My Friend Miranda Page 3

  “Skirt, shirt, pants, black socks, white socks, pumps, hockey boots, hockey stick, swimming costume, swimming cap...”

  She smiled at me kindly when she had finished mine. “Are you Nancy Pritchard’s sister?” I nodded, thinking it was perceptive of her to pick up on what was only a very slight resemblance, before realising that she would have known anyway from the altered names on several items in my kit.

  Once she’d been through all the kits, and highlighted numerous items which were not labelled to her satisfaction, Miss Timpson told us what we’d be doing in PE. We had a double games lesson each Tuesday after break, when we’d be attempting hockey in the winter and tennis in the summer, and we had two single lessons, which for the first term would be occupied by swimming on Thursdays and dance on Mondays. We were suitably aghast at the prospect of dance, with the annoying exception of the prep girls who acted all superior because they’d known about it already.

  “Do you mean ballet Miss?” enquired Emily Tate, who I’d already noted as being the frilly tutu type.

  “No, I don’t. We’ll be doing modern dance. We have a wonderful lady called Mrs Mistletoe who comes in to play the piano for us.”

  It sounded awful. My only previous experience of modern dance had been my part as the burning bush in ‘Bible Boogie: an interpretation of the bible through movement’ at my primary school. I had worn a yellow silky top and red tights and wriggled around in a suitable flame-like manner when Moses approached me. It emerged afterwards that no one in the audience had known what I was supposed to be.

  I tackled Nancy about the dance that night and she chortled with amusement.

  “Oh, have you got Miss Timpson? Bad luck, she’s the only one who makes you do dance, all the other classes will be playing netball. And watch out for the mad old woman she wheels in to play the piano.”

  I was not impressed. I was actually quite good at netball, whereas anyone who had witnessed the embarrassed squirming of my burning bush attempt could have told you what my dancing skills were like.

  Chapter 3

  All the fuss over timetables and dance lessons and the like paled into insignificance however, alongside the need to make friends, and, most importantly, to find a best friend. I had already learnt from observing Nancy that the social set-up at secondary school revolved entirely around units of two. Having a best friend was crucial, and the relationship between best friends could be every bit as intense as an adult romantic relationship. Furthermore the friends would almost always be referred to together: ‘are such and such coming to thingy’s party?’ or ‘do you know where such and such went at lunchtime?’ Some couples stayed together from first year right through to six form, growing gradually more and more alike as they copied hairstyles and bought the same shoes, whereas some girls were involved in strings of heart-breaking relationships, the cause of much grief and anguish.

  My initial choice of a best friend to attach myself to was entirely random, governed simply by our seating arrangements, and the fact that Amanda Parker was the first person I had spoken to. She didn’t seem to actively object to me, and so for the first couple of days I trailed around in her wake. Amanda was deeply disappointed that she and her best friend from the prep had been placed in separate classes, and breaks and lunchtimes were therefore spent meeting up with the awesome Clara to re-style Amanda’s hair and bemoan the lack of decent people in our class. Clara eyed me suspiciously, as if to imply ‘well, if that’s the best you can do...’

  It seemed as if everyone else had already paired up, leaving me with no alternatives between Amanda and social isolation, but of course this simply wasn’t true. When later on in the year we formed the ‘What-where-when’ club it turned out that most other people had felt the same way, and that they too were trudging around in a black cloud of misery behind whoever they had happened to speak to first.

  Still, I doubt that many couples were as mismatched as Amanda and me. Our differences were too numerous to record: she was pretty, I wasn’t; she was posh, I wasn’t; she had trendy shoes, I didn’t, and so on. Our conversations tended to the superficial because that was all Amanda could cope with, but if we did ever discuss anything remotely interesting we inevitably disagreed, and I attributed this to Amanda’s militant Tory background. Personally I liked to think of myself as a socialist – I wasn’t too hot on the details but I had stood as the Labour candidate in our primary school elections and would undoubtedly have won if the Conservative candidate, Helen Simpson, hadn’t made such free use of bribery and intimidation.

