PGC Young is a young writer from Croydon, UK. Her fiction has recently been published in Mslexia. She’s also written articles for MPs on equalities, for The Radio Times, and has edited podcast scripts at the BBC. Right now, she’s writing a feminist speculative fiction novel and a crime novel set in Victorian London whilst studying with both Faber Academy and Curtis Brown Creative.
The first time I smiled at Tabatha Brown, she didn’t smile back.
All hundred-and-twelve of us were sweating into our woollen skirts, our opaque tights and our dry-clean-only blazers, like overwatered plants in the great greenhouse of the school lunch hall. Little did I know that glass monstrosity was to be the setting of a seven-year-long epic, and this was the day when roles would be assigned. Tabatha Brown and her friends were already playing the part of the wanted, whilst I, along with the majority of my classmates, had yet to find my place among the remaining supporting roles, from Maths Whizz to Pot-Head to Gay Best Friend.
Taking my first steps on that linoleum floor, I had my first glimpse of a feeling that would persist throughout my school and university years: the feeling that all eyes are on you, ready to scrutinise everything you do, everything you say, from the brand of your shoes to your last exam result, and that one wrong move will be the death of you. But simultaneously, you feel this desperate need to make people give a shit about you, to become someone who’s worth all that scrutiny, because the only thing worse than being hated is being invisible. And, of course, through all of this, you know that you must act nonchalant, because if you give away the game, you lose it. That is adolescence.
One of the first people I spotted in that bustling room was Tabatha Brown, although I didn’t know that was her name yet. My eye was drawn to her because she, unlike most of us, already knew the unwritten dress code. Her skirt, for one, was about a third of the length of mine, and I assume it had been professionally altered. Mine, by comparison, was a heavy thing, and fell just over my knees. And Tabatha was already wearing make-up – real, grown-up, ‘natural-look’ make-up – whilst my own collection at home consisted entirely of freebies from magazines in dazzling, unwearable shades. Also, she was already standing in a group of people, laughing. Tabatha looked like someone worth talking to.
So, remembering what my mother had told me that morning when I’d cried in the car, too scared to walk through the school gates – that if you’re nice to people, they’ll be nice back, and that everyone is in the same boat – I decided to try and instigate a conversation with Tabatha. But the problem was, I couldn’t move. My legs were stuck, and all I could do was stand there by the door as other new students flooded in around me, making friends and marking territory. I couldn’t just go marching over there and talk to her. I’d have to catch her eye first, maybe smile? Then if she smiled back, that would give me permission to approach.
Eventually, she did look in my direction. I gave her my best, bravest grin – can we be friends? – and waited for her response. But all she did was stare and mouth something to the girl standing next to her, who then looked up and giggled.
I don’t know what they were laughing at. It could have been anything. I might have even imagined the laugh to justify my own social ineptitude. But something I am sure of is that Tabatha Brown doesn’t remember that moment. The memory of my smile, and of her straight face, is mine alone.
The next time I remember interacting with Tabatha Brown – assuming that talking about her behind her back doesn’t count – was about a year later, in a biology lesson, when Mr Dale – or Mr Gayle, as we called him behind his back, because he was rumoured to have a boyfriend – moved her next to me to stop her from ‘distracting’ the boy she was sat next to at the back of the classroom. Now of course, I can see that Mr Dale’s comment carried at least a tinge of misogyny. But at the time, I was entirely focused on the injustice of Mr Dale failing to realise that I, too, could find Tabatha distracting, although in my case it would be because of her endless hair-flicking and facetious comments, rather than because she was trying to flirt with me.
As soon as she sat down, I smelled her perfume. It was like the kind they spray in department stores, fruity and overwhelming. Apart from that, I tried not to notice her, and was fully prepared to spend the rest of the lesson in quiet contempt, with my left hand covering my work to ensure she didn’t try and copy me.
But as soon as Mr Dale left the room to fetch our textbooks from his office, leaving us each with a diagram of a plant cell to label, Tabatha turned to me and said,
‘Izzy told me that you fancy Sam Gilley.’
‘That’s a lie.’ I said to my worksheet, writing the word ‘nucleus’. Part of me was delighted that Tabatha had deemed me worthy of her attention, even if it was only because she had no one more interesting to talk to right now.
‘Then why did she say you fancy him?’
I looked up at her. Her eyes were a deep blue, or at least they looked like they were when framed by those spidery, mascara-laden eyelashes.
‘She didn’t. Me and Izzy don’t waste our time talking about boys.’
‘Oh, come on. Who do you fancy then?’
‘Your make-up is smudged.’ I tapped a spot underneath my left eye. ‘Right here.’
She didn’t take the bait. ‘I’ll tell you who I fancy. James.’
There were three James’s in the Lower School, but if you didn’t give a surname, everyone would know you meant James Butler. As the only boy who could be considered anything but prepubescent in our year, he was the one that every girl had their eye on, including my friend Izzy, although I myself had never been interested. So, I could have easily guessed that James would be the person Tabatha liked, even if I didn’t already know he was in fact her boyfriend.
‘So, who is it?’
‘I don’t fancy anyone. Can we just do our work?’ I tried not to let my irritation come through; it would only encourage her.
‘I won’t tell anyone.’
‘Just leave me alone.’
‘Come on, who is it?’
‘Ok, Tabatha.’ I put the lid on my pen and looked her dead in the eye. ‘I fancy you, ok? Happy now?’ I gave her my best hair flick and began writing the word, ‘mitochondria’.
