Girl, 15: Charming but Insane (12 page)

‘Drugs!’ said Jess’s mum with a dramatic, tragic air.

‘Oh, honestly, Mum! I don’t touch drugs. I have never, ever tried drugs. Not even aspirin. I swear to you on . . .’ Jess looked around for a sacred object, then got up from the table and walked across to the windowsill, where a copper urn had been installed, with some other bits and pieces of Granny’s. ‘I swear on the sacred memory of Grandpa, with his crazy hats and long nose-hair, there are no drugs in that parcel. I have never touched drugs, and I never will.’ Jess placed her hand on the urn containing Grandpa’s ashes.

Granny took Grandpa’s ashes everywhere with her. She hadn’t decided yet where to scatter them. She was always promising to. But still the urn remained. It used to be on the sideboard in her old house. Now it was on the kitchen windowsill. Not terrific in terms of hygiene, perhaps. It was bad enough having your grandparents staying with you while they were still alive. But handy when it came to swearing solemn oaths.

Jess withdrew her hand and stared defiantly at her mother. Was she going to back down and accept that there were no drugs in the package? Or was she going to insist on seeing the ‘Shakespeare play’? If her mum discovered that the parcel contained instead a sinister DVD . . . If she demanded to watch it herself . . . If Jess had to witness her own mother watching the whole ghastly charade with the minestrone bra inserts . . . well, she’d die of shame. There could be another urn up there, next to Grandpa’s, by the end of the week.

Chapter 13

Jess took a deep breath. There was only one way out of this. ‘OK, Mum. I admit it. It’s not
Twelfth Night
.’

‘I know,’ said her mum with a self-satisfied air. ‘Because I can see
Twelfth Night
sticking out of your schoolbag over there.’

Oh no! Betrayed by her own untidiness yet again! Jess wondered whether being tidy was part of what God would regard as ‘being a good girl’. If so, her chances of going to heaven were frankly nil.

‘But it’s not drugs, Mum. I would never be so stupid. Nor would Fred. He won’t even take paracetamol. Please believe me.’

‘What is it, then? And it’s pointless trying to lie to me, Jess – I can see it in your face.’

‘It’s a DVD,’ said Jess, hoping to be able to leave it at that.

‘What kind of DVD? Something nasty, obviously, or you wouldn’t have lied to me in the first place. Is it an adult classification one?’

‘No,’ said Jess.

‘Is it horror?’ asked Granny. ‘If so, I wouldn’t mind having a look. I saw a lovely one once with zombies in.’

‘It’s really silly,’ said Jess. ‘I went to a party at Tiffany’s last weekend, right? Well, we found out afterwards that Tiffany’s brother had rigged up a camcorder in the girls’ bathroom, so every time somebody went to the loo they were on film. We were gutted, obviously. The boys organised another party – that’s where I was last night. They were going to show the footage to everyone.’

‘Men! Typical of the male concept of “fun”! Primitive and immature,’ snapped Jess’s mum.

‘Yeah, right. Anyway, Fred managed to get hold of it in time and he hid it so nobody could find it yesterday. He gave it to me just now so I could destroy it.’

‘Let me see it, then.’ Jess’s mum held out her hand.

Jess handed it over. Thank goodness she had told the truth, and not tried to pretend the DVD was about the novels of Charles Dickens or marine animals of the barrier reef. Jess’s mum marched into the sitting room and shoved the DVD in the machine. Jess and Granny followed her and sat down on the sofa. Although she had told the truth, Jess’s heart was still pounding like mad. She had no idea how soon she would appear, but the thought of Mum and Granny seeing the whole charade made her want to scream aloud and run off to Borneo. Wherever Borneo was. It sounded pretty far away. Worst of all would be the revelation that she addressed her boobs as Bonnie and Clyde. Can you imagine your mum and your granny knowing that kind of stuff?

The footage kicked in with a lot of dazzle and tracking, but then it settled to a view of the bathroom at Tiffany’s. You could see the washbasin and the far wall, but you couldn’t actually see the loo at all – it was far over to the right, out of the picture. For a long time there was nothing at all, just the wall. It was like all CCTV footage: black and white, grainy and boring. Nobody was going to win any Oscars for this piece of cinema.
The Novels of Charles Dickens
would have been a whole lot glitzier.

Then somebody came in – a girl called Sophie whom Jess hardly knew. She marched over to the right-hand side of the screen, turned round and disappeared. You could just about tell that she was going to pull her pants down when she went out of vision.

‘Well, if all the boys can come up with is this, it’s a pretty poor show,’ said Jess’s mum, getting up. ‘I’ve got sleazier stuff in the DVD department of the library.’ And she went back to the kitchen and started clearing the plates.

Jess went on watching the footage. Sophie reappeared, pulling up her pants, came over to the washbasin and washed her hands. Then she checked her make-up, got her mascara out and reapplied it. It took ages and was very boring.

‘I wish somebody would creep up and murder her,’ said Granny.

‘You’ve seen too many whodunnits, Granny,’ said Jess. ‘Anyway, nobody could creep up on her, unless they’d come up out of the loo.’

‘That would be a good idea,’ said Granny. ‘A murderer in a wet-suit, wielding a harpoon.’

