Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [60]
A lot of kids were saying they smoked, but I don’t think many did. It was like boasting you’d had sex – it was the cool thing to say, whether you had or not. But a few people did and I decided to give it a go. I remember, it was a John Player Black and it was absolutely disgusting, but I forced myself to persevere. I really wish I hadn’t. Until recently, I smoked forty a day.
I was helped in those days by the fact that it wasn’t just Robert Dyas – and my boyfriend – who thought I was sixteen. I could buy cigarettes and booze from anywhere, as long as I wasn’t wearing my school uniform. When I realized how unusual this was, I saw an opportunity. I bought a packet of twenty, a box of Swan Vesta and went back to school and sold a cigarette and a match for ten pence. Before long, I was making enough to give up one of my evening jobs. Most importantly, it reminded me of those Sunday mornings spent looking for pound notes with Mum and the time we sold melon at the Bay City Rollers concert.
I’ve inherited her eye for an opportunity. It was a proud moment.
Speaking of Mum, while all the other kids were fabricating their sexual- or nicotine- or alcohol-based experiences, I never once joined in. If I’d revealed my skill at rolling joints and setting up bongs, I’d have been a legend. But I kept quiet. That was in the past. I’d done my best to forget it had ever happened.
I told even close friends that my mother had died of pneumonia, which is technically true. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve been comfortable enough to tell anyone the truth. Obviously I was more scarred by the experience than I was prepared to admit.
It’s funny, looking back, how I managed to spin even something like illicit drinking and smoking so I came out of it looking more successful than anyone else. Okay, I thought, you can’t be a winner doing this – but you can do it better.
So instead of buying the usual cheap brands like Rothmans or B&H, I always bought Dunhill. They were more expensive and, I reasoned, therefore classier. They were certainly more distinctive. And as for alcohol, I began keeping a bottle of red, a bottle of rosé and a bottle of white under my bed for when visitors called. I thought it was the height of sophistication to be able to offer a glass to girlfriends after school. None of us knew that these bottles, opened weeks earlier, were well past their sell-by dates, so would obviously taste rank. We thought we were so grown up.
While all this was going on, my body was changing too. I noticed people had stopped taking the mickey out of my looks and, actually, boys were queuing up for my attention. Girls, too, wanted to be my friend. I was Miss Popular and I loved it.
The more attention I got, the more I wanted. I started wearing make-up, agonizing over every little detail for hours before I went out. Best of all, I bought my first pair of shoes with my own money. The cool girls at school – probably the ones from Woodingdean – all wore high heels. I thought, I’m going to get a pair of those.
My experience of shopping was close to zero. Granny had made most my clothes and the rest we’d picked up at secondhand fairs in the community centre. As a result, I was often four or five seasons out of date. So wandering around Brighton looking for the perfect pair of heels with cash burning a hole in my pocket was never going to end with the bargain of the century.
But my naivety was exposed when it came to size. I didn’t realize that stilettos started at three inches. I saw an amazing pair of six-inch heels and I thought that’s what they all looked like, so I bought them. Who knows where I got them – it was probably a sex shop. All I do know is that, for the next two years, I would not be seen dead in anything lower. To this day, I won’t leave the house in anything less than four inches.
Shoes accounted for, make-up applied, that just left my hair. The craze then