stroking it and winding it around my fingers.
‘That’s enough,’ she said sharply, pushing me to one side and grabbing the bike, her soft rosy cheeks glowing with triumph. Hoisting herself over the bar, she rode away without a backward glance. I sat on the swing for a while before walking slowly home, past the salt and vinegar smell and the golden light of the fish and chip shop, under the twinkling coloured Christmas lights that had appeared in the dark boughs of the Norfolk pines. Wondering what I was going to say to my parents, who’d cut back on cigarettes to make the payments on that bike.
I saw it again a week later, lying on Precious Alice’s lawn. It had turned out that she lived just around the corner from me. She’d ridden the bike down on the beach, through the surf at low tide, when the sand was hard. It was already starting to rust, and the bell was missing.
‘My daddy’s going to buy me a better one,’ said Precious Alice. ‘I didn’t really want yours anyway. You can have it back if you like.’
‘But it’s wrecked,’ I protested.
‘Please yourself,’ she shrugged. ‘It makes no difference to me.’ I opened my mouth to complain some more, and then snapped it shut again. Another girl was actually talking to me.
*
Precious Alice did let me be her friend. It was hard to see why. She was a spoilt little princess, smothered in everything nice. I was just a plain, unattractive girl that nobody liked.
I got to know the inside of her bedroom rather well. The walls were painted with gold paint. Precious Alice told me that when she was four, her daddy had taken her to the carnival and she had spent the whole time riding the merry-go–round. When it was time to go, she’d cried because she wanted to take the flashing lights and the ponies that went up and down and round and round and the mirrors and the music home with her. She cried without stopping, and her daddy had a word with the merry–go–round man. And in the end, Precious Alice came home with a bucket of gold paint, used for touching up the ponies’ bridles.
She must have liked the zoo as well. The pillows and the cushions on her bed were genuine tiger skin, and the bed itself was covered in a thick brown bear pelt. The curtains were made of black ostrich feathers, sewn together with invisible stitching, and a cream and brown giraffe skin was nailed to the floor.
The light shade was made from bright green and gold sequins and hung over the bed like a small net. The sequins cast gold and green shimmers onto the walls at night. They matched the colour of the plant on Precious Alice’s dressing table, a Venus flytrap. Its greeny–gold half circle pads were joined together in pairs, like butterfly wings waiting to snap shut on other insects.
There were certain things that I had to do for Precious Alice. There were the photographs, and there were the cigarettes.
Every now and then, Precious Alice liked to burn the insides of my wrists and the soles of my feet with her daddy’s cigarette butts. Sometimes she did it in my hair, where it wouldn’t show. ‘See how long you can stand it this time,’ she’d say, her darkened eyes gazing at me with fascination and a secret pleasure that I couldn’t even begin to understand. I shut my own eyes tightly and tried not to let the hot tears squeeze out and run away down my cheeks. ‘Hardly any time at all,’ she’d say in disappointment when I screamed. ‘Let’s try that again.’
Later, those burns turned to pus–filled sores. Precious Alice turned up her nose. ‘You’re so scabby, Gemini,’ she said. ‘I’m going to tell on you,’ I sniffed. Her green eyes lit up with a cruel fire, and her face changed like dry sand does when the wind blows across it. ‘My Daddy’s a policeman,’ she said. ‘If you tell anyone at all, even your mother, I’ll get him to put you in jail.’
She had the photographs too. Precious Alice had her own expensive camera, and I was her subject. Me in a party dress with my chubby little knees sticking out under the hem while I stuffed a piece of birthday cake covered in jellybeans into my mouth with my eyes shut. Me shivering under the cold sprinkler in just my undies. I didn’t like the photos because I could see how fat I looked. I worried that other people would see them.
‘You’re my muse, Gemini,’ said Precious Alice, and I was flattered, and posed in all the positions she asked me to. But later she said, ‘You’re nothing without me. Nobody likes a fat girl with greasy hair. If you weren’t in my pictures, there’d be no reason for you at all.’
