The Day My Best Friend Found A Man

We'd done everything together. I was thirteen when she literally courted me to be her friend. I was sitting on a bench at school, a few metres away from the swimming pool with my friend Wendy who wanted to be an actress. Her aunty had been on the stage and she was the inspiration for this ambition. Wendy was already very interested in boys even though we were only twelve. She used to talk endlessly about her older brother and fancied his friends. Her brother loved John Mayall who I'd never heard of up till then. I used to try to keep up by boasting about my brother in law who was the only man in my family life..apart from my Uncle Lionel and he didn't count. I went along with the fancying boys business but really the interest wasn't there.

My brother in law loved Johnny Cash, drove a big lorry and he'd travelled the world with the Merchant Navy. He said the best sunsets he'd ever seen were in South Africa. He could also draw battle scenes like the great Italian painters and play guitar and piano. Not only that but the first Christmas he went out with my eldest sister he bought me and my two other sisters a massive box of Black Magic chocolates each. My mum got a 200 pack of Rothmans cigarettes and a compliment on her nice legs.

Wendy and I were sitting there on our bench, as usual, pretending to be old women..we said things in a strange elderly accent like, "I know, isn't it terrible, it shouldn't be allowed." Christine came along and stood in front of us. She was slim, with braces to control her sticky-out teeth, and had short dark straight hair. She literally hung around us but it was me she was after, not Wendy. I hadn't even noticed her before but I guess she'd been around all along. There was a point where I felt quite guilty about Wendy because gradually I was hanging around with Christine more. Christine was persistent. She'd marked me out to be her friend and wasn't taking no for an answer.

Christine was very class conscious. We used to go into the same loo cubicle together at school..I was standing against the door while she was having a pee and she said: "I can't stand people who go to Bingo, it's common." As my mum went to Bingo once a week with her best friend Mrs Barratt (who'd introduced her to the the excitement of the Jackpot) I went red. Very red. Extreme blushing was the bane of my life. My cheeks would go crimson like a painted doll and it meant that all my discomfort was displayed on my face for the world to see. Anyway, regarding the Bingo, from that time on I used to beg my mother never to say she was going to Bingo in front of my friends. I was always nervous it would slip out or that one of my sisters would mention it.