The Girls Are Good Read online

  THE GIRLS ARE GOOD

  Ilaria Bernardini

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2022

  Copyright © Ilaria Bernardini 2022

  Jacket designed by Ellie Game © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2022

  Jacket Photographs: Shutterstock.com

  Ilaria Bernardini asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008503048

  Ebook Edition © August 2022 ISBN: 9780008503062

  Version: 2022-06-07

  Praise for The Girls are Good

  ‘Chilling, disturbing and utterly compelling. I couldn’t put it down.’

  Sarah Morgan, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Christmas Escape

  ‘A tight, frightening story of friendship, rivalry and obsession, told in sparse and beautiful prose. Tense as the space between the uneven bars.’

  Abigail Dean, author of Girl A

  ‘What a book! A stunning and revealing look the world of elite gymnastics. An unforgettable debut.’

  Jo Jakeman, author of Sticks and Stones

  ‘Brilliant, immersive, page-turning.’

  Gillian Stern, judge of The Lucy Cavendish College Fiction Prize

  ‘Brutal and brilliant – I read it in one sitting.’

  Harriet Tyce, author of Blood Orange

  ‘Dark, disturbing, desperately sad – I was totally gripped. What an incredible setting for a novel – a glimpse into a wonderfully dangerous, screwed up world. I couldn’t put it down.’

  Cesca Major, author of The Other Girl

  ‘Dark and memorably uncomfortable.’

  Sofia Zinovieff, author of Putney

  ‘A fascinating and heart-breaking insight into the world of competitive gymnastics by an author who clearly knows this world inside out. Amazing characterisation of these young girls and a compelling and suspenseful story. Loved this book – it is unlike anything else I’ve read. I continued to think about it a lot once I’d finished.’

  Catherine Cooper, author of The Chalet

  ‘Powerful, claustrophobic, shocking and heart-breaking.’

  Jane Shemilt, author of The Patient

  ‘I absolutely loved this book – I couldn’t put it down. Twisted in every sense of the word and so, so dark – it’s absolutely brilliant.’

  Nikki Smith, author of All in Her Head

  ‘What a haunting novel. Cruel, barbed, disturbing, poignant – and it opened my eyes to an industry so graceful and effortless, and the intensity of a group of young people.’

  Liv Matthews, author of The Prank

  ‘The Girls are Good is a compelling, harrowing, and ultimately devastating portrayal of the horrors of being a teenager in the world of competitive gymnastics. Brilliantly observed, beautifully written – it’s quite simply unforgettable.’

  Alex Michaelides, author of The Patient

  ‘Loved this book, it’s such an original and haunting read which has stayed with me long after reading.’

  Amanda Reynolds, author of Close to Me

  Epigraph

  How long can music

  override the pain?

  She reaches for the playlist.

  Diane di Prima

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Praise for The Girls are Good

  Epigraph

  Monday

  Tuesday

  Wednesday

  Thursday

  Friday

  Saturday

  Sunday

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  MONDAY

  In seven days there will be a dead gymnast, yet this morning, as I open my eyes, everything looks the same. Then again, my life is a loop and everything always looks the same. My first alarm wakes me at five past six, the second one at ten past. I like the first one because there is the second, these five minutes are mine only. I think of nothing, I am nothing. They are the longest five minutes of my day. At ten past six I wake up properly, click my neck and stretch my arms, my hands, each finger. I get up and feel the carpet under my feet. It prickles, as usual. It isn’t one of those soft carpets, like they have at Anna’s house. Ours is cheap and beige, the cheapest colour with the exception of school grey. Dad says being poor is OK because we love each other and, as long as we have our love, nothing else matters. I always make sure to nod in agreement, otherwise he and Mum get even sadder and I’d feel both poor and mean.

  I wash my way-too-red hair, check my way-too-many freckles in the mirror, get dressed, close my bag. I walk twice around the chair, zip up the fleece of my team tracksuit and check my way-too-many freckles again. I open the door, tap the knob twice, go down to the living room. Which is also the dining room, the TV room, the kitchen and my parents’ room. I eat my cereal, drink my juice.

  Mum gives me a kiss and says, ‘We’ll miss you’ and ‘Don’t forget your passport.’

  From the sofa bed, Dad says, ‘See you in a week’ and ‘Break a leg, little mouse!’

  We really do love each other. Even though Mum’s eyes slant downwards and even though Dad looks more depressed than ever. I won’t miss them. I never do, I never did, I never will. But I want to win for them, or at least qualify for the individual finals at this tournament so that maybe – thanks to me and my road to the Olympics – one day they can have their own bedroom. Or kitchen, at least. Then I could stop feeling guilty that sometimes when they come to watch me compete, I pretend I don’t know them.