But the times when I was allowed to play with Precious Alice’s hair were the happiest in my life. Her daddy had given her an antique mother–of–pearl hair care set. It consisted of a brush, a comb and a small hand–mirror. Precious Alice liked mirrors, and had several in her bedroom. She liked to sit in front of the one over her dressing table, turning this way and that, surveying herself from different angles, wondering which was her best side.
My job was to minister to her like a maid, murmuring my admiration. Once, I tried to slip a bracelet off her dressing table and into my pocket. Precious Alice saw me through a peephole that she’d drilled between her bedroom and the toilet. ‘Ha!’ she said. ‘Tell anyone about what we do, and I’ll tell my daddy that you’re a stealer. Policemen do bad things to stealers.’
*
One day I overheard Precious Alice’s daddy asking his daughter about me. ‘Why is Gemini always over here?’ he asked. ‘I don’t like the way she fawns over you. I can’t imagine what the two of you have in common. She’s such an unappealing girl. Surely my Precious little Alice can find a nicer friend for herself?’
‘I want Gemini,’ said Precious Alice. ‘She has her uses.’
By the time we became teenagers, Precious Alice had filled out to a gorgeous womanly shape, with curved hips and rounded breasts. I, to my disgust, had become even more overweight, able to grab flesh all over my body and roll it back and forward like pale baker’s dough. Precious Alice used to make me undress and stand next to her in front of her big mirror so that she could point out my faults.
She’d pirouette gracefully, wrapped in her cloak of long red hair. Sucking in her already taut stomach and admiring the baby pink and white of her skin. Then she’d chastise me for my heavy hips, pinching them hard between her cruel fingers, and laughing as she taunted me. ‘Just look at this blubber,’ she criticised. ‘How can you bear to be so fat? I think you need to go on a diet, Gemini.’
The photographs she took of me had changed. Me lying naked on my side on the wet sand on the beach. ‘Gemini being a beached whale,’ said Precious Alice. Me, naked in the kitchen, cooking eggs in the frying pan. Taken from behind so that my fat bum wobbled like the egg yolks.
When I was fifteen, I went away on a long holiday with my family, and I took Precious Alice’s advice about dieting to heart. I stayed in my room as much as possible, crying into my pillow because I was so ugly, and starving myself. ‘You’ve got to eat,’ said my mother, waving big platefuls of food with smells to die for under my nose.
‘Just leave it,’ I told her. ‘I’ll eat it afterwards.’ She’d sigh and put the plate down, and later, I’d scrape it onto a piece of toilet paper, wrap it up and flush it.
By the time we came back, I’d lost a lot of weight. My parents were rapt, and my mother went out and bought me some new Barbie jeans, size twelve. Because I was weak from not eating, I had a dizzy spell and nearly fainted when I was trying them on, but I was so happy!
I rushed over to Precious Alice’s house, keen to show her the new, slimmer body that I was so proud of. ‘I wouldn’t have recognised you, Gemini,’ her daddy congratulated me. ‘You look wonderful.’
His daughter’s eyes darkened. ‘Come and see what I got you for Christmas,’ she said.
Once we were in her room, Precious Alice pulled a huge box of chocolates out from under her bed; triple layered. A few of the chocolates were already missing. ‘Happy Christmas,’ she said sweetly.
‘Thank you very much,’ I replied, secure in the knowledge that I wasn’t going to eat them.
‘Aren’t you going to have one?’ she asked nastily.
‘When I get home,’ I explained, not wanting to cross her.
‘Eat them now,’ she commanded in her steeliest voice. ‘Don’t be ungrateful. If you don’t have one now, I’ll be very disappointed. I might have to show my daddy some of our pictures.’ I hovered uncertainly. ‘Eat,’ insisted Precious Alice.
Slowly, I raised a chocolate to my mouth: vanilla cream. I tucked it into the back of my cheek, determined not to swallow. ‘Another one,’ she directed. Tears rolled down my face. ‘No,’ I whispered. Pushing me down onto the bear skin on her bed, she sat on my chest. Pinning my arms under her knees, she started cramming chocolates into my mouth with her fingers. She tickled my throat to make me swallow, and, ignoring my retching, she forced me to eat every single one.
