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‘God, Ginny, you’re so self-absorbed. Since Felix betrayed me I’m experiencing such an overwhelming trauma that I’ve put off having my roots done, I can’t face going out and I’m so bitter that my karma has gone all to fuck. I mean, how would you feel if you were not only unemployed, but you’d caught the love of your life shagging the local florist?’ she wailed. ‘And he didn’t even have the decency to send me a bunch of bloody flowers.’
Ginny nodded in what she hoped vaguely resembled a sympathetic expression. It lasted about three seconds before the truth made a break for freedom.
‘He was a twat anyway.’
‘He was not!’ Roxie protested.
‘Was.’
‘Was not.’
Ginny sighed. ‘You do realise that we’re twenty-seven? Apparently we should have given up on childish, petty, pantomime dialogue somewhere around puberty. Remind me again why we’re friends?’
She had a point. Almost thirty years of friendship, based on having absolutely nothing in common other than the fact that they were born on the same day and their mothers were distantly related. Speaking of which…
‘Hellooooooooooo, girlies.’ The sing-song shriek came from downstairs and was accompanied by a slamming door and the smell of chow mein.
Said girlies groaned. ‘How can you be related to someone who sounds like that? You know, you really have to move out of your mother’s house, Gin–it’s obscene that you still live here at your age.’
‘And is my favourite girlie still up there too?’ screeched another voice, which to the untrained ear sounded very like the first one.
Roxy sighed. ‘And how can I be related to someone who sounds like that?’
Then, louder, ‘Yes, Mum, I’ll be down in a minute.’
‘I’ve got your favourite here, sweetie–prawn crackers and crispy chicken. We thought we’d all have dinner together.’
‘Gin, do you think our mothers are having a lesbian affair? I haven’t seen them apart since about 1974. Urgh, mental image, my mother muff-diving…don’t think I can face those prawn crackers now. And I’m not buying that my mother moved in here just for the companionship.’
Gin giggled. ‘You have a sex-obsessed, twisted mind. They’re not lovers, they’re cousins.’
‘About third cousins, four times removed. I’ve met people in public toilets who are closer relations than that. But think about it. Since your dad popped his clogs and my dad popped Mrs Fleming from the fish shop, they’ve been joined at the hip. Urgh, another mental thought that I could live without.’
‘They’re cousins!’ shrieked Ginny, smacking Roxy with a threadbare, heart-shaped pink pillow, and still her perfect hair didn’t move an inch out of place.
‘There should be a law against parents having sex. Come on then, let’s go join them. But when we’re finished you have to help me update my CV and find a new job, Gin–you know I’m hopeless at that kind of stuff.’
‘And what am I, a careers officer?’ Ginny replied indignantly.
‘You work in a library! There are loads of job information advice thingies in there.’
‘There are also several editions of the Kama Sutra and a whole bloody shelf on the menopause, but I know sod all about those either.’
Objection overruled.
‘Come on, hon, please. I really need you to help me decide what I’m going to do. Maybe I should take a year out and travel a bit. Or go back to university. I only had one year left to do, before…well…before…’
‘Before you got caught giving the philosophy professor a blow job. Under a podium. During a lecture.’
‘Girlies!!!’ came another shriek from downstairs.
Ginny groaned. ‘You know, Rox, you’re right–I have to move out of here. I need to stop wearing clothes with “sweat” in the title, and I need to shred the apron strings.’
Suddenly, a rousing chorus of ‘Hey Big Spender’ filled the room.
‘Rox, either your arse is singing or that’s the naffest ringtone I’ve ever heard.’
Roxy ignored her and checked the screen.
‘Shit. Shit. Bloody shit. It’s Sam at the Seismic.’
‘What did he say when you resigned?’
‘Actually I just left a note. Couldn’t face them.’
To Ginny, this didn’t exactly come as a newsflash. It was vintage Roxy. Roxy, who couldn’t face up to life’s un-pleasantries if her Miu Miu mules depended on it. It had been the same their whole lives. Roxy couldn’t tell a boy she didn’t like him any more so she sent Ginny. Roxy never did her homework, she just copied Ginny’s. Roxy didn’t want to tell her mother she was leaving home, so she did a midnight flit. Ginny carried the bags. Crazy, impetuous, dramatic, spontaneous, endlessly fucking irritating Roxy.
