Chapter four

      ‘Have you got hair?’ I ask Yvonne. ‘You know I haven’t,’ she laughs, tugging at her blue and white dotted scarf. ‘No, not on your head,’ I say, mouthing ‘down there.’ ‘No,’ she says, looking bemused. ‘God,’ I think to myself, ‘I’m even more ugly than I thought.’

      Most of the girls in my class start their periods in our second year at Lealands; mine don’t come until much later. ‘You wait till you get breasts, you wait till your periods come; then you’ll be a real woman,’ Granddad keeps saying, and I am terrified. If this is happening to me now, when I don’t have periods or breasts, what is going to happen to me when I do?

      I start my periods at the end of the summer term when I am fourteen; and then, when I am on holiday in Blackpool with Mum, Dad and Lisa, my breasts grow – literally overnight. We are staying in a self-catering apartment and Lisa and I are sharing a bed. My little bumps are agony whichever way I lie, and my arms don’t know where to put themselves. Next morning I take off my nightdress to find that my molehills have turned into mountains. I am astonished – and ashamed.

      I hate my boobs because he likes to touch them, and my periods because they excite him. My body feels infected and dirty, and when I catch sight of myself in the mirror, I am disgusted by it. My classmates are right – I am ugly and I probably do smell. I hate my body, hate my life and find myself looking at other boys and girls and wishing I could be them instead of me. God forgive me, I even wish I had cancer like Yvonne.

      Yvonne has been off school for ages, and I visit her at home. She is really into the Royal Family, and shows me her scrapbook filled with pictures of the Prince and Princess of Wales’s wedding and baby Prince William. The last time I see Yvonne she has a patch over her eye, and talks a lot about a bone marrow transplant. I don’t really understand what she means, and it is a shock when Mum tells me one dinner-time that Yvonne is in a coma. ‘Will she wake up?’ I ask. ‘Nobody knows, love,’ says Mum, and I cry.

      In December, a girl comes flying down the school corridor shouting ‘Yvonne’s dead!’. I want to go home and ask Mrs Patterson to let me off choir practice, but she won’t. I have to stand there and sing, my grief spilling onto the wooden floor. On the day of the funeral, I am in a real state. As Yvonne’s coffin is lowered into the ground, I weep and weep. ‘God’s got to get his angels from somewhere, Claire,’ says Yvonne’s auntie, putting her arms around me. She isn’t to know that part of me is crying because I want to be the one who is dead.

      With my best friend gone, I hate school even more, and in June 1985 I am pleased to have three weeks off, doing work experience at British Home Stores. Each day I go into town on the bus, and work from 8.45 a.m. to 5.45 p.m. I love it. I am proud of my uniform – the pale-blue blouse and dark-blue A-line pinafore with its special loop for my locker key. I like the other staff who treat me like one of them, and not like a schoolgirl. Best of all, Mr Warner, the manager, says that if I am any good he’ll consider me for a Saturday job.

      I work in all the departments – lighting, children, fashions, menswear, toys, the lot. When deliveries come I collect them from the stock room and sort them out. I tidy, count stock and fill out the DAS – the daily alteration sheet. I am too young to work on the till, but if there is a queue I jump up and wrap for the cashier.

      ‘You need fattening up,’ says Sheila, who works on one of the tills. She is an older lady and I am gobsmacked by her rings – three or four big gold ones, with diamonds, on each finger! She calls me ‘Little Love’, ‘Skinny Lizzy’ and ‘Rag Doll Annie’ and she’s always saying, ‘Let’s go and have a nice cream cake.’ It becomes a joke between us. She gives me sweets, and at tea break she sits next to me in the canteen and tries to tempt me with her cream cake. I don’t like cream and I won’t eat the cake, but I love Sheila to bits.

      The canteen is upstairs and has a pool table and a table-tennis table, comfy seats and the sort of carpet that would hurt your feet if you didn’t have shoes on. I eat well during those three weeks. I feel happy and comfortable and the canteen food is lovely. A book of meal vouchers costs staff £1.50 each week, but because I am on work experience I get mine free: a white main meal ticket and two pink tea-break ones every day. In the morning you can help yourself to tea, coffee, orange or lemon, and there are warm rolls from the bakery across the road. The canteen cook fills them with cheese – the smell drifts down to the shop floor, and I look forward to my morning break. Dinner is home-made lasagne or steak and kidney pie with vegetables, and a hot pudding like jam roly-poly and custard. I tell Mum not to do me tea because I am eating so much at work.

      At the end of my work experience Mrs Sansom, the personnel manageress, calls me into her office. ‘We’d like to offer you four hours’ work every Saturday,’ she says; and I am so pleased. My hours are 10 a.m. till 2 p.m. and my wages are £5.53 a day. With my bus fare at 55p each way I am left with a grand total of £4.43 – but I think it’s a fortune. Soon after, the summer holidays begin, and a vacancy comes up for a Saturday job with more hours. I am thrilled when Mrs Sansom gives it to me and increases my money to £10.37.