What If?. Shari Low

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      Don’t Leave Me This Way – The Communards

      The holiday was booked for the end of June, a few weeks before my eighteenth birthday, and the day after I attended the mothership of all that was oppressive in society, St Mary the Blessed Virgin High School in Glasgow, for the last time.

      Actually, school wasn’t that bad. Where else could you hang out with your mates all day, get free ciggies from the guys at lunchtime, and be involved in more daily drama than an episode of Neighbours? The only inconvenience was tolerating the punishments that were regularly meted out to me for answering back, not paying attention, and generally causing affray. But it was all innocent and done in the name of fun.

      My favourite class was French, where my ‘disruptive’ behaviour pushed the highly strung Mr Distell too far and he made me sit behind a filing cabinet for a whole year. It was a great opportunity to catch up with lost sleep.

      As for the work, much as I don’t want to appear conceited, I officially possess the memory of an elephant. Even when I was staring transfixed at John Potts’s thighs in biology, I could still remember every word the teacher uttered. Exams, therefore, were never a problem. Straight A student, straight zero work. Life was bliss.

      I think that’s why I agreed to go on holiday. I wanted to prolong the last year with my school pals for as long as possible. We knew we would all go in different directions afterwards. Sarah Moore, my friend since we were in the womb and our mothers went to antenatal classes together, was going to Edinburgh University to study mathematics. Such a rational subject for a joyfully irrational person. Carol Sweeney, Glasgow’s answer to Kate Moss, was going to London to try to launch her modelling career. Jess Latham, Aberdeen University, reading politics. Politics! She said she chose it because it was sure to include lots of men and dinner parties. And Kate Wilkes, who had been butchering our coiffures for years, finally had a position as an apprentice hairdresser in a trendy Glasgow salon.

      Me? I still wasn’t sure what to be when I grew up, so I’d applied for university just because it seemed like the right thing to do. I didn’t have the financial support to study in a different city, so I opted for Glasgow University and was accepted to study English literature. Did I really want to spend four years immersed in Keats, D.H. Lawrence and Shakespeare? I’d rather have my teeth pulled. No, I wanted to travel the world, meet interesting people and rich men who would buy me diamonds while encouraging my career as a kickass boss with a big heart and a philanthropic sideline. Years of reading Jackie Collins novels had clearly had an effect on my life aspirations. In reality, however, I was lacking the finances for an epic, global life adventure, so I applied for Uni and settled for a fortnight with my chums in the centre of the Costa Del Juvenile Delinquent, Benidorm. It was hardly St Lucia, but we were living off our parents. Or at least the other girls were. I’d saved every bloody penny for this holiday. For eighteen months, I’d spent every Saturday clearing tables and serving coffees to loud women in fur coats with diamonds the size of Gibraltar dripping from their fingers, in one of Glasgow’s more ‘upmarket’ department stores. I hated that job. It was bad enough that I had to work on Saturdays when everyone else was hanging out and shopping at Miss Selfridge, but to make matters worse I had to wear a brown A-line overall that made me look an overcooked sausage. Not that it mattered, as I was apparently invisible as I trundled round the tables clearing away the used crockery. That was the thing with the kind of unbearably obnoxious, aloof women who frequented the store, they didn’t acknowledge the presence of anyone who earned less than £100k per year. They would just carry on their conversations whilst I cleaned their tables, oblivious to the fact that I could hear every word they uttered.

      ‘Have you seen her breasts lately? I didn’t realise the porn star look was in this season.’

      ‘So I said to Jeremy, Monte Carlo is so passé, it’s St Barts this year and don’t even think about flying commercial.’

      ‘Of course I fake it, darling, otherwise we’d be at it all night and I do need my beauty sleep.’

      They didn’t even stop for breath, never mind to say a courteous ‘Thank you’ for clearing away their debris. Yet perversely, although I detested them, I vowed that one day I’d be able to drape myself in jewels and pay five pounds for a sticky bun. I would watch the way they held their cigarettes, flicked their hair and talked in exaggerated whispers, always with the self-assurance that they were above reproach. Only one thing, I decided, gives that air of confidence – money. I was determined that one day I’d be sitting there in my Janet Regers, underneath my Dior, talking about my rich husband’s failure to achieve an erection. But until then, me and my sausage-shade uniform were working all the hours I could get to save up for a bit of fun in the Spanish sun.

      We left for Benidorm at 10.15 p.m.. In order to thoroughly embarrass us, all our parents insisted on accompanying us to the airport. In my case it was just my mum, as my dad was in the middle of another deep debate with Jack Daniel’s. I’d heard them arguing while I was packing and was relieved when it finally went quiet because that meant he’d slumped into a bourbon induced coma. I learnt when I was young not to get in the middle of them. Instead, I found a way to lock their issues in a box in my mind and escape into books, boys and pals, all the while having the same thought: I. Will. Never. Be. Like. Them.

      All that fighting and staying together even though they brought no joy to each other whatsoever? No thanks. How could two people who must have loved each other enough to take their vows end up like this? If that’s how marriage turned out, I’d pass, thanks. Yes, in hindsight, several engagements later, I can see the irony of that train of thought.

      Anyway, back to my seventeen year old self.

      By the time we got to the airport, my mum was in organisation mode, with an undertone of disapproval. ‘Now, have you got the number of the British Embassy in case you have any trouble? Wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Remember, don’t speak to any foreign men, they might misunderstand your intentions.’

      I doubted it very much.

      It took us an age to get rid of the menagerie of relatives. We finally managed it by convincing them that we should go straight through to the departure lounge, lest we get trodden on in the stampede of tourists rushing through security at the last minute. We stormed into the duty-free shopping area like it was a competitive trolley dash. There wasn’t a skirt longer than twelve inches or a heel under four, and we couldn’t walk right next to each other because our matching perms were teased, curled and sprayed to the size of beach balls. The only thing that varied was our hair colour. Sarah was a brunette, Kate was chestnut, I was light ash blonde (straight out of a box of dye from the chemist), Jess’s mane was fiery red and Carol was the one who put us all in the shade because aside from her natural dark tresses, she was 5’ 10” tall, and made Cindy Crawford look average. Right now, her perfect white teeth were glinting as she adopted the same gleeful expression as the rest of us. We were ecstatic. Two weeks of fun and freedom with not a responsible adult in sight.

      We made straight for the ciggies and alcohol section of the duty-free. Five bottles of vodka, 1,600 Benson & Hedges, and five bars of Toblerone later, we settled down in the bar to await our departure to Alicante.

      Sarah and I were doing our best rendition of Whitney’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’, when we were rudely interrupted.

      ‘Right,’ bellowed Jess, doing her best Margaret Thatcher impersonation. Not that we were fans. Thatcher had just been voted in for a third term and in our working-class area of the West of Scotland that result was about as popular as sexually transmitted warts. ‘If we’re going to get through the next two weeks without getting arrested or killing each other, we need to set some ground rules.’

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