But then…
Wasn’t that the same Roxy who had poured a can of Vimto down the front of Kevin Smith trousers in primary school because he’d put chewing gum in Ginny’s hair? The poor guy was probably still in therapy trying to eradicate the nightmare of spending the next ten years with the nickname Pisspants.
And wasn’t that the same Roxy who’d bought Ginny her very first box of tampons? Actually, she’d stolen them from a fifth-year prefect’s gym bag, but the thought was still there.
And that was definitely the same Roxy who had invented the care package that got Ginny through every teenage moment of doubt, insecurity or low self-esteem: two Mars Bars, a packet of Silk Cut, a bottle of Diamond White and the Dirty Dancing video.
Ginny’s face reverted to pensive-slash-wasp-chewing as she grudgingly conceded that, despite all Roxy’s faults, she was more than a friend and general irritation: she was the closest thing Ginny had ever had to a sister. One who was insanely annoying, spoilt, demanding, high maintenance, yet still managed to make Ginny laugh more than anyone else on earth. And, if she was totally honest, sometimes she admired Roxy’s spirit. At least Roxy had taken chances in life, she’d broken the mould and experienced a bit of excitement and danger–although that police caution for flashing her baps at a bus full of American tourists travelling down Farnham Hills High Street had been a jolly jape too far.
Nope, at least Roxy would never be boring, Ginny conceded dolefully.
Unlike her chum, no one would ever call Ginny spontaneous. Her life’s CV could fill one paragraph: Same job since she left school almost a decade earlier, same boyfriend for twelve years, still lives in the same village she’s lived in all her life, with her mother, in a bedroom that she hasn’t decorated since before the millennium. Ginny was so ponderous that she took two weeks to decide to order something out of a catalogue, and that was with the safety net of a money-back guarantee.
Boring? Check. Restrained? Check. Dead? It was pretty close…
Ginny pulled at a thread at the bottom of her sleeve and half the cuff unravelled. Fabulous. She hastily shoved the sleeve halfway up her arm to conceal the demise of a sweatshirt that had given her years of loyal service.
She glanced at Roxy and guessed that Roxy probably didn’t have a single thing in her wardrobe that was more than six months old. Urgh, sometimes Ginny really felt like the bland, wardrobe-challenged poor relation. But then, this was the life she’d chosen. This is what made her happy. Content. Satisfied with her lot. Condemned to a lifetime of mediocrity. Ouch, where had that come from?
It was just that sometimes…Well, just sometimes she’d like to know what it felt like to get dressed up to the nines in designer togs, in a bra and pants that weren’t matching shades of grey, in shoes that didn’t lace up and come in three different shades of boring, and spend just one day where she couldn’t predict–down to the last second–everything that would happen.
She shrugged off her melancholy. It didn’t matter if she had the odd moment of regret–she’d already chosen her path, and her ship hadn’t so much sailed as sprung a leak, capsized, and plummeted to the bottom of the local pond. And anyway, who was to say that any other life would make her happier than the one she had here with her mother, long-standing boyfriend and steady job, in the village she’d always lived in, with the same people she’d been seeing every single day of her life? This was it. And it was as good as it was going to get. Wasn’t it?
Over on the bed, Roxy was blustering into the phone. ‘But I don’t know anyone who can cover it! Okay. Okay. I understand. Okay. I’ll get back to you. Sorry, Sam.’
She snapped the phone shut.
‘Fuck.’
Ginny climbed out of the pond and rejoined the drama. ‘Problem?’
‘He says I can’t just walk out–something about a one-month notice period, blah, blah, blah. He sounds really pissed off. Apparently Sascha has gone off with herpes and Tilly has been barricaded in a hotel by the News of the World because she’s doing a kiss-and-tell on some MP this week, so they’ve got no one to cover for me. He says I’ll lose my holiday pay and my salary and, oh, I don’t know, a bloody kidney if I’m not at the desk tomorrow. So much for turning over a new leaf.’
Roxy looked at her watch. ‘The new, penis-avoiding me lasted for a whole eight hours…’
‘I’ll do it.’
‘…and now Felix will know where to find me and he’ll come begging me to take him back.’
‘I’ll do it.’
‘…And I tell you, if he pitches up with a bunch of petunias I’ll shove them up his…What?’
‘I’ll do it.’
‘Do what?’
‘Cover your shift at the Seismic. Sam’s the guy I met at your birthday party, right? The one who helped me fill the vol-au-vents?’
