Kizzy’s Bedroom: The Incident Room & Form Photo Forensics
Saturday 29 April 1978 (Late Evening)
Once the boys had gone, Kizzy and Momo walked back to Kizzy’s place through the late April dusk, all spring blossom and post-disaster quiet. In the kitchen they made tea—builders’ strength—and talked about horses, boys, and going back to school. Taking a loo break, Momo padded upstairs and along the landing, past the familiar wallpaper and fading school photos.
The door to Kizzy’s room was ajar. Momo, nosy by nature and by right, slipped in. She made straight for the vinyl stack. First up: Get Stoned — The Rolling Stones’ 30 Greatest Hits. Predictable Kiz, still high off that Stones concert at the City Hall last year.
Next: The Kick Inside — Kate Bush. That raised an eyebrow. An unusual choice for Kizzy, but it was the one all the girls had obsessed over, especially the subset who choreographed a dance routine to ‘Wuthering Heights’. Neither Kizzy nor Momo had joined in.
Turning to leave, Momo spotted the Form Photo—Eastfield High UVth b—peeled from its cardboard frame and pinned to the corkboard like evidence. Barely a face had been spared. Pin marks punctured every girl like a madwoman’s voodoo hex. Momo was still making sense of it when Kizzy walked in behind her.
Momo spun, flustered. “Oh, Kiz, sorry—you know me. Just a quick nose through your records. But this?”
Kizzy leaned on the doorframe, tea in hand, unbothered. She could’ve disowned the whole project. He was gone for the term—eleven weeks of exile. But it wasn’t just about him. This had become something else. A map. An incident board. Evidence of adolescent misadventure.
“I was trying to get Robbie off my back,” she said. “Out of the house. Find him a girlfriend.”
“Us? Upper Five?” Momo gestured at the board. “This looks like a science project. Or backstage scheming. Creepy. Controlling.”
“Don’t say that. Look—” Kizzy pointed, “Not you, exactly.”
“Still. I’m in the picture,” Momo said, visibly thrown. “Like it or not, I’m part of the set. The ‘population’. Whatever you call it.”
Kizzy shrugged. “Not you, not me. Not Miss Rowbotham. Not Ruth. No strings. No notes. After that… we let the darts decide.”
“Letting a dart decide is hardly scientific.” Momo had picked one up now, stepping back from the board.
“Encounter notes? Is that what you’re calling them?”
“Can you think of anything better?”
“And where did all this lead? A dance? A kiss? Holding hands? Nothing more, I hope. Tell me you weren’t—”
“No,” said Kizzy quickly. “This was about the big ‘L’. Love. A girlfriend for Robbie. Or as he put it, a ‘real girlfriend’.”
“Which is boy-code for what, exactly?” Momo raised an eyebrow.
“Dating. And stuff,” Kizzy said lamely.
Momo approached the board. Some girls were virtually untouched. Others looked like they’d been under siege. And then there was Cece—strings emerging from her like a homespun Medusa.
“Cece? Really? That’s what fate decided?”
“Dart One,” said Kizzy. “Brownie’s Promise. Cross my heart.”
“And Tracey, bless, hasn’t been hit. Strange karma. Force field?”
Momo lined up the dart, aimed for Tracey. It missed—skidded left and struck Kizzy’s ankle.
“Let the darts decide?” Momo grinned. “Do I get a kiss or something?”
Kizzy laughed. She was warming to the idea of a debrief.
“We had rules. Rules of engagement. Encounter notes. It’s not creepy. There were boundaries. Everything had to be permitted.”
“Permitted?” Momo echoed. “Says who?”
“Me,” said Kizzy. “We had three rules. One: talk. Lots of open questions. Get her talking. Two: listen. I told Robbie for every one word he said, she had to match it with seven. I saw him counting when Cece was in full flow. He told me she spoke for eleven minutes without letting up. Nearly 2,000 words. But he was so busy counting, he hadn’t clocked a thing she said. So when she finally stopped, he was lost. Boys, eh?”
“Never listen,” Momo muttered.
“That was enough to put her off.”
Momo started ticking off on her fingers. “So one: talk. Two: not dance?”
“Would’ve made sense,” Kizzy said, checking the board. “But we didn’t want bad music to get in the way. So we went for: laughter.”
“As in funny-ha-ha or…?”
“As in connection,” Kizzy said. “Not jokes. Most boys can do that. We can do it better. I meant rapport. Empathy. Seeing the funny side of life’s trials and tribulations.”
“Deep,” said Momo.
They climbed onto the bed. Kizzy brushed Momo’s hair gently back from her ear. For a second she felt like she was being watched—an anthropologist with a clipboard peering from the wardrobe. Sometimes being informed spoils things, she thought.
“You staying over?” she asked.
Momo nodded. It was going to take all night to dissect Robbie’s romantic disaster under the direction of the mighty Kizmo love-match fixer.
Half an hour later, Momo sat cross-legged in borrowed pyjamas, tea cooling in a mug. Kizzy stood like a detective before the board.
“Rear row,” she began. “Seven girls. Jane, Katie—though she doesn’t count—Cece, India, Julie-Anne, and Hilde, who isn’t even in the country.”
“Hilde?” Momo peered in. “Jane’s German exchange? How’d she get in the photo?”
“She wasn’t even a full-time pupil. Dingsbums, everyone called her. German for Thingey. She was with us for a week. Still got hit by two darts.”
“What does that say about fate?” Momo asked seriously.
“That it doesn’t exist,” Kizzy replied. “This is randomisation. Not Cupid.”
“Not who gets Robbie,” Momo corrected, “Who gets to choose if they could give a monkey’s for Robbie.”
Kizzy nodded. “Front row: Me—struck out, obviously. Ruth, accounted for. You—‘no-go’. Helen, Diana, Donna, Tracey, Miss Rowbotham. And Sharon, who deserves a hazard triangle.”
They both looked at Cece. The one with the many coloured strings.
“It starts and finishes with her,” said Kizzy.
Momo nodded. “So. Shall we begin?”
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