  After a couple of days of talking about the size of Amanda’s house and the best clothes shops in Altrincham I felt semi-suicidal. I couldn’t be as rude as I would have liked because I had to hang on to Amanda until I didn’t need her any more, rather like at a party where you don’t know many people and you make just enough of an effort with the bore you’re stuck with to avoid them leaving you on your own, while peering desperately over their shoulder in search of an escape. My escape came in the form of Miranda.

  The first time Miranda came to my attention was when Mrs Mackintosh asked if anyone had any special religious requirements. Miranda raised her hand to primly announce that she would be taking the Catholic holidays, and I swivelled round to get a better look at her.

  “Oh! Are you a Catholic?”

  “Yes, are you?”

  I nodded to imply a resigned ‘God chooses those he will’ attitude towards Catholicism.

  “Will you be taking the Catholic holidays?” whispered Miranda.

  I was stumped. I didn’t know that therewere any Catholic holidays. “How do you mean?”

  “Like Ash Wednesday and stuff. Holy Days of Obligation.”

  “Oh!” I brightened. “Well, we normally just go to church in the evening. I don’t know if I’ll be allowed the whole day off for them.”

  In time, it emerged that Miranda was not either. She had brought up the Catholic holidays merely in an attempt to appear exotic among the middle-of-the-road, Church of England herd.

  Miranda and I resumed our conversation at break time, and it became obvious to me that she was far more suitable as best-friend material than Amanda Parker. She lived in Salford near Broughton Park (at last – another North Mancunian!), she had gone to a Catholic primary school whose church we sometimes attended and her parents were both teachers. True, she lacked the finesse of Amanda Parker, who had smooth brown legs, thick hair streaked with blonde and a hint of pink polish on her pearly nails. However, the reality was a) that Amanda Parker bugged the hell out of me and b) that she would have dropped me soon anyway, whereas Miranda, with her doggy eyes and earnest desire to please, was clearly a friend for life.

  Physically Miranda was nothing to write home about, but the refreshing reality post-Parker was that she didn’t care that much how she looked. Fussing too much about your appearance would have counted as girlie, and that was something Miranda avoided at all costs. She was on the short side, and, although not exactly fat, she was a funny shape; perhaps because her body was a uniform cylinder with no hint of a waist. Her sturdy legs bulged with the calf muscles of a middle-aged woman, and I noticed they were astoundingly hairy. They reminded me of the Italian woman who usually sat in the pew in front of us in church, and had bristly leg hairs poking out through the mesh of her American tan tights.

  Miranda was also the kind of person who is allergic to everything, and was always suffering from some kind of skin complaint. Her eczema was pretty much constant, but in addition there were unpredictable allergic reactions and various psychosomatic conditions to be endured. For example, during the first week she had a flaking patch on her wrist under her new watch (the watch was forcibly confiscated by Mrs Mackintosh when she couldn’t bear the scratching anymore), red stripes on her legs from her sock elastic and a kind of blotchy rash down the side of her neck from anxiety.

  Surface appearance aside however, Miranda was great. She was funny, unpretentious and up for practically anything. In fact, we
’d only been hanging around together for a couple of days when she demonstrated just how up for anything. We were up at the top of the north block looking for the science labs, but all we could find were ordinary classrooms with faded French and Spanish posters on the walls.

  Eventually it dawned on us that we in the wrong building altogether – we should have been in the south block, which was the mirror image of the north block from outside but completely different within. We were going to be massively late.

  “God what a nightmare,” I said. “Come on Miranda, let’s go.”

  She stood at the top of the stairs. “Do you want to go the slow way? Or the quick way?”

  At first I didn’t understand what she meant, but then I realised that she was gesturing towards the banisters. Lovely smooth wooden banisters, descending deliciously down three flights of stairs without any intrusive knobs or railings. They were pretty much the perfect banisters for sliding on.

