Tell Me Everything. Sarah Salway
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I went to get a clean towel from one of the piles in the back room to wipe it all off.
‘We had this English teacher at school,’ Miranda said when I came back. ‘What he always said when we were writing stories was that it didn’t matter if the facts were true or not, but whether we believed in them. For lots of reasons, it’s something I’ve remembered.’
She paused then and I thought about what she’d just said. ‘So you can make something true just by believing it?’ I asked. ‘What if you believe in a lie? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘I know,’ Miranda sighed. ‘But the way he explained it was that not everything’s black and white. He used to ask us if we’d ever been nervous about waiting for something and how five minutes could seem like hours.’
I nodded.
‘Well, what he said was that if you were trying to tell someone about it, you were better to say you had to wait five hours because that gave a more truer picture of what it felt like, even though it wasn’t true.’
‘And that’s not bad?’ The skin all over my body felt as if it was being charged by several hundred electric shocks. I willed Miranda to continue and after a few seconds – seconds that felt like hours – she did.
Miranda shook her head. ‘In real life, it can be very bad,’ she said. ‘It can even ruin lives. But these are just stories we’re talking about, aren’t they?’
I stared at her. I couldn’t speak.
Miranda clicked her tongue against the top of her mouth hard. ‘Molly,’ she said. I guessed she meant to be kind, even encourage me to say something more, but it took me out of the trance I was in danger of falling into. My cheeks were red from the heat in the salon and I could feel a flush coming up my neck. It was exactly as it had been in the school room.
‘It was only something a friend told me,’ I interrupted her before she could say anything else. ‘What you’re talking about reminded me of her.’ I was willing myself not to cry. Next to me Miranda was holding the hairbrush at chin level, her mouth open. She looked as if she was about to sing into a microphone but no sound came out.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I lied, shaking my head. ‘It happened a long time ago and I think my friend’s left home now. I was just wondering about stories and stuff.’
‘And she’s OK?’ Miranda turned her back on me.
No, I wanted to shout, but Miranda was back fiddling with her hair and besides I wasn’t sure if I could trust the words any more. We were quiet then until she finished. I sang along with Bryan about how horrible it was to be jealous under my breath but I was finding it difficult to breathe. Was it safe to really leave the story there?
‘So what do you think?’ At last Miranda put down the straighteners and let her flattened hair swing from side to side.
‘Everyone’s going to get out of your way,’ I said and then we laughed and it all seemed so normal that I let out a deep sigh which made Miranda smile again.
‘Time to go now.’ She bustled round the salon turning off lights and putting the equipment and brushes away. She switched off the music system and waited at the door for me to leave first so she could set the alarm. We kissed each other goodbye in the street. One cheek, two cheek, we hesitated over three before leaving it. ‘I’ll do your hair next time,’ Miranda said. ‘It’ll look just darling.’ But then instead of clitter-clattering down the street on those silly high heels she wore that made her look like an elephant on stilts, she held on to my arm tightly.
‘Tell your friend to find a whole lot of made-up stories from somewhere else and pretend they happened to her,’ she said. ‘That way no one gets hurt.’
‘Maybe.’ I wanted to believe Miranda.
‘I’ve got shelf-loads of love stories you can borrow if you want. It’s all in there.’
‘I didn’t know you were a reader.’
‘I didn’t always want to be a hairdresser.’ Miranda shook her head so her hair really did flare out, just like it did in her magazine pictures. ‘That English teacher I told you about. He’s got a lot to answer for.’
I bared my teeth, trying to smile along with her.
‘And are you really sure you’re all right?’ she said.
I nodded, blinking the tears back. This was how to be normal. To learn when to be quiet. There was no reason why I couldn’t do it. Not every story has to have an ending.
She looked at her watch and then grimaced. ‘I must be off. Mum’s got bingo tonight and I promised I’d look after Dad so she can enjoy a night off. He can’t get around by himself, you know, not since his accident. Mind you, you’d be surprised at the trouble he can get up to in his wheelchair. Speedy, that’s what Mum says we should call him.’ She grimaced and then shook herself. ‘You take care now, honey-girl. Time for me to love you and leave you. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ she said brightly, her hair slicing the air around her as she walked away.
‘Oh you,’ I cooed as I stood looking at myself in my mirror. I lifted my skirt above my knees, looking at my legs harshly. I couldn’t even pretend they were romantic tonight. They looked fat. Filled up with lies and unsaid things. Mr Roberts was right. The whole of me was nothing more than lumpy, mashed potatoes.
I shook myself all over in the mirror. My head, my arms, my bottom, my legs. I watched the fat wobble, wanting to prove to myself I wasn’t as flabbily solid as Miranda. That my outline could be redrawn, even my bones broken.
And that was something I had to believe. That little chance of transformation. Otherwise what was the point of anything?
‘I used to be a little scrap of a thing, so small no one really paid any attention to me.’ I ignored Mr Roberts’s snort from the bottom of the ladder as I noticed my voice turn to almost a whisper. ‘Then all of a sudden one morning I woke up and it was as if I’d turned into someone else. With a cartoon sexy body I couldn’t control. I can’t have developed that quickly, of course, but it was what it felt like. None of my clothes fitted and at first Dad refused to waste money on new ones. I got to hate the way he’d glare at me every morning and tell me to pull my skirt down, or button up my shirt properly as if it were my fault I was popping out of everything. He was always on at me.
‘I’d walk around with my arms crossed, my shoulders hunched, but you can’t be on guard all the time. Round about that time, all the boys at school started to notice me too,’ I spoke down to Mr Roberts. ‘Even the little boys had crushes on me. Once when they had an exam, they begged me to give them a good luck kiss, queuing up so I wouldn’t miss one out. They’d bring me presents, things they’d stolen from their mothers just so I’d remember them the next time I walked past.’
‘What’s that?’ Mr Roberts grumbled. ‘Speak up, Molly. You’re mumbling.’
‘But it was the boys my age who were the worst.’ There was no one else in the shop but my heart was knocking against my chest so hard I could almost feel it vibrate against the shelf. ‘My pigeon hole would be filled with notes. I’d find telephone numbers scribbled on my class books. They came round to my house in gangs and just stood outside the door. Once a boy knocked himself out on a lamppost because he was clowning around to get my attention. He had a black eye the next day at school.’
‘Teenage boys,’ Mr Roberts sighed. ‘Too many hormones. They never learn.’
‘But I wouldn’t go near any of them,’ I said. ‘I think that’s probably why they all kept after me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a boyfriend. My father would never have let me. He thought it was all my fault.’
‘Only natural to want to protect you,’ Mr Roberts said.
‘After that,