The Verdict. Olivia Isaac-Henry

by their boyfriend was their own fault, who didn’t always take the side of step-siblings over flesh and blood, because wasn’t it their father, not hers, paying for everything? Why was she so difficult and contrary? Why did she have to study computer science instead of something feminine, French perhaps? Couldn’t she have nice friends instead of misfits like Pearl and Andre? No, in her mind, Audrey would never be ‘Mum’.

      A housemate let Julia in, and she made her way up to the room on the top floor, where Andre was already sprawled on the bed, a bottle of Holsten Pils in his hand. Pearl was sitting in front of the mirror, getting ready for their night out. She had shaken off the remains of parochial teenage misfit in the last couple of years and now smoked roll-ups and drank German lager, instead of the Consulate menthol and Diamond White she’d preferred in sixth form. Her hair had changed from a short, jet-black crop to a choppy, dirty-blonde shoulder-length bob.

      ‘We used to call that cut a shag,’ Audrey said when she first saw it.

      Pearl had turned to Julia and smirked.

      ‘Well, it does get me laid,’ she’d said.

      Today, Pearl was wearing a powder blue baby doll dress and enormous black boots. She leant towards the glass to smudge her eyeliner and muss her hair. An enviable look Julia couldn’t pull off. Dishevelled, she looked more like a librarian gone to seed than a hard-partying rock chick. Half of her longed to be forty, when the tailored dresses and slender-heeled shoes, which actually suited her, would be more acceptable. As it was, she had twisted her hair into two long plaits and wore a loose vest top, jeans and new blue suede Converse, and hoped a little of Pearl’s don’t-give-a-fuck cool rubbed off on her.

      ‘I want to meet her,’ Pearl said, when Julia told her about Genevieve’s eccentricities.

      ‘Me too,’ Andre said. ‘She sounds like a hippy version of Audrey.’

      ‘Please don’t compare that woman to my mother. At least not in front of her. Can you imagine Audrey in a turban?’

      ‘She’d look adorable,’ Andre cooed.

      ‘She’d have an aneurism,’ Julia said.

      ‘Who else is going to be living there – any guys?’ Pearl asked.

      ‘Someone called Alan, but he wasn’t in.’

      ‘A pity. Never date someone you’re sharing with, but he might have friends.’

      ‘I’m not looking,’ Julia said.

      ‘Well, you should be.’

      ‘Pearl’s gone all Cupid’s arrow because she’s got some news herself, haven’t you, Pearlie?’ Andre said.

      ‘No,’ she said and scowled.

      ‘What?’ Julia said.

      ‘Nothing,’ Pearl said.

      ‘Are you seeing someone?’ Julia asked.

      Pearl and Andre glanced at each other.

      ‘Not exactly,’ Pearl said.

      ‘He’s called Rudi,’ Andre said. ‘They’re inseparable.’

      ‘Not inseparable. I’m not with him now, am I?’

      Pearl smeared lipstick across her mouth, with no attempt to stay inside the lip line.

      ‘You see him most nights,’ Andre added.

      Julia felt suddenly jealous that Andre knew all about Rudi and she didn’t. She and Pearl had always been the closest of the trio, perhaps because they were both girls, or perhaps because Pearl was an only child, and Julia had been too, until the age of nine, whereas Andre was one of four. Now, it seemed, their physical distance had resulted in an emotional one. Pearl used to tell her everything. It would get back that way, once Julia moved nearer.

      ‘How long has it been with this guy, Pearl?’ Julia asked.

      ‘Not sure.’

      ‘Two months,’ Andre said. ‘She’s only pretending not to remember.’

      ‘Two months!’ Julia said. ‘That’s a marriage for you, isn’t it, Pearl?’

      Andre laughed, and Julia was about to, when she checked herself. Although Pearl was smiling, something in her expression made Julia think she’d been offended.

      ‘You really like him, don’t you?’ Julia said.

      Andre stopped laughing too. ‘Do you?’ he asked.

      Pearl shrugged and turned back to the mirror without replying. Andre threw Julia a confused look.

      ‘What is it?’ she mouthed.

      ‘I don’t know,’ Andre mouthed back.

      ‘Er … guys, I can see you in the mirror,’ Pearl said.

      ‘So, what’s going on, Pearl?’ Julia asked.

      ‘I didn’t want to say anything. It’s really bad timing, me getting a boyfriend so soon after you and Christian split up. I didn’t want to upset you.’

      Julia felt sick. She couldn’t lose Pearl to coupledom. Not just now.

      ‘Nothing’s going to change,’ Pearl said. ‘We didn’t stop hanging out together because of Christian.’

      That was different, Julia wanted to say. They still lived with their parents and Christian used to come out as part of their group.

      ‘No one would ever put you three together as friends,’ he’d said.

      He was right. At school, their bond had been that none of them fitted in. Before Pearl was effortlessly cool and desirable, she had been weird-looking. Tall and spidery thin, with hands and feet too large for even her height, her domed forehead, large wide-set eyes, narrow chin and small mouth gave her an odd and unnerving appearance. Craig Carter, the school bully, said she looked like an alien. ‘E.T.’, he had called her, and it stuck.

      Only at sixteen did her features start to make sense – ethereal rather than alien, her figure willowy not lanky. Jolie laide, Audrey called it, that peculiar, off-beat beauty, androgynous and without symmetry, beloved of avant-garde fashion shoots.

      Andre always preferred hanging out with girls and was taunted for being a ‘poofter’ long before he realised he was, in fact, gay. At which point, he embraced his sexuality, modelled his clothing on Quentin Crisp and any boy taunting him was met with, ‘You weren’t saying that in the bushes last Saturday night, were you, darlin’?’

      Unlike her two friends, Julia felt she had yet to blossom. Awkward and shy changed to slightly less awkward and slightly less shy.

      ‘We’ll find you someone tonight,’ Pearl said. ‘Or I’ll introduce you to one of Rudi’s friends. We could go on double dates.’

      ‘I told you, I’m not interested,’ Julia said.

      ‘Well, whatever, nothing’s going to change. When are you moving to this new place?’ Pearl asked.

      ‘The beginning of June,’ Julia said.

      ‘Yay! The old gang back together every weekend,’ Andre said. ‘And without Craig Carter hanging around.’

      Julia looked at Pearl. Would she be with Rudi every weekend? She tested the water.

      ‘I can’t crash at Pearl’s all the time.’

      ‘Of course, you can,’ Pearl said.

      ‘And if not, you can stay at mine,’ Andre offered.

      Andre shared a dank basement flat in Finsbury Park. Julia had once come across a slug on the bathroom floor.

      ‘She’s staying at mine, aren’t you, Jules?’ Pearl said.

      She really did love Pearl.