  By now it was ages since the bell had gone and the corridors were deserted. Chances were we could make it down without any interruptions. But was it worth the risk at this early stage in my school career?

  Miranda was hoisting her satchel onto her back and swinging her leg over the banisters. I watched her in horror. “You’re not going down like that are you?”

  “Of course. Side saddle’s for sissies.”

  There was a drop of three stories down the stairwell to the stone floor below. If she fell that would be it.

  “Miranda, please don’t go down with your leg over, I’m scared you’ll fall. Just sit sideways.”

  Miranda heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Oh alright then. But only if you slide down too.”

  I agreed reluctantly and positioned myself on the banister beside her. She grinned at me and shot off at high speed. Moments later I released myself to follow behind. The banister was incredibly slippery and I found that I needed to apply a constant brake by pressing the palms of my hand flat against the banisters. It hurt but it was preferable to falling off. Miranda wasn’t exercising any such caution however, and by the time she got close to the bottom she was almost a whole flight ahead of me. She messed up her landing and fell awkwardly onto the floor.

  I used my braking system to bring myself to a complete stop a few steps up from her and scurried down. “Are you alright Miranda?”

  She was already getting up, but her hands were grazed and her knees had big cuts that went right through her socks, where she’d caught them on the edge of the stone flagstone. She was blinking back the involuntary tears that come whether you like it or not after a nasty fall.

  “We should go to the medical room,” I said. “You ought to have plasters on those cuts.” I wasn’t sure where the medical room was, but it seemed like the right thing to do. Miranda shook her head stubbornly.

  “I’ll be fine. Can you get me some loo roll from the toilets?” I hurried into the toilets and by the time I emerged with a big wad of tissues Miranda was smiling again.

  “I suppose we’ll have to do it again sometime so I can practise my landing. And you need to get your speed up a bit.”

  “In your dreams!” I replied as we set off to the south block, with Miranda dabbing at her wounds and me on the look-out for over-inquisitive teachers.

  I was glad we made it to science, because I had a feeling it was going to be one of my favourite subjects. The lab was great for a start, with its long wooden benches, cupboards full of gleaming glassware and Bunsen burners hanging neatly on racks. I could see myself standing in there, dressed in my brand new white lab coat and a pair of safety goggles, and frowning earnestly as I synthesised hitherto undiscovered compounds.

  Then there was the teacher. She was a Scot called Mrs Donaldson, and she pronounced iron with the R sounding and reminded me of the actress who played Miss Brodie in ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”. I warmed to her immediately and in later lessons I was proved right; she had silly rhymes for remembering things, like ‘Little Willie’s dead and gone, his face we’ll see no more. For what he thought was H-2-O was H-2-S-O-4’! She was also a great believer in doing practical demonstrations wherever possible.

  One of our best lessons was when we started learning about atmospheric pressure and vacuums. She begged an empty cooking oil tin from the dinner ladies and got Mr Lester, the lab technician, who was six foot three and must have weighed at least fourteen stones, to stand on it to prove how strong it was. Then she filled it a quarter full with water and set it over the Bunsen burner. As the oil and water inside boiled and evaporated the smell of cheap cooking filled the air.

  “It’s just like chips!” Miranda said delightedly.

  Once the water had been boiling for a while Mrs Donaldson screwed the lid on tight and turned the Bunsen burner off.

  “What do you think will happen now girls?” she asked.

  I wasn’t too sure thatanything would happen, and for a while, nothing did. We copied down the notes Mrs Donaldson had written on the board and sneaked occasional looks at the tin. Then a funny creaking started and the tin began to suck its sides in slightly, as if it was holding its breath. There was a loud banging noise that made us all jump, and it suddenly crumpled down one side. A series of lesser bangs followed as it gradually imploded in on itself, until all that was left was an irregular lump of twisted metal. We stared at it in amazement, and Mrs Donaldson had to clap her hands to get our attention.

