Trio - [43]

She turned back. Maybe her boobs were even bigger because of her periods starting. Maybe they’d settle down and shrink a bit. Some people did swell up like that, didn’t they? She pouted at herself and blew a kiss, touched the tip of one finger to her nipple. Watched the small, pink cone swell and darken.

‘Pamela!’

She jumped. ‘OK!’ she yelled.

She dressed and flushed the toilet.

Downstairs she waited until they’d eaten before confiding in her mother.

‘I’ve got my period.’

‘Oh, Pamela.’ Her mother smiled, a soppy look on her face. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Yes, it doesn’t hurt, not yet anyway.’

‘Some people get more cramps than others.’

‘But I feel a bit bigger.’ She tapped her chest, blushing. ‘Did yours do that?’

Her mother hesitated. She was always a bit awkward talking about intimate things, secretive even. When Pamela had first seen tampons in plain sight in a friend’s bathroom she’d been shocked. ‘Not really. They were tender sometimes.’

‘When did your periods start?’

‘I was fourteen like you.’

‘But they stopped really early?’

Her mother cleared her throat. Pamela began to feel embarrassed. She should never have asked.

‘I had a problem with them.’ Her mother shrugged. ‘I had to have an operation and that was the end of all that.’

‘So you wouldn’t be able to have any more children,’ Pamela said slowly.

‘Yes,’ her mother said quickly. She jumped to her feet and began clearing the table. Pamela didn’t try asking any more. If the trouble was something that ran in families then her mother would have told her all about it, she was sure, if it was something important that would affect whether Pamela could have children.

Joan

‘Scarborough?’ George had said incredulously when she had told him about the house. ‘You can’t bleedin’ well live in Scarborough!’

‘’Course I can. I can post you things, get the train now and again. I’ve had enough of London, George.’

‘How can anyone have had enough of London, I ask you? This is where it’s all happening, girl.’

‘I’ve made my mind up.’

She had to get out. Seven years it had been, since she got that number one. Seven years of parties and clubs and the endless frenetic activity. Too many flings with too many strangers. It had been wonderful at first. And when ‘Swing Me’ followed ‘Walk My Way’ up to the top of the charts she had basked in the glory. Two number ones. There were nights at the Palais and others at all-night clubs. Times when Ray Davies from the Kinks or John Lennon and David Hockney, the artist, and Twiggy fresh from the cover of Vogue, and David Bailey, celebrity photographer, would be there. All the beautiful people. As the months went by it got harder to keep up. She was using uppers to stay awake and Mogadon to knock her out at bedtime. Speed and cocaine and god knows what for parties. Her hands shook now, in the mornings, and she had begun to feel edgy. She’d lost weight and with it her energy. Some weeks ago she had woken up in bed with a strange woman and been unable to recall anything of the night before. Worst of all she hadn’t written a decent song in months. Oh, she’d still been working, and George had sold most of them but they weren’t a patch on her best, on what she knew she could do. When Jimi Hendrix died, Joan felt a stab of fear. A month later Janis Joplin died too. That could be me, she thought. If I don’t get my head straight. Or she could just mess up, become more mediocre until she was a has-been. There were lots of them in the clubs and bars, talking about their heydays to anyone with half a mind to listen. She didn’t want that. Leaving London was about survival.

‘If you want me to, I can find a new agent.’

There was the merest whisper of alarm in George’s face. Joan winked.

‘Bugger off, Joan.’ He pulled out a bottle of pale ale, removed the cap with his teeth. ‘Where the bloody hell is Scarborough, anyway? Do they have running water and electricity up there?’

Pamela

Malcolm. He was very nice. But nice was the best she could come up with and it wasn’t good enough. She’d met him at work, he was based at Stockport but the bank had brought him in when the flu epidemic affected staff at her branch in Northenden. It had been easy to say yes to a date. She’d even been excited about him for a while but now…

The hairdresser moved her over from the basin to the vacant chair. She’d fancied a pageboy cut but it was impossible with wavy hair like hers so she just kept it long and had the split ends trimmed every so often. Least it was a good colour, a glossy black. She didn’t have to mess about colouring it with Harmony or Inecto to get an effect.

She had sensed Malcolm edging towards a proposal, imagining her ensconced in some nice, new semi in Heaton Mersey, just round the corner from his parents. Mrs Suburbia. Like Thelma from The Likely Lads on television. Ironing his shirts and having babies and making love twice a week laying flat on the bed with the lights out. He was so dull, so unimaginative. He thought prawn cocktails and a bunch of flowers were the height of romantic courtship. Or maybe that was the problem: he wanted romance – safe, dull, predictable – and she wanted passion. She wanted sex to be daring, challenging, naughty. It was so unsexy with Mal. Always the same routine, like brushing teeth or something. She fantasised constantly and she wanted to try out some of the milder ones but she couldn’t see Malcolm taking her up against the wall or making her kneel on the floor and entering her from behind or chasing her and catching her.