The Guilty Friend. Joanne Sefton

       Chapter 4

       Tasha

       2019

      Tasha knew that whoever invented Valentine’s Day must have been a wanker. A sadistic wanker with a hatred of teenagers. It comes at the worst time of the year. When Christmas is over, but it still won’t be warm for ages and the teachers are doling out crap results from crap mock GCSEs. It creeps up on you – you’d forget it was coming and then you’d be in town and see a card shop window stuffed with red heart-shaped balloons and your stomach would jump up and crash down again leaving you feeling queasy.

      Tasha estimated that around two per cent of the girls in school actually liked Valentine’s Day. They were the fit ones with boyfriends, or at least boys who would admit to liking them. If it wasn’t for them, everyone else could just ignore it and forget about the whole thing. But they wouldn’t let that happen. Girls like Lola Shirini and Nadya Bansal. They’d been going on about it for ages. The main WhatsApp group for the girls in Tasha’s year was full of messages from them debating which boys were going to get them cards or presents and who else wasn’t going to get anything.

      Her friends Claire and Sonal felt exactly the same. The three of them were moaning about it at lunchtime, eating their packed lunches in the music quad. It was freezing, but still better than eating inside and contending with a zoo of screaming Year 7s and 8s and their stinky sandwiches. Sonal was in a bad mood to start with because she’d got a Grade 7 in her history mock. She was expecting an 8 and Tash knew she was hoping for a 9 in the real one, even though she wouldn’t admit it. Tash had got an 8 so Sonal was being a bit pissy with her, even though Tash’s actual mark was only three higher than Sonal’s own.

      Claire didn’t do History and didn’t get any marks back that day so she was keeping quiet, but then Claire was a real-life genius anyway and Tash just knew she was going to get a 9 in everything without even trying. Mr Taylor had already told her he thought she’d have a good shot at Oxford or Cambridge. Claire had been on at Tasha’s mum to give her a practice interview, because she’d been to Cambridge herself. She apparently hadn’t paused to think that it did a fat lot of good for Karen. But then perhaps geniuses weren’t renowned for common sense.

      Sonal was going on and on about Charles de Gaulle and how she’d been unfairly marked down because she’d forgotten when he died. Then Claire told her to shut up and said that when Sonal and Tash had been in History, she’d been in Geography and Lola had been nudging loads of the girls and getting them to look at something ‘secret’ in her bag. When the bag got passed to Claire, she saw a box of Lindt chocolates and a charm bracelet in a Pandora box. No wonder Lola was pleased with herself. Everyone knew that Pandora bracelets started at £100 or something and apparently this had three or four charms on it already.

      After Sonal had whinged about her exam and Claire had told the others about Lola’s bracelet, a Year 7 kid came up out of nowhere and said, ‘Are you Tasha Neville?’ She obviously didn’t have a clue which one of them actually was Tasha, because she was talking more to Claire when she said it. So, Tasha butted in to say she was the girl was they were looking for and the Year 7 shoved this giant pink envelope at her and then ran off sniggering like a fruit loop.

      ‘Well, open it then!’ Claire and Sonal were all over her. So, she did, and it was a Valentine’s card. It had a pair of those hideous grey teddies that are meant to be cute with massive hearts between them and part of her head was thinking about how it was possibly the worst card that had ever been printed and how she’d be embarrassed to buy it. But at the same time another part of her mind was thinking that this was the first Valentine’s card she’d ever got. Claire and Sonal were obviously mad with jealousy and, after all, it wasn’t like anyone would expect a boy to have good taste in greetings cards so they all decided they could probably overlook the bleurgh grey teddies. For Tash, the amazing thing was that someone actually liked her and wanted to tell her that on Valentine’s Day with a big showy card at school.

      She flicked the card open then shut it immediately. But not quick enough to stop the rush of blood in her cheeks. There had been some printed writing – she’d not had the card open for long enough to read it – then, at the bottom, just one word ‘Stanno’ and one crossed kiss.

      Tasha had fancied him since Year 8. Thinking about it, she probably would have had more chance with him then, because ever since then he’d just got more fit and more popular whereas she’d, well, not. But they did still get on. He only lived a street away from her and sometimes they would walk home together off the bus. Maybe she’d made more of an impression than she’d thought.

      ‘Oh my God.’ She turned to her friends. ‘It’s Dylan Stanton. It’s actually him. He likes me. OM-fucking-G. What the fuck am I going to do?’

      And the girls were hyped, because they knew she liked Stanno, although she would never have told them quite how much. Claire’s face lit with excitement and happiness for her, and then, just as suddenly, it crumpled.

      Tash’s stomach turned to ice. She turned, following Claire’s gaze, to look over her shoulder. Lola Shirini swooped like a vampire bat, her glossy Kate Middleton hair swinging and her phone thrusting into Tash’s face as her laughter ripped through the quad.

      ‘She actually fell for it. Look at her! Little Miss Boffin-Head is in luurve with Dylan Stanton. Can you imagine it? Like he’d send a card to her – as if!’

      The three or four worker bees she’d brought along for the ride swayed around laughing, making out like they were pissing themselves or unable to stay upright. The blood that had rushed to Tash’s cheeks a few moments earlier was now joined by what felt like the rest of the blood in her entire body and an army of fire ants. Her face was blazing like an exploding oil tanker.

      She stood up and shoved the card into Lola’s free hand.

      ‘Take it back then – it’s not like I care.’ She choked out the last couple of words in a sob, aware even as she said it that it was a pretty pathetic effort at a comeback.

      Of course, when she was stewing at home that evening, she came up with about seventeen razor-sharp ripostes that would have left Lola for dead. But none of those were featured on the video that was instantly being shared all over WhatsApp and Snapchat. Tasha knew that even kids in other years who wouldn’t have had a clue who she was that morning would be pointing and laughing when she went back into school the next day.

      She wondered if it was true that Saint Valentine lived in Italy a zillion years ago and they made him a saint because he married couples so the husbands wouldn’t have to go to war. Woot woot for them. She would bet he didn’t realise the depths of misery he was storing up for generations of innocent schoolgirls, did he? Wanker.