His & Hers

The transformation was quite remarkable, and Catherine was almost unrecognisable when they were finished with her. Lives are like lightbulbs; they’re not as hard to change as people think. Catherine looked beautiful, and she knew it too, beaming at her own reflection when the girls let her look in the mirror.

‘Try to smile with your mouth closed, nobody wants to see those ugly braces,’ said Rachel. Catherine did as she was told. ‘Look at that pretty little mouth now. The boys are going to love you,’ she added, patting her on the head as though she were a pet.

Her new smile looked uncomfortable to wear.

I didn’t know what boys Rachel was talking about – we never hung around with any – but I think I must have looked jealous, because she offered to paint my nails for me then. She held my hands and wrote letters on my fingernails with red varnish, spelling the word GOOD on one hand, and GIRL on the other.

I’d already drunk far more alcohol than I was used to – the room had started to spin – but Rachel, Helen and Zoe said they were going to the kitchen to find more, leaving Catherine and me alone in the lounge.

‘Are you glad you came?’ I asked her.

She blinked at me, her new false eyelashes exaggerating the action, and once again I marvelled at how different she looked. Then she told me something I had never known about her; I’m not sure anybody did. Perhaps because they never asked. She’d clearly had too much to drink too, and her sentences were interspersed with hiccups.

‘I used to have an older sister, we did makeovers like this together, but she died. My dad had a small boat and we would go with him sometimes at weekends. That’s where it happened. But before then, sailing was fun and he taught us how to make lots of knots. Look, I’ll show you.’ She pulled the laces out of her trainers with a sudden and strange enthusiasm. ‘This is a square knot… this is a figure eight…’ Her fingers were so fast, tying, twisting and looping the laces together before holding them up each time. I watched with a sense of bewildered fascination. ‘This is a sliding knot – just like the one you’ve used in the friendship bracelets – and this is a bowline, which I like better because you can control how far the loop constricts… see?’

I stared at the final knot.

‘How did she die? Your sister?’

I doubt I would have asked the question so bluntly if I hadn’t been so drunk. Catherine untied the laces and started to thread them back in her shoes.

‘People always presume that she drowned because it happened when we were sailing, but an asthma attack killed my sister. She forgot her inhaler. My dad blamed himself and my parents have been really sad since she died, really sad. He lost his job, sold the boat, and our house isn’t a very nice place now. I think maybe that’s why nobody talks to me or invites me to anything anymore. Until you did. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ I whispered.

‘Can I hold her?’ she asked.

I stared down at the grey kitten asleep on my lap. Kit Kat. I was so drunk I had forgotten she was there.

‘Of course,’ I said, lifting her up and handing her to Catherine.

She held the cat in her arms and rocked it, as though it were a baby.

‘Come on, it’s time to go,’ said Rachel, appearing in the doorway wearing her coat.

It was one I hadn’t seen before, made of fur, which I guessed was fake. I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost eleven.

‘Go where?’ I asked.

She pointed at me, smiled, and started to sing.

‘If you go down to the woods tonight, you’re sure of a big surprise.’

‘I don’t want to go to the woods. It’s late and cold and—’

Rachel ignored me, and pointed at Catherine instead while singing the next line.

‘If you go down to the woods tonight, you’d better go in disguise!’

Zoe and Helen appeared behind her and all three started laughing.

The woods never scared me during the day, but at night they seemed to change into something different when I was a child. Somewhere dark and dangerous, where bad things might happen. It was meant to be my birthday party, but it was clear that what I did or didn’t want to do was irrelevant. Rachel took my mother’s torch off the hook by the door in the kitchen, and led the way. There was a path from my back garden that led straight into the woods, and she knew it as well as I did by then.

I remember the sound of us all walking over a carpet of dead leaves.

I remember the cold.

And I remember seeing four men sitting on makeshift log benches, in what I thought was our secret, private place. They had lit a small fire in the middle, surrounded by white stones. It flickered and hissed and spat.

They all smiled when they saw us.

I didn’t recognise the men. Even after what happened, I could never describe their faces. In my broken memory of that night they all looked the same: skinny with brown hair, four sets of small black eyes with dark shadows beneath them. They were much older than us, late twenties or early thirties maybe, and they were drinking beer. Lots of it. There was a pattern of crushed cans around their feet.

I was scared at first, but Rachel clearly knew them, as did Helen and Zoe. They went straight over and sat on the men’s laps.

‘This is Anna. She’s new and she’s sweet sixteen at last. Aren’t you going to wish her a happy birthday?’ Rachel said.

‘Happy birthday, Anna,’ the men replied with strange smiles on their faces.

They seemed to be amused by something.

Rachel draped an arm around my shoulder, and I noticed her fur coat again. Perhaps because I was so cold in the skimpy dress she had made me wear.

‘Do you like my new coat?’ she asked. ‘Zoe made it for me.’

Zoe was always making things for her friends: pencil cases, cushion covers, tiny little dresses. She bought the most interesting material she could find in markets, and borrowed her mother’s sewing machine to make her creations, but I’d never seen anything as elaborate as a coat before. It looked so real. I couldn’t stop staring at the fur.

‘I’ll let you borrow it if you come and say hello to our new friends,’ Rachel said. ‘They’ve been waiting to meet you.’

She took me by the hand, and led me to the nearest man. Then she told me to sit down on the fallen tree trunk next to him. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to be rude either. So I sat down next to the stranger, who stank of body odour and beer. When I started to shiver, he rubbed my bare leg with his big ugly hand, saying it would help me warm up.

Catherine Kelly sat down next to me, and looked as frightened as I felt.

A bottle of vodka was passed around, along with strange-smelling cigarettes. More logs were added to the fire, and dance music was played. Which seemed odd to me, given nobody was dancing. I thought the men must have owed Rachel some money, because they all took out their wallets and gave her a handful of notes. I thought it might have been for the pills she took out of her purse, but that wasn’t all the men were paying for.

‘Take one,’ she said, coming over to Catherine and me.

There were two little white shapes in her hand. They looked like mints, but I knew enough to know that they weren’t.

‘No, thank you,’ said Catherine, and I shook my head too.