  I’m now 15, I was only 4 when I started doing gymnastics. Back then, no one knew if I’d be good at it, or if I’d grow to be tall or short. I also had no idea that from the age of 10, it would mean I’d find myself training at seven o’clock in the morning before school. Then again from three to seven p.m., and that I’d have to be doing my homework during dinner, sleep, then get up the next morning, six days a week, to train again at seven and so on. I didn’t know Sundays would forever be for competitions and that my days would be so repetitive. I didn’t know that I’d end up liking how things repeat themselves. At least, most of them. Even though training sessions and exercises don’t really ever repeat themselves because even in repetition there’s always change. And in a gymnast’s life there’s always change. Like today we’re flying to Romania to compete. This is new.

  And new is both scary and great.

  I open the front door and our team’s minibus is coming up the road. I cross the yard, feel the freezing cold pressing on my cheeks, my eyes tearing up in the wind. The sky is lower than usual. Just like my hair today feels redder than usual. Fire red. Or maybe more strawberry red. I wrap myself up in my scarf, then do it tw
ice more, before getting on with life and all the movements it requires. Walking, sure. Being with other people. Breathing, smiling.

  Praying I won’t die.

  Inside the bus, it’s silent. None of my teammates look at me. Anna and Benedetta are asleep, Nadia and Carla just don’t bother. Rachele, our coach, is smiling at me, though she always tries too hard. When smiling. When talking. When all things. I give her a little wave, then nod to the physiotherapist, Alex. Even from here I can smell his last drink. And just like every day over the last five years I can smell his cigarettes, then the smell of his cigarettes on my skin. The smell of him on my skin. And that’s another thing I learned when I was 10.

  ‘Slept well last night?’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  I imagine him with his wife, sleeping well despite the horror he is capable of. Maybe she hates his smell too. Maybe she too tries to rinse it off with water, alcohol, or by scratching her skin with her nails. Will he really only touch us while we look like kids, as Carla says? Or is this too a lie? It could mean that when I’m 16, or max 17, he’ll stop, and that will be the only good thing about being older.

  That, and being able to eat more.

  The only empty seat is next to Nadia and Carla, so I sit there and we all say ‘Hey.’ It’s a one-hour drive to the airport, then a three-hour flight from Italy to Romania, and I feel claustrophobic already. I tap the window twice, zip and unzip my fleece, count to a hundred. The others are streaming music through their phones, but I still use an old iPod that was handed down to me from the hairdresser my mum cleans for. I have to switch it on and off a few times before it works. Nadia and Carla look at my dinosaur contraption, then they shut their eyes, at the same exact time. It’s like I’m watching them in slow motion, a choreography they’ve rehearsed. There’s also a sound for the movement of their super long eyelashes and that sound has an echo too.

  Whatever Nadia and Carla do, even breathing, they always seem to do it together. Maybe even their heartbeats are synchronized. Maybe their names, both five letters, are part of a larger picture. Carla wears more make-up and skirts and Nadia is all tracksuit bottoms. One is blonde, the other one dark. But these differences were probably decided at planning stage, so they’d be a better pair.

  The first time I met them, they were 8 years old. Before that I’d only seen them at the training camp but they never mixed with anyone else. They’d come to visit Rachele’s club where I was training. Carla was already a prodigy. And famous for being in a TV advert in which she said to a boy the same age as her ‘Look what I can do!’ and launched herself into three roundoffs and a double back somersault. She landed, smiled, and sat down at the table to wolf down a cereal bar that was supposed to give her the energy to do that routine. The boy moved away, dejected, but Carla ran after him to give him a bar of his own and they were both happy.

  I know she’ll have spat out that cereal bar as soon as they’d cut the scene.

  I remember thinking that I wanted to be her and how was it possible she could smile for the cameras so naturally after a double backflip with twist. Then I realized I was always trying to smile for the juries and for the coaches. And for Mum and Dad too.

  We all looked fine, from the outside. We still do. Some of us are just better at faking it.

  I select the playlist of my floor routine and put it on quietly, because I hate it when music hurts my ears. I follow the notes and visualize a move for each one of them – the front pike, the aerial cartwheel – then I imagine the tune without the singing. I visualize being full of grace in a double tucked back somersault and a front one, a tick-tock bending my back to make an upside-down V shape, before doing the split leap. If my mind helps me, if my body helps me, this week I’ll add a triple twist, which I’ve been able to do quite well for a few months now. I imagine crying a single tear of satisfaction after it, and smiling to the jury.

  Then, to the world.

  I curl up on the seat, my back to Carla, and go to sleep. I can sleep anywhere – my mum taught me. Even as a small child, I could fall asleep under a desk while she cleaned offices, at the hairdresser’s while she cleaned salons, and on overnight buses when we were coming back from one of her faraway jobs, no problem. I sleep immediately and deeply. I dream of nothing. I am nothing.

  When I wake up, we are at the airport and Nadia and Carla are laughing at Rachele’s bum, which they say is looking bigger and fatter and flabbier.

  ‘I can see the cellulite holes from here,’ Carla says.

  ‘I can see them through her tracksuit,’ Nadia confirms.

  ‘I can see the plates of pasta and greasy sauce she ate. I can see it on her face too, her skin is as glossy as cheese. Can you smell the mozzarella?’

