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Gemma had wandered into my room.
‘Hi,’ she said, sitting down on my bed beside me.
‘What’s up? Nothing on TV?’
‘Just wondered what was going on over there.’ She indicated the window over the road.
‘Absolutely nothing.’
‘Oh. Sorry about letting on to Mum.’
‘I’ll survive.’
‘But you do fancy him, don’t you?’
‘He’s all right.’
She leaned towards me and asked in an undertone: ‘Do your knees go to Jell-o whenever you see him?’
‘Go to what?’
‘Jell-o.’ She paused. ‘What is Jell-o?’
‘Jell-o is American for jelly. And no, they don’t as a matter of fact. Honestly, Gem. I don’t know what you see in those books.’
Chapter Six (#ufbc92d8e-ce70-57ff-8971-011421628926)
The school week dragged to an end at last, and Friday found me in my room doing my long overdue oboe practice.
I had a really difficult piece to practise for my next exam. It had this long sustained opening note which you had to count through and keep your breathing controlled until you felt you could burst. I dread to think what I must have looked like while playing it.
On my third attempt it really came out well. The piece was by Albinoni. He’s a genius. If you play his music properly it’s really stunningly beautiful. That’s the funny thing about practice. You put it off and put it off and when you can’t put it off any longer and it comes to doing it — you find you enjoy it. No, not just enjoy It’s as if you’re on another plane when you really get into it. You get to a state when you’re so totally absorbed that you can’t break off …
Like now.
‘Natasha, can you hear me?’
‘Yes Mum … What is it?’
‘Help me with this, can’t you?’ Mum’s voice was muffled. She appeared in her bedroom doorway half-in and half-out of a dress, her best dress.
I put down the oboe and went to rescue her. I gave the dress a tug and her head appeared over the top.
‘Can you keep an eye on Jamie and Gemma? It’s only for a few hours. I’ll be back by 9.30.’
‘But it’s Friday …’
‘Yes, and this is a very important meeting. Might mean promotion.’
‘I’m doing my oboe practice.’
‘Well, that won’t take all night.’
‘Why can’t Dad babysit?’
‘Working late on that river project.’
‘Uggghh.’
‘You can take the two of them to the cinema, my treat.’
‘Big deal. We can go to a U.’
Mum was leaning into her three-piece mirror putting lipstick on. I stood behind her and watched critically.
‘You ought to use a lipliner you know — you’d get a much better shape.’
‘You said yourself you wanted to see Babe,’ she mumbled, rubbing her lips together. They’re doing a rerun at the MGM.’
I had actually. OK, I know it’s pathetic, but I still get a kick out of kids’ films — it’s the one and only compensation for having a younger brother and sister. You can veg out in front of stuff like 101 Dalmatians and pretend it’s for their benefit.
‘Popcorn and ice-cream too?’
Mum put a tenner on the dressing table and then increased the bribe by adding a five pound note.
‘It’s a deal then,’ I said sweeping them up. What time does it start?’
‘You’ve missed the early performance — have to take them to the 7.15. So you can finish your practice first.’
‘Can I stand the pace?’
Mum straightened up and took an assessing look at herself in her full-length wardrobe mirror.
‘How do I look?’
I’ve never liked the dress. It’s a really ghastly oxblood red and that terrible middle aged length that makes you look as if you end at mid-calf.
‘It’s not exactly power dressing, is it?’
‘What do you think I should wear?’
‘Your black suit.’
‘The skirt’s too short.’
‘Rubbish. You’ve got good legs Mum, flaunt them. And you need mascara too.’
It took about half an hour to get Mum looking halfway decent, and I had to lend her my lip-gloss. She took another long assessing look at herself in the mirror.
‘I look like Joan Collins.’
‘Well look how successful she is.’
‘True. And — oh my God! Look at the time! I’ve got to dash. They’ve both had tea. Now make sure Jamie holds your hand anywhere near a road. And …’
‘Mum … Do you think I’m stupid or what?’
‘Or what,’ she said, giving me a hasty kiss.
‘Thanks. Knock ‘em dead.’
‘Do you really think I look OK?’
‘Of course!’
‘Not mutton dressed as lamb?’
‘You looked like lamb dressed as mutton in that red thing. Raw mutton.’
‘OK … Here goes.’
We could walk to the MGM from our house. Jamie and Gemma kept running on ahead so I was forced to run with them. Going with me instead of Mum made it an extra-special treat, and I knew that it was going to be a struggle to stop them getting out of hand.
We arrived at the cinema hot and out of breath to find there was a queue and it had started to drizzle too. We’d hardly joined the tail-end before Jamie started to put the pressure on for me to go inside and stock up with supplies of popcorn.
‘It’s raining,’ I pointed out. ‘It’ll only get soggy. Wait till we’re inside.’
