The Complete Fab Confessions of Georgia Nicolson: Books 1-10

She said, “Why? What do you mean? Do you mean false eyelashes?”

I said, “No, I mean eyebrows. You know, the hairy bits above your eyes.” Honestly friends can be thick.

“Of course they don’t do eyebrows. Everyone’s got eyebrows, why would you need a spare pair?”

I said, “I haven’t got any any more. I shaved them off by mistake.”

She said, “I’m coming round now, don’t do anything until I get there.”

Noon

When I open the door Jas just looks at me like I’m a Klingon. “You look like a Klingon,” she says. She really is a dim friend. It’s more like having a dog than a friend, actually.

6:00 p.m.

Jas has gone. Her idea of help was to draw some eyebrows on with eyeliner pencil.

Obviously I have to stay in now for ever.

7:00 p.m.

Dad is annoying me so much. He just comes to the door, looks in and laughs, and then he goes away... for a bit. He brought Uncle Eddie upstairs for a look. What am I? A daughter or a fairground attraction? Uncle Eddie said, “Never mind, if they don’t grow back you and I can go into showbiz. We can do a double act doing impressions of billiard balls.” Oh how I laughed. Not.

8:00 p.m.

The only nice person is Libby. She was stroking where my eyebrows used to be and then she went off and brought me a lump of cheese. Great. I have become ratwoman.

I wonder who our form teacher will be?

Pray God it’s not Hawkeye Heaton. I don’t want her to be constantly reminded of the unfortunate locust incident. Who would have thought a few locusts could eat so much in so little time? When I let them out into the biology lab for a bit of a fly round I wouldn’t have expected them to eat the curtains.

Strikes me that Hawkeye has very little sense of humour. She is also about a hundred and a Miss – which speaks volumes in my book. Mind you, as ratwoman I’ll probably end up as a teacher of biology in some poxy girls’ school. Like her. Having cats and warm milk. Wearing huge knickers. Listening to the radio. Being interested in things.

I may as well kill myself. I would if I could be bothered but I’m too depressed.

Saturday August 29th

10:00 a.m.

M and D went out to town to buy stuff. Mum said did I want her to buy some school shoes for me? I glanced meaningfully at her shoes. It’s sad that someone of her mature years tries to keep up with us young ones. You’d think she’d be ashamed to be mutton dressed as lamb, but no. I could see her knickers when she sat down the other day (and I wasn’t the only one).

11:00 a.m.

Phone rang. Ellen and Julia and Jas are coming round after they’ve been to town. Apparently Jas has seen someone in a shop that she really likes. I suppose this is what life will be like for me – never having a boyfriend, always just living through others.

Noon

I was glancing through Just 17 and it listed kissing techniques. What I don’t understand is how do you know when to do it, and how do you know which side to go to? You don’t want to be bobbing around like pigeons for hours but I couldn’t tell much from the photos. I wish I had never read it, it has made me more nervous and confused than I was before. Still, why should I care? I am going to be staying in for the rest of my life. Unless some gorgeous boy loses his way and wanders into my street and then finds his way up the stairs into my bedroom with a blindfold on I am stuck between these four walls for ever.

12:15 p.m.

Perhaps as I can’t go out I can use my time wisely. I may tidy my room and put all my dresses in one part of my wardrobe, and so on.

12:17 p.m.

I hate housework.

12:18 p.m.

If I marry or, as is more likely, become a high-flying executive lesbian, I am never going to do housework. I will have to have an assistant. I have no talent for tidying. Mum thinks that I deliberately ignore the obvious things but the truth is I can’t tell the difference between tidy and not tidy. When Mum says, “Will you just tidy up the kitchen?” I look around and I think, Well, there’s a few pans on the side, and so on, but I think it looks OK. And then the row begins.

2:00 p.m.

Putting the coffee on for the girls. It’s instant but if you mix the coffee with sugar in the cup for ages it goes into a sort of paste, then you add water and it’s like espresso. It makes your arms ache like billy-o, though.

7:00 p.m.

Brilliant afternoon! We tried all different make-ups. I’ve been Sellotaping my fringe to make it longer and straighter and to cover up the space where my eyebrows were. Jas said, “It makes you look like you’ve escaped from the funny lads’ home.” Ellen says if I emphasise my mouth and eyes then attention will be drawn away from my nose. So it’s heavy lippy for me from now on.

We were all lolling about on my bed, listening to the Top Forty and Jas told us about the gorgeous boy in the shop. She knows he is called Tom because someone called him Tom in the shop he works in. Supersleuth! We all pledged that we would wait until I can go out again and then we will go and look at him.

Talk then turned to kissing. Ellen said, “I went to a Christmas party at my cousin’s last year and this boy from Liverpool was there. I think he was a sailor. Anyway, he was nineteen or something, and he brought some mistletoe over and he kissed me.”

We were full-on, attention-wise. I said, “What was it like?”

Ellen said, “A bit on the wet side, like a sort of warm jelly feeling.”

Jas said, “Did he have his lips closed or open?”

Ellen thought. “A bit open.”

I asked, “Did his tongue pop out?”

Ellen said, “No, just his lips.”

I wanted to know what she did with her tongue.

“Well, I just left it where it normally is.”

I persisted, “What about your teeth?”

Ellen was a bit exasperated. “Oh, yeah, I took those out.”

I looked a bit hurt. You know, like, I was only asking...

She said, “I can’t really remember. It was a bit tickly and it didn’t last long, but I liked it, I think. He was quite nice but he had a girlfriend and I suppose he thought I was just a little thirteen-year-old who hadn’t been around much.”

I said, “He was right.”