  Nadia laughs. She always laughs when Carla’s being mean. Or when Carla is being anything, really. She laughs and she adores her.

  I follow them, making it look like I am not following them – they hate me when I’m too close, and I hate myself when I’m too close. So I walk almost alongside them but a step and a half behind. Carla is swaying her hips and her designer handbag, which is printed with large letters. Now she’s going on about flirting with her teacher during a history test in school last week. She asked him if it really was important to know what diseases were around in the Middle Ages. ‘Should we not,’ she apparently said, ‘worry about other things?’ Then she tells Nadia that she blinked in a very explicit way.

  I’ve been listening to Carla and Nadia for years now. I’ve heard them analyse the growth – or non-growth – of their boobs, my boobs, and scan every boy, every girl. I’ve heard them, one by one, go through their families’ obsessions, anecdotes, and secrets. For years too I’ve seen Nadia staring at Carla in the shower, admiring her back handspring in the gym. Praising her. Loving her.

  I know she loves her. We all know.

  I also know that they pray a lot at Carla’s house. They read the Bible at dinner and in bed, before going to sleep, then they read more Bible with their morning coffee. If they have lunch together, well then, more Bible will go with that lunch. It’s because they read the Bible together with their morning coffee, or with their chicken at meals, that her parents decided to stop Carla from being in adverts. It was OK to be famous before God got into their lives. It was permitted. Now it is no longer the right way to Give Thanks for the Precious Talent and Gift Carla has been Given by Him.

  ‘You are God’s gymnastic angel,’ they tell her.

  And even if Carla mocks them, I wonder if some of that sentence has stuck with her. She does seem to believe in being one. This faith, together with being able to fly, must help her with not falling at the vault. At the bars. Or ever.

  Nadia’s mum is very different from all the other mums. She had her when she was our age and absolutely hadn’t wanted to. She’s only 29 now and she’d be cool with Nadia having a boy sleep over at her house. Nadia isn’t interested in having a boy stay over but tells us so we can see what her mother is like, that she and Nadia deal with fun stuff, like love, affairs, sex, and how to end things with boyfriends without hurting them or yourself. She tells us so we can see that they talk. That she exists.

  ‘Just don’t make my mistake, girls,’ her mum told us one of the few times we spent any time with her. ‘No pregnancies before you are twenty. Or thirty, even. Having kids is a terrible idea.’

  I looked at Nadia and wondered what she felt at the idea of being often mentioned in a warning that was about mistakes and terrible ideas.

  At the airport, we are the shortest people in the queue for the low-cost flight, and Anna and Benedetta are the shortest of the shortest, here and maybe in the universe. That’s only partly the reason we hardly ever notice them. The other one is because they are so scared of everything they have chosen silence as a way of pretending not be here. Or to be alive. Or in danger. Carla has nicknamed Anna and Benedetta the Useless Ones. We used to only see them when we trained to get into the national team because they came from faraway clubs
, and Carla always reminded us that theirs were poor people’s clubs. For poor people’s gymnasts. But then Rachele invited them to join our club, so here they are. Here they uselessly are. Carla also repeats that both the Useless Ones and the entire team of the boys at our club are a disgrace. The boys never even make it to the tournaments, and she says they should become waiters, carpenters, or disappear, disintegrate. Maybe die.

  Rachele always defends both the boys and the Useless Ones.

  ‘They are your valued teammates,’ she tells Carla. ‘You know very well that when they win, you win too.’

  But as much as Rachele reminds us of this, Carla never lets it go. And, to be fair, they never win.

  ‘Let’s not overdo it, Coach,’ Carla told Rachele last time. ‘Benedetta, in spite of her spectacular anorexia, is an elephant on the balance beam. Anna’s scared of the vault and when she does a floor exercise she looks at her feet. They’re so pathetic! Why do you even let them compete with us?’

  In the queue for our plane, like everywhere in the outside world, people stare. I guess we look weird, little people with over-muscular legs and very coiffed hair all trapped in our identical tracksuit tops. In the gym, I like our bodies, I cherish them, but here I feel misshapen. I’d like to have it written on my forehead: We are gymnasts. In this sport, it’s a great advantage to have short bodies like ours and grow super muscular legs! We don’t want breasts! We don’t want periods! It’s OK to develop osteoporosis at 13 years old, we don’t care about growing tall! The important thing is to win and for this body to be strong and not look pretty when we are queuing!

  But these would be way too many words to fit on my forehead.

  Rachele always says thank God we are built like this, thank God we are short with no boobs, and thank God very few of us have periods and we really must thank God for our bodies, so tiny yet so strong. Otherwise, we could not excel at this sport and be champions and carry gymnastics high like a flag of the nation’s power and strength. That’s why she-who-puts-on-weight is done for. She-who-grows-tall is done for. She-who-grows-boobs, done for, unless she can endure very tight wrapping. Our body is our most precious possession. That’s also why we live and travel with a physio. And that’s why we have daily sessions with him. In theory, the sessions are there to protect our most precious possession.