Victory Dance

Pin-ups and Gossips

If the days leading up to invitations being sent out were filled with rumours, then the days after they were received were filled with a heady rush in making sure everything was prepared. New dresses were to be swapped or found or made, make-up was scrounged for or created if you knew how. Of course, the men were all as calm as cucumbers. The most they had to prepare for was lining their stomachs on the night. At least, all the married men were calm enough.

"I heard that lil' Louie wants to ask Olive to dance," I could hear the smirk in Nancy's voice as she flicked through the clothes in my wardrobe, "Oh...oh, when did you get this shirt?!" She squealed, spinning around to show me what she had in her hands.

"At a swap – keep your voice down! He's probably in his room," I hissed, slipping off from my bed to float over to my best friend with a grin, "Not Olive Riley?"

"One and the same."

"Oh...her dad-"

"-his blood will just boil up and he'll keel over," She nodded, finishing my sentence. The grin on her face widened, "I honestly can't wait!"

There's a few things that astound me about Nancy Laughton: on my first day of school 18 years ago, Nancy Laughton sat down beside me at lunch when no one else would. She remained silent for a minute whilst I chewed on my cheese and pickle sandwich before she rubbed her hand down my arm and then checked the palm of her hand. With a satisfied, toothless grin, she climbed onto the bench, holding her hand aloft as she declared to the rest of the room, "I TOLD YOU IT WOULDN'T COME OFF." Once she had gotten through Mr. Keller's bollocking, she explained to me that some of the other kids were too scared to sit beside me. Their mothers had told them to come back clean and they were worried that my blackness would rub off on them, dirtying their new school clothes. From a young age, Nancy could smell bullshit from a mile away and she was never afraid to call it, either.

"Do you reckon she'd say yes?" I asked, taking the hanger from Nancy to put my shirt away as she continued to pull out dress after dress from my cupboard. I found it was always best to try and clean up as you go along in the middle of Hurricane Nancy.

She spun towards me once more, pressing my high-waisted trousers to her body and tutting in despair when they only came to her hips, "Eh...yes. Yes, she will. Have you not heard?! God, I wish you weren't such a short-arse."

Another thing about Nancy, is that she seems to be the fountain of all the gossip in Bristol – maybe in the whole of England, actually. There must have been something about her that made everyone gather around and spill their deepest, darkest secrets with her. It was local knowledge that Nancy would know everything – as much as it was local knowledge that if everyone knew your problem, you could trace the source all the way back to Nancy. For some reason, the fact that she had loose lips was never a real problem, though – she still managed to maintain her status as the shoulder the cry on, no matter how many dramas she had caused. Her most egregious was when she was 15, and had somehow found out that our headmaster was sleeping with the school secretary. She did have a claim to fame of telling us that Roy Emerton had died five whole minutes before it was announced on the radio.

"It's not my fault you're basically a giant. They'd be hanging off your skinny arse anyway - what have I not heard now?"

"Oh, she fancies the pants off him. Seriously! They all went out to the cinema together to see The Thief of Bagdad and Molly told me Olive insisted she sat beside him."

"You're jok-"

My bedroom door creaked open in that moment, with my mother's round face appearing behind the frame, "Sorry, girls – Nance, are you staying for dinner, pet?"