‘Oh my God, really? You’re a lesbian? I had no idea!’ She turned to the girl behind her and said in a frantic whisper, ‘Did you know Ellie’s a lesbian?’
Something cracked. ‘I am not a fucking lesbian!’
At first, I assumed my sudden outburst was what had expelled all other sounds from that room. But then, following Tabatha’s wide-eyed gaze, I spotted Mr Dale standing in the doorway, looking right at me.
That is one of the moments my brain has played over and over again on sleepless nights before exams, lonely hungover mornings, and the day before my period when everything is terrible. Even now, almost twenty years on, I still think about it sometimes.
And so, when I bumped into Tabatha Brown while waiting for the Number 2 bus last week, it felt more like spotting an actress from a film I’d watched a hundred times than seeing someone from my own past. As soon as I spotted her walking by, with that same long blonde hair, those same piercing blue eyes – it turns out they really are unusually bright, it wasn’t just the make-up – I immediately looked at my shoes, letting my hair flop over my face. But she spotted me anyway.
‘Ellie MacDonald? Is it really you?’
I looked up to meet her gaze.
‘Tabatha Brown, right?’ As if I’d ever forget her.
‘Yeah! So weird seeing you here. What are the odds?’
I felt it would have been facetious to point out that spotting a former classmate less than a twenty minute walk away from your old school was hardly something to write home about, especially when almost everyone, no matter where I knew them from, seemed to live in London now. So instead, I said, ‘I know.’
‘So nice to see you! Although it’s not Tabatha Brown anymore – it’s Tabatha Butler.’ She held up her left hand, flashing two rings, one diamond, one gold.
‘Butler?’ I scanned my memory. ‘As in James Butler?’
She giggled. ‘You remember! Yeah, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it?’
Up until this point, I had engaged a kind of angry fantasy whenever I thought of Tabatha’s life. I’d imagined her jumping from one dysfunctional relationship to another other, never holding a job, and not making anything of her life. Somehow, imagining that people like her had become failures validated my life choices in a way that my own list of successes – running the London half-marathon, making editor at a leading publishing house, learning French – could not. I had sometimes even fantasised about bumping into her like this, telling her about how wonderful my life was now, how socially normal and successful I’d become, just to see the look on her face.
But seeing her in the flesh shattered all that. She was no failure. But she wasn’t the Tabatha Brown I remembered either – she was wearing a spotted dress that I’d have found too mumsy to wear, and as far as I could see she wasn’t wearing any make-up. She had a full Bag For Life with her, with a William Morris pattern on it.
‘So, what are you up to now?’ I asked, thinking, trophy wife.
‘Right now I’m just picking up my shopping,’ she laughed, ‘But generally? I’m a trainee surgeon at St Thomas’s.’
‘Right,’ I said, trying to work out where that fit in with everything I already knew about Tabatha Brown.
‘How about you?’
She didn’t seem to be aware what she’d said might have come as a surprise to me. The last I’d heard about her was that she was taking a second gap year in Australia, just floating around. I couldn’t imagine her going from that to a medical degree, let alone to surgical training.
‘I’m an editor at Penguin. My office is just around the corner.’
‘Ooh, wow! Well done to you. Taking a half day then?’
‘Yeah, I’m catching a flight to Italy with a friend this afternoon, so I thought I’d come in for the morning, sort everything out before I go.’
Friend. I wondered what Amy would say about me calling her that, given that we’d been sleeping together for eleven months. There was just something about Tabatha that made me want to slip back into the closet, to hide in a way that, since I came out in my first year at university, I never thought I’d need to again.
‘That’s great.’ She paused for a moment, and I felt my insides clench up at the awkwardness of that silence. ‘Are you married, or…?’
Had she guessed about Amy? Perhaps I was just being paranoid.
‘Not married, but I’ve been with my partner for about a year now.’
‘That’s lovely. I’m really happy for you.’
It was at that moment that my bus arrived, and people began to pile out of the back. I rooted around my bag for my Oyster card.
Taking the hint, she flashed me a smile and stepped backwards to allow the people from the bus to walk between us.
‘Send her my best wishes,’ she called over their heads.
I didn’t turn around and climb onto the bus. I couldn’t. Instead, after the passengers had passed between us, I blurted out,
‘I didn’t fancy you,’
‘Sorry?’ She clearly thought she’d misheard me. But it was too late to take it back now.
‘Just, at school, in biology? Year Eight. You asked me who I fancied and I said you. But I didn’t. I just wanted you to leave me alone.’
‘Oh, right.’ She looked uncertain, and I didn’t know whether it was of her memory or of my sanity.
Before I could say anything else, the bus driver honked his horn, and I turned around and jumped on.
By the time I’d sat down, she’d gone. But a few minutes later, I saw her again by a nice car with a tall, brown-haired, bearded man in a business suit. James Butler hadn’t changed one bit. They were laughing, talking – about her bumping into me? – and I couldn’t not watch.
Then they spotted me. She pointed at my face behind the bus window, and they both grinned and waved.
When I met her smiling eyes, it was with an empty gaze and my best straight face. Perhaps it was because my tongue was twitching against my teeth, because I was resisting the urge to stick it out at her, to give her the finger, to scream and call her a bitch. Or maybe it was another way of saying, yes, I like women, but no, I never liked you.
But I don’t really think so. Honestly, I think I’d just run out of parts to play.