TWO DIFFERENT LIVES

Two girls and parallel lives

Alice hated her name because she thought it meant she’d spent most of her life in a place called wonderland when she knew that she hadn’t. She couldn’t remember one thing about what ought to have been a most memorable adventure. But then, Alice had never had the sort of life anyone, if they had it, would choose to remember. It was her parents, really. If money couldn’t but it then they didn’t want it

Yet everyone said she was lucky to be the daughter of a rich man living in a big house with a huge well manicured garden, but she thought that in truth she was far from lucky. Her friend Fiona was the lucky one, and that friend was the daughter of a particularly poor family with a father who didn’t even own a car.

When Fiona was taken on holiday, which was only once a year, she went in a bus to the seaside and stayed for a week in a caravan before catching that same bus back home. But when Alice went on holiday there was all the messing about at the airport (she hated airports) and then mummy moaning that even though they’d flown goodness knows how many miles and landed, they were still hours away from the hotel. There was so much dull pressure about the whole affair. She would much have preferred to be Fiona. Fiona didn’t even know what an airport was like, and instead of an expensive hotel for the weeks when she was away she rather liked the idea of a cosy caravan surrounded by acres of tidy grass.

Fiona, of course, didn’t understand what Alice grumbled about. To her the very idea of going over the seas to another country, of flying through the air in an aeroplane, of spending different money in different shops and seeing different things on different streets, that was excitement beyond belief!

“But Fi,” mumbled Alice, “it’s all such a bore!”

They were the very best of friends, peculiarly enough, but they had very little in common. But as children and then growing through their teens they were inseparable. They even went to the same school and not the boarding school where Alice was supposed to be going until she created such a fuss about it and even told lies about the goings on behind the cricket pavilion (a cricket pavilion on a girls’ school playing field! But once it had been a boys’ school and the field facilities had been left in place). But Alice told if village boys finding their way onto the field, behind the cricket pavilion, and she asked her father what a condom was and why the boys wanted her to buy some, and almost overnight found herself being transplanted into the state school where Fiona went. That was a major triumph, and it cemented the two girls together as if nature had meant them to be together.

“Wouldn’t you be happier at your posh school?” asked Fiona on one occasion.

“You must be joking! They were all lezzies there!” declared Alice, with as much accuracy as she’s used about boys behind the cricket pitch.

Time did its usual thing, and passed, ticking iself away until years turned the girls into eighteen year-olds and real rather than imagined lads entered their lives, and one day Alice appeared at home with Kelvin in tow.

And at about the same time Fiona arrived at her back door with Colin in her wake.

Kelvin came from another big house at the other end of town, but the distance between them was insignificant as he had been given a small car when he passed his driving test, aged seventeen whereas Colin knew the relevant bus timetables off by heart.

Kelvin knew all the places he thought Alice would like to go to, but they had one distinct disadvantage so far as romance was concerned. Kelvin’s chosen places were’t new to her because her father had already taken her to most of them, ountry houses with special gardens, that sort of thng. Kelvin was like a younger version of her father, and although she loved her father because she was supposed to love him, the idea of being stuck with a junior version of him together with an accent she couldn’t stand was an obstacle to abiding happness.

“Can’t you be more normal?” she asked him, and to her surprise it turned out that he didn’t know what normal was.

Colin, on the other hand, reminded Fiona of her own family. There was no excitement in him, no adventure, just a lad who fitted round the dining table where she lived as though he had been created for it, and when he took her to meet his own parents they were so too nice that she could have wept. Nice wasn’t an adventure, and she started to really envy Alice and the throughly public school boy she went around with, hand in hand, or in a smashing little car that took her out of town to wonderful places on the road map of the county.

Colin, seeing the way the wind was blowing, bought himself an old banger. That’s what Kelvin called it when he saw it.

And to prove a point that didn’t need proving Kelvin’s father bought him a bigger car, and then he did look the part as he drove off to university, taking Alice with him because he’d acquired lodgings for the two of them and, he said, she could spend the days learning to knit.

Fiona was lost without Alice to gossip with so she found herself with a boring check-out job at the local supermarket followed by endless rather tedious hours with Colin, who took her to pubs at night and played darts with a few friends.

“You don’t mind, do you, precious?” he said in his infectiously cheeky way, “they’re mates from the good old days, and it won’t last long…”

It did last long and Fiona spent much of her time being bored.

Meanwhile, Alice managed to get herself pregnant, and when she told Kelvin, he was shocked.

“I thought you were on the pill,” he said, blaming her because he’d been obliged by the forces of nature to move that bit too close to her during several of the nights in their shared bed.

“Please, Kelvin, take me home,” she begged, not liking the idea of telling her parents about the growling infant inside her, but knowing that if she put it off too long the shock, to them, would be all the greater.

“At the weekend if you must,” he growled, and added “you silly moo!” which she found offensive.

She didn’t go straight home when they arrived in Brumpton, though, but asked Kelvin to drop her off at the supermarket where Claire, her lifelong friend, worked.

And there she was on the checkout nearest the door.

After a few giggles and hugs and cups of tea during Claire’s tea-break she decided that the one friend she had in all the world would understand the seriousness of her problem.

“Claire, love, can you keep a secret?”she asked.

“What? The one about you being in the family way?” grinned Claire.

“Who told you?” stammered Alice, “because I haven’t told anyone except for Kelvin, and he’s plain stupid about denying it!”

“It’s written on your face, love,” answered her friend, “and you know I can always keep a secret.”

“I’ve not told my folks,” Alice said, “and I hate the idea, but I’ve got to, I suppose.”

“They’ll find out soon enough,” smiled Claire, “and of course I’ll come with you! What are friends for if it’s not to give each other support when it’s needed.

Two hours later Alice’s father told her to leave his house forthwith and not to darken his doorstep again.

“I knew you’d get in trouble having a friend like that w***e,” he growled indicating Claire with a wave of his hand, and added to her, rather spitefully for a man of his own social class, “and you’ll be pregnant too, will you?”

It was time for Claire to explain herself.

“No,” she said, “I’m a virgin and likely to stay this way while my boyfriend spends all his time playing darts with his mates down the pub.”

And she put one arm round Alce’s shoulder and smiled at her. “Come on, Al,” she said, “I know we’ve got a spare room and you can doss down in that if you want.”

And that was what happened. A matter of balance was put right.

© Peter Rogerson 27.04.23

Reviews

[DIVYA]

A friend in need is a friend indeed. Fiona and Alice were inseparable as children and now it seems they'll go on being friends for a lifetime, watching out for each other. This was such a lively story and I loved the part where Alice told her father lies just to get back to the state school. Also very amusing was the treatment of Alice by her boyfriend Kelvin, and you presented a very realistic picture of how some men treat their girlfriends like cows. Alice never really cared much for being rich and so all well that ends well. One small issue I'd like to point out --- it must be Fiona and not Claire, you mean. The one Alice returned to confide in and the one who took her in.

Loved this story!

[Peter Rogerson]

I sometimes wonder if wealth can actually be a hindrance to happiness.

[DIVYA]

I can't decide but I loved the story all the same. 😊