wrote it
a play that’s taken this long to get staged because every company she sent it to turned it down as not being right for them
and she couldn’t bear the thought of resurrecting Bush Women Theatre to put it on
when Dominique left, she was left to steer the battleship alone
which she did for a few years, feeling abandoned, never finding someone to replace Dominique who had provided the practical solutions to Amma’s creative ideas
she dismantled the company in the end
and went freelance
Shirley
her oldest friend will be here tonight, she’s attended every one of Amma’s shows since she was a teenager, has been a constant in her life since they met as eleven-year-olds at grammar school when Shirley, the only other brown girl in the school, made a beeline for her in the playground when Amma was standing alone one lunchtime amid the excitement of green-uniformed girls screeching and whooping and having fun skipping with ropes and playing hopscotch and games of tag
there was Shirley standing before her
Shirley, with perfectly straightened hair, her face so shiny (Vaseline, Amma later discovered), with her perfectly-knotted school tie, white socks pulled up to her knees
so composed, so neat, so nice-looking
unlike Amma’s own messy hair, mainly because she was unable to stop unpicking the two braids her mother plaited for her every morning
or stop her socks slipping down to her ankles because she couldn’t help rubbing one foot against the other leg
and her school cardigan was three sizes too big because her mother had made it to last three years
hello, she said, my name’s Shirley, do you want me to be your friend?
Amma nodded, Shirley took her hand and led her to the group she’d just left who were playing rubber band skipping
they were inseparable after that, Shirley paid attention in class and could be relied on to help out with homework
Shirley listened for hours to Amma talking about the crushes she had on boys, and later, after a transitional bisexual period (with brief crushes on Shirley’s brothers Errol and Tony), girls
Shirley never had a negative word to say about her sexuality, covered for her when she bunked off school and listened avidly to her tales from the youth theatre – the smoking, snogging, drinking, acting – in that order, even when their paths forked after school, Shirley into teaching, Amma into theatre, they maintained their friendship
and even when Amma’s arty friends said Shirley was the dullest person on the planet and did she have to invite her? Amma stood up for Shirley’s ordinariness
she’s a good person, she protested
Shirley babysat Yazz whenever she was asked (Amma also babysat Shirley’s girls once or twice, maybe?)
Shirley never once complained when Amma needed to borrow money to pay off her debts, which she sometimes wrote off as birthday presents
it felt one-way for a long time, until Amma reasoned she made Shirley’s safe and predictable life more interesting and scintillating
and that was what she gave back
then there were the members of her group or squad, as Yazz corrects her, no one says group of friends, Mum, it’s so, like, prehistoric?
she misses the people they used to be, when they were all discovering themselves with no idea how much they might change in the years to come
her group came to her opening nights, were at the end of a phone (landline, of course – how did that work back then?) for a spontaneous night out
were there to share and stir-up dramas
Mabel was a freelance photographer who went straight once she hit her thirties, ditched all her lesbian friends as part of her reinvention
as probably the first black, Barbour-wearing, horse-riding housewife in the Shires
Olivine went from being un-castable in Britain because she was so dark to landing a major crime series in Hollywood and living the life of a star with ocean views and glossy magazine spreads
Katrina was a nurse who returned to Aberdeen where she belonged, she said, became a born-again Anglophile, married Kirsty, a doctor, and refuses to come down to London
Lakshmi will be here tonight, a saxophonist who composed for their shows, before deciding there was nothing worse than a song and a tune and began to put the niche into avant garde and play what Amma privately thinks of as bing-bang-bong music, usually headlining weird festivals in remote fields with more cows than punters in attendance
Lakshmi has also developed an improbable guru persona for the gullible students she tutors at music college
who gather around the hearth of her council flat sipping cheap cider from tea cups
while she sits cross-legged on the sofa in flowing robes, long hair streaked with silver
denouncing chord progressions in favour of micro-tonal improvisation and poly-tempic, poly-rhythmic and multi-phonic structures and effects
while declaring that composition is dead, girls and boys
I’m all about the contemporary extemporary
even though Lakshmi is approaching sixty, her chosen lover, male or female, remains in the 25–35 age range, at the upper end of which the relationship ends
when Amma calls her on it, she comes up with a reason other than that they’re no longer quite so impressionable, fresh-faced and taut-skinned
then there was Georgie, the only one who didn’t survive into the nineties
a plumber’s apprentice from Wales, she was abandoned by her Jehovah’s Witness family for being gay
she became the lost orphan child they all took under their wing
the only woman in a council’s plumbing team, she had to endure constant innuendo from her male colleagues with their jokes about screw hole locators, blow bags, nipples and ballcocks
as well as comments on what they’d like to do with her arse when she was fixing something under a sink or peering down a gutter
Georgie
drank two litres of Coca Cola a day and mixed it with spirits and drugs at night
she was the least lucky of their group in attracting women, and sadly, stupidly, thought she’d be on her own forever
many a night out ended in tears with Georgie saying she was too ugly to pull, which wasn’t true, they all endlessly reassured her how attractive she was, although Amma considered her more Artful Dodger than Oliver Twist
which in the lesbian world wasn’t such a bad thing
Amma can never forget the last time she saw her, both of them sitting on the kerb outside the Bell as the revellers drifted drunkenly off while Amma forced a finger down Georgie’s throat to make her regurgitate the pills she’d taken in the toilets
for the first time in their friendship, Amma actually showed her frustration with her friend for being such a hopeless case, for being so insecure, for not being able to cope with adulthood, for getting off her face all the time, it’s time to grow up, Georgie, it’s time to grow the fuck up!
a week later she went over the top floor balcony on the Pepys Estate in Deptford where she lived
to this day, Amma wonders how Georgie died
did she fall (accident), fly (tripping), throw herself off (suicide) or was she pushed (unlikely)
she