My face was covered in chocolate, and so was my T–shirt. I could feel the fat returning to my hips. When Precious Alice released me, I heaved myself into a sitting position and threw up all over her bed, dripping with vomit and smelling of cocoa.
‘You bitch,’ swore Precious Alice, trying to smother me in the sodden bear skin; using it to mask my skin from bruising as she rained punches onto my face. ‘You did that on purpose,’ she shouted.
‘I’m sorry,’ I wept. ‘I won’t do it again.’
‘You’d better not,’ she hissed.
I stood up, feeling sick. My Barbie jeans were stained. The skin around my eyes was red from crying, and I smelt like a toilet. ‘Shit, you’re ugly,’ said Precious Alice. ‘But never mind, I’m still your friend.’ Comforted by this, I crawled home and hid the Barbie jeans under my bed. Within a month, I was overweight again.
*
When I turned eighteen, my parents noticed that something wasn’t right and decided to send me to live with my mother’s sister. ‘They can’t separate us,’ said Precious Alice, when she heard. ‘I need you so that I can take the photographs. I won’t let you go!’ But even she was powerless in this case, and my parents prevailed.
When I got there, I was desperately lonely without even Precious Alice to be my friend. My mother’s sister was old, and spent all her time in her greenhouse with her collection of lilies and rotting–meat plants. I used to go out to the park and drink vodka, hoping to blot out my life.
One night, I picked up a man who was drinking in the same place. We fell into bed together, and he began to touch my body. After lying still for a minute or so and trying to pretend he wasn’t there, I got up and rushed to the bathroom. Locking the door, I sat in the empty bathtub and sobbed.
‘What’s the matter?’ he shouted from the doorway. ‘Are you hurt?’ I couldn’t tell him about the memories that had come flooding back. Memories of lying naked in the sheets beside a sweet–smelling, creamy skinned Precious Alice. Wrapped in her hair while she kissed me all over, giggling as she pinched my nipples till they hurt with her pearly green fingernails.
‘Who do you like at school?’ she’d asked me. ‘Boys, I mean.’
‘No one,’ I’d told her, embarrassed by the subject.
‘You must,’ she’d said. ‘You can tell me. I’m your friend. I’ll bet you like Lee.’
‘No,’ I’d answered.
‘Lee, Lee, Lee,’ chanted Precious Alice.
‘I don’t,’ I’d insisted. ‘I like Christian. A little bit.’
‘Gemini loves Christian,’ Precious Alice had crowed. Then she’d sobered up. ‘I thought that you only loved me,’ she said.
The next day when I got to school, Precious Alice was standing at the gates under the Norfolk pines with Christian. I saw her showing him and his friends some photos, and suddenly, everybody was laughing at me. But worse was yet to come. Precious Alice and Christian became an item, and he sat with her at lunchtime; cuddling her and stroking her lovely hair. I sat miserably at a distance. She’d even invited him to her house, and the two of them had disappeared into the bedroom while I waited stiffly in the lounge. Precious Alice had forbidden me to go home.
She tired of Christian within a fortnight, but the humiliation that I’d suffered lasted longer than that. Whenever I’d seen Christian or any of his friends in the corridors, I’d pressed myself into the shadows between the lockers, or tried to duck into the emptiness of a classroom rather than hear their scornful laughter.
*
Before long, my mother’s sister contacted my parents. ‘Gemini isn’t happy here,’ she said, in the understatement of the year. ‘I think that she might need professional help.’ My mother came to see me, and agreed. I was a mess. I couldn’t get up in the mornings, I cried all the time, and, making a groggy effort to rid myself of the elusive black haze that seemed to cling to me, I’d attempted to drain the blood from my wrists where the scars from old sores were.
They committed me to a mental hospital. Nice warm orange bricks covered in dark–pink roses. Sometimes other faceless people screamed. I didn’t mind. My mother arrived again. ‘I have a surprise for you, Gemini,’ she said. ‘You’ve got a friend here to visit you as well.’
‘I’ve brought my camera,’ said Precious Alice. Her hair was as lovely as ever. I was glad to see her.