Roxy groaned. ‘Still can’t believe you brought vol-au-vents to my party. Thank God Gordon Ramsay couldn’t make it or you’d have had his stroke on your conscience.’
‘Can we just focus on Sam? He was nice. Your type actually–how come you didn’t go for him instead of the dickhead?’
Roxy’s lip pouted even further than usual. ‘Thought about it, he fits all the criteria, but the man works in a brothel–could you imagine the dinner-party conversation? “Hi, I’m Jeremy, I’m in hedge funds, and you?” “I’m Sam–vaginas.”’
Ginny shrieked with laughter, but Roxy barely rose from her morose state. ‘Anyway, Sam, party, so?’
‘Well, he was nice. Vaginas aside, obviously. Said if I ever decided to move into the city I should check in with him to see if there were any vacancies. Of course, I was wearing your clothes, your jewellery and your shoes at the time, so he probably thought I was Miss Cosmopolitan Girl about Town. Anyway, if it’s only for a month, surely he wouldn’t mind?’
‘But even if it was okay with Sam, what about your job? Where will you live? You can’t commute, the hours are too irregular.’
‘I’ll move into your place.’
‘And I would live…?’
‘Here.’
‘You’re kidding me.’
Ginny’s inspiration was gathering speed. Suddenly this seemed like the best idea she’d ever had. Spontaneous? She could be spontaneous. Her enthusiasm bubbled. Spontaneous was her middle name. Actually, it was Violet, after her mother, but that wasn’t the point.
‘I’m not. Come on, Roxy–it totally works! That gives you a month to sort out what you’re going to do with your life and heal that devastated soul. Should be ample time. You can live here and you can take my job in the library. You said it yourself, it’s the best place to research your future options.’
‘But they’d never let me.’
‘Course they would. Hold on, I’ll ask the manager.’ Ginny opened her bedroom door.
‘Muuuuum, is it okay if Roxy takes my place at the library for a few days?’
‘Course it is, dear. Now, hurry up, or I’ll have to microwave your hoisin sauce.’
‘That’s settled then. Come on, you know what to do there, you covered my holidays.’
‘That was in 1998!’
‘Trust me, nothing’s changed. What shift are you supposed to be on tomorrow?’
‘Er, noon till eight,’ replied Roxy tentatively. She had a horrible feeling that for the first time in her life she was being outmanoeuvred. The library. One month. God, she could smell the boredom.
But then, she couldn’t face London again. She needed a break. She needed to be away from the Seismic, away from memories of Felix, away from the constant pressure to be nice to grown men who paid for women half their age to attach probes to their testicles.
‘Okay, I’ll do it. On one condition…’
‘Name it,’ said Ginny.
‘I’m changing that duvet. If I’m going to sleep with Westlife, then I want them to have working parts.’
Summary:
Ginny shows little or no interest in PE, Drama, Art or Music. Her only focus in the arts is in the field of literature, where Ginny shows a voracious appetite for all genres.
This was reflected in her achievement of second place in the county short-story competition with her splendid entry, ‘The Day My Cousin Stole My Bike’.
Ginny should be encouraged, however, to broaden her interests to encompass other disciplines and areas.
Personal Skills:
Ginny’s behaviour and conduct within the school this year has, as always, been exemplary. She has achieved a 100 per cent attendance record and a perfect punctuality score.
She is articulate, pleasant, diligent and always keen to help others.
She works well under direction, but is equally capable of using her own initiative.
Ginny has a keen analytical mind and excels in her ability to absorb and process information.
Ginny has now assumed her new role in the school library, where she is responsible for the efficient management of the record systems and the inventory. She is handling this position with efficiency and enthusiasm.
Challenges/Development Needs:
Ginny continues to lack confidence and finds it difficult to assert herself, especially in the presence of authority or stronger characters. As a consequence of this, she can occasionally be easily led–as witnessed by the smoking incident earlier in the year.
Shyness also continues to be a challenge, and this often prevents Ginny from participating in class or group discussions or projects.
It is hoped that as Ginny matures her confidence will improve, allowing her interpersonal skills to develop to the same level as her intellectual abilities.
Signed:
TWO I Feel the Earth Move (#u0a891236-d197-5112-8e12-f51744cf58f9)
Ginny. Day One, Sunday, 9 p.m.
