I’m not a party person. I’ve never liked crowds of people: all that pushing and shoving and possible sweat. But if I’m faithful to the facts, that’s where my story starts. Saturday, 25th November 1984 to be precise. The day Nicolette had that stupid party. I should never have been invited, and everyone was morbidified that I was.
And by everyone I mean my classmates at Les Moulins College for Cretins, the only all-girls’ school on the island. They mostly hate me for no good reason. Just because I sit at the front of the classroom and get all the questions right and hand my homework in early. And they call me Cabbage because of it. Teenage girls are très mega horrible, and Nic was exactly like that but prettier. She’d been moved from the Grammar School, having been put down a year on account of her dyslexia. For some people (me) this would’ve been embarrassing, but my classmates took one look at her long blonde hair and big green eyes and turned dyslexic too.
It was pathetic how they fought to be her friend, scrambling to sit near her and jostling to get her attention. No better than boys now I think of it. I didn’t join in because I never do, and maybe that impressed her. I was also busy with my Festung Guernsey4 timeline, which secured me an A+ in our Living History project. There was a bit of a fuss over it, actually, because I’d included quotes from local people who’d had to work for the Nazis, and some of my classmates didn’t like seeing their surnames underlined in luminous green. Nic thought it was hilariously funny, though.
But that wasn’t why she invited me to her party. The truth is, she was the new girl in class and she invited everyone.
Even Vicky. Vicky Senner lives down the road from me and our mums have been friends for ever. She’s called Stig because she’s dark and hairy and is a champion builder of dens. Before Nic came along, she was the closest thing I had to a best friend, and we agreed to go to the party together.
I was (I’ll admit) excited, and I was curious to see inside Nic’s house. She lived on Fort George, one of those modern fancy housing estates5 Dad used to call a TRAVESTY, and as per ever he was right. Les Paradis looked exactly like Nic’s birthday cake – all sickly-rich and cream-coloured. It had chandeliers in every room and gold-plated knobs on the banisters.
Therese Prevost, Nic’s mother, gave me the full guided tour.
Therese is very important to this story although I’m sure she’d rather not be. She’s extremely beautiful, like an older and more French-polished version of Nic. You could easily make the joke that they were sisters, except that Therese had done all the fussing older women do: she’d had her hair multi-coloured at Josef’s in Town Church Square and her lips tattooed a dried-blood red. And she always wore heels – this explains why she walked so slowly. I sometimes thought she floated across a room, and she had this way of holding her hands out to each side like she was waiting for her tan to dry.
The first time we talked properly was at the party. I was hiding in the kitchen, chatting away merrily to absolutely no one, and Therese wafted in. When she realised I was alone she smiled politely.
‘Is everything OK?’ she asked.
I made a joke about how I had lots of imaginary friends who were all very funny and not remotely dangerous.
‘Ah,’ she nodded, ‘I’m always talking to myself as well. I say you get a better class of conversation that way. People frown on it but I find it therapeutic.’
I spread my hands flat on her Italian maybe-marble worktop and told her she had excellent good taste. That’s when she showed me around the house. I was especially impressed by the automatic blinds in the conservatory and the impulse jets in the shower. There were also mirrors everywhere, which reminded me of the house of Victor Hugo, the famous/tortured writer.6 He’d lined his walls with mirrors so as to spy on his family and send them all mad. This was after he was thrown out of Jersey for smoking cannabis and kidnapping street children.
Therese was definitely riveted when I told her all of this, and I’m sure she would’ve liked to hear more if Nic hadn’t interrupted.