  “So come on girls. Why has my big strong tin been crushed?”

  “Atmospheric pressure Miss,” Jasmine Allardyce said smartly. She only knew that was the answer because it was the heading on the board.

  “Yes Jasmine, but why? What happened to the water in the tin when I boiled it?”

  “It turned into water vapour.”

  “Yes, so the tin was full of water vapour instead of air. Then what happened when it cooled down?”

  Suddenly I got it. I waved my hand in the air. “It condensed back into liquid water but that would only take up a little space at the bottom. So the rest of the space was a vacuum.”

  “Very good Janet,” Mrs Donaldson said. “Does everyone see now how strong atmospheric pressure is?” We nodded and copied down a diagram of the tin being crushed by big red arrows that were atmospheric pressure squeezing it from every direction.

  Of course not all the teachers were as nice as Mrs Mackintosh and Mrs Donaldson. For example, for maths we had Miss Heaney who was renowned for having no sense of humour and being a bit weird, although with hindsight, she was possibly just shy. She was very tall and evidently not at ease with her height, in that she had developed round shoulders and a stooping walk which attempted to be inconspicuous but actually just drew attention to her. She wasn’t very pretty either: she had a long goaty face with one of those hard round pimples on her cheek that you never see on people under fifty, and she wore her hair up in a lop-sided bun and probably didn’t wash it enough.

  Sometimes I felt sorry for Miss Heaney because she was so eminently unsuited to teaching, and seemed to have no idea of how to get along with us. Teachers like Mrs Donaldson managed to achieve a relaxed feeling of mutual cooperation, but Miss Heaney was so paranoid about being taken advantage of that she was overly strict, and then no one liked her. Even during the first couple of weeks when we still settling in and the other teachers accepted things like being late for lessons or forgetting to do our homework as par for the course, Miss Heaney had to make a big song and dance about every minor misdemeanour.

  She particularly hated the fact that we were always late after swimming on Thursdays but it was hardly our fault - anyone could tell it was a stupid idea for us to have a single lesson of swimming scheduled straight before maths, and that if the PE teacher only let us out of the pool five minutes before the bell we were bound to be late. In fact if it bothered her that much she should have talked to Miss Timpson about it, not blamed us.

  Unreasonable as she may have been, Miss Heaney still wasn’t a patch on our needlework teacher. For some reason and
contrary to everything that you might have expected, the needlework department was famed for including some of the bitchiest and most unpleasant teachers in the school. Our first lesson was on the Friday at the end of our first week, and most of us were prepared for the worst through being briefed by legend: I had seen Nancy slaving red-eyed over our ageing singer machine and attempting to pull sickies on the days of her lessons, and the prep girls had catalogues of horror stories detailing misery and humiliation. The only person who didn’t seem concerned was Miranda, who despite my efforts to tell her otherwise was apparently expecting some re-run of the lazy afternoons of her primary school days, spent cross-stitching place mats and winding long strips of French knitting into little coasters.

  She should have been warned by the distribution of needlework exercise books, which were given out with all the other exercise books on the first day. Clearly something more taxing than lazy daisies lay ahead of us, or did she think they were for designing our cross-stitch patterns? Along with the exercise books was a message that they were to be backed in preparation for our first lesson, which Mrs Mackintosh delivered with a wry smile.

  Most people rolled their eyes at the idea of backing an exercise book, exclaiming ‘sod her’, ‘who does she think she is’, and ‘I’m not messing around with brown paper for a bloody exercise book’. However, come Friday morning all were sheepishly wielding books clad in flowery wallpaper or metallic gift-wrap. All except Miranda, that is.

  “Miranda!” I screeched when the lack of a backing became horribly apparent. “What are you playing at? She’s going to kill you!”

  Miranda flushed and scuffed her sandal against the desk. “I thought you said you weren’t going to...”