The Number One Rule for Girls. Rachel McIntyre

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      Nice guy. Cute. It almost made up for catty Brittany. Almost.

      And I suppose the rest of the day wasn’t that bad, not burning-in-the-sulphurous-pits-of-Hell bad anyway. More un-good, like finding an umbrella in your Christmas stocking: hardly Yay, gift of my dreams, but not quite Kill me now territory either.

      I guess the biggest shock was how similar college was to school. Maybe there were no bells, no uniform, no registration. (No friends . . . sigh.) But from the Dirty Porridge painted walls, to the perma-reek of Lynx and chips, I could have been back at St Mary’s.

      The Rule #8 Think Positive List

      Here, I could be Just Daisy not

      DaisywhogotdumpedbyMatt.

      The toilets were clean.

      No uniform.

      OK-ish teachers.

      It wasn’t a mistake. Right?

       Right?!

      And speaking of mistakes, Brittany must’ve though it was fancy dress herself. I mean, why else would anyone walk round dressed as a Bratz doll?

      After college, I caught the bus to footie training and then me and Ayesha went back to hers.

      ‘How was school?’ I said as I sat down on her bed. ‘Everyone missing me already?’

      ‘Well, me and Beth certainly are,’ she answered. ‘And Mr Fox asked after you in registration.’

      ‘Old Captain Comb-over? Really?’

      Given our years of mutual loathing in form time and maths I was stunned he didn’t get the party poppers out when I failed my GCSE. Or fall to his knees and weep with joy when I told him I wasn’t coming back.

      ‘Shocker, I know. He said to give you his best wishes for college.’

      Blimey.

      ‘And I think he really meant it.’

      Double blimey with sprinkles on top. He must have been wetting his flares in case I changed my mind about leaving.

      I opened my mouth, ready to cast a think positive spin on my day when the doorbell rang. It was Beth. Apparently she wasn’t grounded as long as she agreed to her dad following her wherever she went. As in he was sitting outside in the car. Beyond creepy.

      However, my initial mad-dad sympathy soon drained away as the endless tears Beth snotted down Ayesha’s cardigan turned my heart to stone. And after five minutes of her, But I loooove Shaneeey, driving me up the Wailing Wall, I could not hold my tongue another second.

      ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe your dad’s got a point.’

      Beth’s head popped up, a mascara-smeared meerkat sensing danger. ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘Maybe it’s time you tried being single for a bit.’

      ‘Single? What the hell for?’ She sounded genuinely surprised.

      ‘Oh God, I don’t know. Because you’ve never tried it? Because you’re making yet another mistake?’

      ‘What mistake?’

      ‘I mean . . .’ I breathed in deep. ‘From what I’ve heard, I don’t think this Shaney is good news.’

      ‘Oh yeah?’ she said, folding her arms and giving me the bring-it-on eyes. ‘Why not?’

      ‘Well, for starters, he followed you home from school.’

      ‘Only to talk!’

      I rolled my eyes. ‘Talk . . . stalk . . .’

      ‘Daisy . . .’ said Ayesha in a warning tone.

      ‘I’m staging a Rule number 5 intervention,’ I said defensively. ‘Always be honest . . . ’

      ‘. . . even when it’s painful,’ Ayesha finished. ‘I know, I know. But I don’t think now is the right time.’ She gave an exaggerated nod in Beth’s direction and grimaced.

      ‘Well, excuse me,’ interrupted Beth, with a Jeremy Kyle guest hand/head shake ’n’ wag. ‘It’s up to me who I go out with, not you. Stop interfering.’

      This was the exact moment at which an emergency gob-stop would have been advisable. Sadly, it appeared my mouth had missed the memo.

      ‘It’s not me who’s interfering with you, is it?’ I said.

      ‘Daisy! ’ said Ayesha, more urgently this time.

      I rolled my eyes heavenwards again. ‘For God’s sake, Beth, get real; he’s a complete pervatron.’

      ‘You’ve never even met him,’ she snapped. ‘You don’t know anything about him.’

      ‘I know he’s a bouncer with a misspelled neck tattoo who follows schoolgirls home.’

      ‘I love him!’

      ‘And I love animals,’ I said, ‘but I wouldn’t particularly want to start a relationship with one.’

      Beth glared, presumably aiming for haughty, but too red-faced and snot-encrusted to carry it off. Ayesha inhaled, poised to rub some verbal Savlon on our bitch scratches, but before she got a word out, Lady Boohoo took a final swipe.

      ‘You’re jealous, Daisy, that’s your problem. Bitter and heartless and jealous. The only reason you want me single is so you won’t be the only one without a boyfriend. Because since Matt left you can’t stand to see anyone happy.’

      Ouch. That hurt so much.

      I didn’t even stay to state the obvious, Er, who’s happy? I just grabbed my coat and stormed past Ayesha’s lovely mum in the hall and Beth’s bonkers dad on the street.

      But as I walked home, muttering, ‘Bitter, am I? Jealous?’ under my breath, my anger began to recede. Had I been too harsh? Was I really being the Queen of Stony Hearts?

      It was true that Matt broke my heart when he went to Spain. (And by ‘broke’ I mean ‘tore out and pounded to lifeless, smushy goop’.) But that didn’t mean I wanted everyone else to be miserable too. Especially not my friends.

      But get real! Any primary schoolkid could have told Beth that if a strange man followed you home, you should report him to the police, not hand him your phone number. No exceptions. And to call it love, puhlease. She barely knew him.

      Beth was a first-class drama farmer. Every other week she created some new boyfriend crisis and expected me and Ayesha to just jump on the emoto-cycle with her.

      Phase 1. Ignore the warning signs.

      Phase 2. Expect Daisy СКАЧАТЬ