The Number One Rule for Girls. Rachel McIntyre

when Beth rang me in a full on ‘my parents hate my boyfriend’ meltdown.

      I SWEAR I didn’t set out to be unsympathetic. I mean, I was no stranger to the agony of man trouble myself. But honestly I’d heard these dating stories so many times before they were practically, you know, biblical.

      And on the first day Beth meeteth a crap man,

      And this man was a total wasteth of time,

      And Beth cryeth. A lot.

      And the more she ranted the more I found myself almost siding with her mum and dad.

      Actually, make that totally siding.

      OK, so I hadn’t met her new boyfriend yet. But no matter how much I got to know him I’d never be able to unknow these two disturbing facts:

      1. How they met. (She walked past him in her school uniform and he followed her home.)

      2. His mates called her ‘jailbait’.

      According to Ayesha, he was a bouncer. With a tattoo on his neck. Which was spelled wrong.

      Not exactly Romeo and Juliet then. And Beth’s dad (aka High Priest of the Victorian Dads’ Club) couldn’t know these creepy finer details either or she’d have been gagged, bound and shackled, never mind merely grounded.

      So less than a minute into Beth’s rantathon and I was already in a mental tug of war. Should I make the supportive ‘poor you’ noises she’d be expecting or say what I really thought?

      ‘Dad can’t see past Shaney’s job,’ Beth was saying now. ‘I told him it’s standing on the door of The Rat and Drainpipe, not dealing drugs to toddlers. And anyway it’s only while he figures out what he really wants to do.’

      This definitely called for diplomacy.

      ‘Well, I suppose it must be difficult to find jobs with his, er, literacy issues,’ I said.

      ‘What “literacy issues”?’

      ‘Ayesha mentioned the tattoo,’ I said.

      Beth tutted. Loudly. ‘GOD, how many times! There’s nothing wrong with Shaney’s spelling, it was the tattooist’s fault.’

      Oops, I’d obviously touched a nerve there. ‘Sorry. Didn’t realise.’

      There was a moment’s silent huff before she hit back. ‘So, have you spoken to Matt yet?’

      My heart thudded, like it always did when someone said his name.

      ‘No. He dumped me and moved to Spain. Remember?’

      ‘Don’t be so touchy, I was only asking,’ she said. ‘It’s so ridiculous you two aren’t talking. You need to ring him and sort it out.’

      Relationship advice from Queen of the Waster Chasers? As if.

      I said a very frosty ‘gotta go’ and lay back on my bed. I just didn’t understand: if my friends and family really wanted to help me get over Matt, why did they keep talking about him? No one seemed to get it: even if his mum’s bar failed and he crawled home from Magaluf on bleeding knees wearing nothing but horsehair underpants and a hat made of brambles . . . I’d still say bollocks to him.

      Swipe left school. Swipe left Matt. It was time to move on.

      Because as Shaney’s tattoo said: You only live wonce.

      ‘I am soooo jealous,’ Ayesha said as she peered in my wardrobe.

      ‘Jealous clothes or jealous there’s no uniform at college?’ I asked, adding yet another cardigan to the pile on my bed.

      ‘Both.’ She sighed.

      As some ancient Greek guy probably never said, no one gets a second chance to make a first impression and so choosing the perfect outfit for my induction at college required careful consideration and help in the form of Ayesha the Wise.

      She was assessing the skirts now, taking each one out of the wardrobe and holding it up. ‘You’ve got so many lovely things, Daze. You’re so lucky.’

      Yep, I totally got the clothes envy. My mum was a professional seamstress. Ayesha’s mum was a chiropodist. My house: piles of to-die-for clothes. Ayesha’s house: piles of manky foot bits.

      ‘Beth rang me in tears about whatshisname, Tattoo Tosser,’ I said, rattling coat hangers down the rail. ‘You know her dad’s locked her in the coal shed? Mouldy crusts for dinner, hourly spankings with the family Bible.’

      ‘It’s not funny,’ said Ayesha. ‘She’s been really upset all day.’

      ‘So what’s Shaney like then?’ I said. ‘Apart from dyslexic.’

      ‘Into leather.’

      ‘Kinky?’

      She shook her head. ‘Motorbikes.’

      ‘No wonder Beth’s dad’s gone mental,’ I said.

      ‘I know. And we thought she’d scraped the barrel when she met Stinky Pete.’

      I nodded slowly. Ah yes, Stinky Pete. Beth’s beardy, battle-re-enacting ex-boyf who dressed like a Viking at the weekends . . . and washed like a Viking at all other times. She finally hung up her horns after an unexpectedly warm spell in March, telling him he needed to spend less time in costume and more time with Mr Soap.

      She was pulling dresses out of the wardrobe now and arranging them on top of my bed.

      ‘So what’s the deal?’ I asked.

      ‘Well, he does weightlifting so he’s got these massive muscles. She says he makes her feel girly.’

      Girly. I flashed on a vision of Beth pinked up, giggly and fluffified. Scattering IQ points like confetti every time Shaney flexed a bicep because she’d fallen for the myth that fit guys never fancy clever girls.

      ‘Sounds like she scraped through the bottom of the barrel this time,’ I said.

      ‘Er, what happened to Rule number 2?’ said Ayesha. ‘You know – Always support your friends.’

      Ah, yes. The Rules were how me, Beth and Ayesha first got to know each other. It was during one of those get-to-know-the-group things at the start of Year 7: come up with a list of rules of acceptable behaviour. I couldn’t remember anything else we did in English that year, but the Rules stuck.

      They were our Ten Commandments; the girl code our friendship was founded on. Except there were only nine of them. And they weren’t so much carved in stone as totally rewritten in Year 9 when rules concerning boys became necessary. Still, the principle had stayed the same and, whenever I didn’t know what to do, the Rules could usually point me in the right direction.

      It was actively depressing. Beth had the brains of a Nobel Prizewinner-in-waiting, but when it came to potential partners her man-nav was permanently set to ‘unworthy’. And when the latest Mr OK turned out to be just another Mr No Way, me and Ayesha were left mopping up the tears and chanting Rule #3: Never change to please someone else.

      ‘These?’ Ayesha the fashion fairy held out a grey-and-fuchsia tea dress in one hand, a purple patterned blazer dangling from the other.

      ‘Not too OTT?’

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘You told me the best thing about college is that you can wear what you want . . . so, Rule number 6: Dress to make yourself happy.’

      True. I had been poised to set fire to the Polyester Chains of Conformity the other day. Hardly a grand gesture then if I rose like a phoenix wearing tatty