The queue was moving really slowly and there were at least forty people ahead of us. My hair had started sticking to my head in a most unflattering fashion. That’s when Gemma nudged me hard.
‘Look,’ she said.
It was him. He was walking down the road with this incredible girl. She had really high-heeled boots on and a minimal skirt topped by a black leather jacket. And she was walking with him as if she owned him.
They joined the queue opposite ours — the one for White Knuckle, a really tough suspense movie just released. The one I’d been planning to see with Rosie until tonight’s alternative entertainment cropped up.
Gemma looked at me balefully. I ignored her. The last thing I needed was her sympathy. ‘She could be his sister,’ she whispered.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see that the girl had started practically rubbing her body against his. Some sister. Get any closer and she’d be inside his jacket. She kept pulling at his sleeve to get eye contact.
‘Huh,’ I said. All I was interested in at that point was getting into the cinema without being noticed.
But as luck would have it, their queue and our queue coincided at the MGM doors at precisely the same moment.
‘Hi …’ I heard him say.
‘Hello …’ said Gemma.
I vaguely murmured a cross between the two that came out like a painful hybrid ‘Hi-lo”. Hoping that if I didn’t look at him, he wouldn’t look at me, I gazed at the pavement which was dotted with blobs of discarded chewing-gum — riveting.
‘Are you going to see Babe?’ I heard Jamie ask. (Thanks Jamie.)
‘No, as a matter of fact, but I’ve heard it’s good …’ he was saying.
There’s a pig in it that can talk and everything.’
‘Really? How do they do that?’
‘Come on Matt. We’re losing our place,’ the girl’s voice whined.
‘Dunno,’ said Jamie. ‘I suppose they must’ve taught it to.’ He was doing everything in his power to prolong this agonising encounter.
‘Must’ve been some bright pig,’ said ‘Matt’. I knew his name now — Matt. He was being really nice to Jamie for some reason.
There was more hassle coming from the girl, who was through the doors by now.
‘OK, I’m coming …’ I heard him say, and then they went ahead of us and bought their tickets and disappeared arm-in-arm into Screen 2.
Gemma gazed after him. ‘He is gorgeous,’ she sighed.
‘But he’s got a girlfriend,’ I pointed out. ‘So forget it.’
Gemma then proceeded to give me the benefit of worldly-wise advice gleaned from her obsessive romance reading — like how ‘true love’ always had to overcome all sorts of totally impossible obstacles which made it all so much more worthwhile in the end.
‘Thanks a lot Gem, that’s a big comfort.’
I didn’t have the heart to point out that, in real life, guys like him went out with girls like the one he was with — and girls like me went to see Babe with their kid brother and sister.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_c4cd2819-8594-5818-a0fb-d3a68b8fec2b)
Saturday morning. Mum likes to use Saturdays to catch up on chores. So it had become a sort of ritual that Dad and I should make the routine shopping expedition to the supermarket. I had an ulterior motive, of course, like making sure decent shampoo and conditioner found its way into the trolley, not just family stuff — and slipping in things like Fruit Comers and Coco Pops when he wasn’t looking. If Dad had his own way he’d come out with an entire trolley of unwashed, unwrapped, organically-grown fruit and veg. He has this real thing about packaging, keeps ranting on about what a waste of the worlds resources it is. In Dad’s ideal world, we’d all have to juggle our groceries home with our pockets filled with detergent. So for Dad, Saturday mornings at Sainsbury’s isn’t just shopping — its a crusade.
We’d stocked up on fruit and veg and Dad had given a lady who was helping herself to a stash of special mushroom bags a lecture on criminal waste — when I spotted Matt.
He was with that alkie guy — the one who looked as if he’d been guzzling vodka on number twenty-fives front wall. The alkie guy actually had an open can of lager in his hand, and between bouts of slopping it everywhere, he was drinking out of it. Their trolley was packed sky-high with booze. A third guy, who was huge and ferocious-looking with matted dreadlocks, was tagging along behind. I knew Dad would throw a wobbly if he saw them. I steered our trolley into safer territory between the cereal aisles and started up a distracting argument about the virtues of Kelloggs versus Own Brand Cereals. I knew this would get him going.
‘They’re all made by the same people, Natasha.’
‘No they’re not. Says so on the packet.’
‘It’s basically the same stuff inside, though.’
‘It can’t be.’
Dad was well into a tirade against branded goods when we moved on to Jams and Preserves. Since it was Saturday morning the place was pretty crowded. At this rate I just might get Dad out of the supermarket without him spotting the guys.
All went well as we went full steam ahead through tinned foods and stocked up on pasta. Nearing the end of the maze of aisles, we reached pet foods. I was reminding Dad of the varieties of cat food that Yin and Yang would or would not currently eat.
‘What do you mean, they’ll eat Chicken & Rabbit but not Chicken & Turkey? Those can’t taste much different.’