‘You’d never get the harpoon round the S-bend, Granny,’ Jess pointed out. She was beginning to feel better. But she still wished Granny would go to bed.

Sophie finally finished her make-up and left the bathroom. There was another long wait. Then Alice Andrews came in, took out her contact lenses, rinsed them, put them in again and used some eye drops. Then she blew her nose. Then she washed her hands. Then she started looking for something in her bag. Then she looked in the mirror again and went out.

‘I’m getting a bit bored with this, Jess, love,’ said Granny. ‘Can’t we watch the latest James Bond instead?’

Jess wanted to see more of the tape, but she didn’t want Granny to see it. She had no way of knowing how many girls had visited the loo before her. She might appear on screen any moment with minestrone all over her cleavage.

‘OK, Granny.’ Jess put on James Bond for Granny, but went off upstairs with the DVD. She told Granny she had work to do – which was true. She still hadn’t started her latest essay. However, once upstairs, she was distracted by the chaotic grandeur of her new bedroom. Her stuff lay strewn everywhere, spilling out of black plastic sacks. She should have sat down at the desk and started to plan an essay entitled ‘Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night
may be a comedy, but it also has darker moments’. Instead she started sorting her clothes out, folding them up and putting them carefully in the drawers. It was virtually the first time in her life she had done this kind of thing, but it was sort of enjoyable in a weird, perverted kind of way.

Her mum knocked on her door half an hour later.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about the DVD, darling,’ she said, and gave Jess a hug. ‘I’m a little bit stressed out today. Anyway, Granny’s going to bed now – can you just pop down and kiss her goodnight?’

‘Sure,’ said Jess. She ran downstairs and kissed Granny, who was sitting up in bed in what had once been Jess’s room. It didn’t seem anything like it used to be. Even the bed was in a different place.

‘Jess,’ whispered Granny, ‘would you mind bringing Grandpa in here with me? I don’t like to be separated from him, in case I go in my sleep.’ She winked roguishly. For somebody who thought about death all the time, Granny was amazingly cheerful.

Jess brought the urn in from the kitchen windowsill and placed it on Granny’s bedside table.

‘I’m going to throw him into the sea one day, if I’m spared, dear,’ confided Granny. ‘But if I go before I get round to it, will you promise to do it for me? It’s a little place down in Cornwall, where we spent our honeymoon. It’s called Mousehole.’

Jess promised, though of course she reassured Granny that she looked exceptionally healthy and would certainly live till she was a hundred.

‘I don’t want your mum to have custody of Grandpa,’ explained Granny conspiratorially. ‘She would probably just chuck him on her carrot patch.’

Jess assured Granny that she would prevent her mother from top-dressing the vegetable plot with the remains of either grandparent, and eventually managed to get away. She ran upstairs to get the DVD.

‘Jess!’ called her mum as she passed the door of the box room. ‘I’m absolutely shattered, I’m going to bed early. Will you make sure all the lights are out when you go to bed, love? But leave the one on in the hall downstairs, in case Granny wants to go to the loo in the night.’

Jess nodded, kissed her mum, and then went back downstairs to see the rest of the footage. She fast-forwarded through the boring bits, but she saw some things that surprised her. Two girls came in together, for a start. Shona Miles and Lily Thornton. Shona did her hair while Lily went to the loo. Fancy having a pee while somebody else was in the room! Jess knew that Shona and Lily were inseparable buddies, but she would never, ever, ever have peed in front of Flora. She had heard that in India people just peed and pooed in the street. Well, she was never going to do that. She didn’t even like having paintings of people in the loo. Their eyes always followed you around the room, with a kind of mocking look.

Anyway, Lily and Shona were soon off the screen, and somebody else charged in and disappeared off the screen on the other side. It was Donna Fielding, evidently desperate for the loo. She didn’t wash her hands when she’d finished, either.

‘Disgusting!’ cried Jess. She would certainly never have lunch at Donna’s ever again.

After Donna, Jodie Gordon came in, and embarked on a massive spot-squeezing exercise that went on and on and on – her chin, her brow, her shoulders, even the tops of her boobs. Jess watched in fascinated horror. Eventually Jodie finished, pulled a face at the mirror, said something, sneered at her reflection and left.

It was getting late and, fascinating though all this was, Jess had become impatient for her own performance. She fast-forwarded through the footage until the awful moment when she herself appeared. Jess recognised her own image with a gasp of horror. But she ran across the screen and disappeared on the side where the loo was. The removing of the bra inserts and throwing them down the loo was completely out of view.

She came over to the wash-basin and pulled off her top. The washing of her boobs was certainly the high point of the tape so far, but it didn’t last long – she soon turned her back, dried herself, and got dressed again. And though you could see her lips move, there was no soundtrack, so nobody would know her terrible secret – that she talked to her boobs, and called them Bonnie and Clyde.

Jess ejected the disc, and went into the kitchen. She could hear Granny snoring faintly in her room. There was no sound from her mum upstairs. Jess wondered how to destroy the DVD. She filled the washing-up bowl with water and immersed the disc in it. Then she took it out, put it on the floor, and stamped on it. Then she picked up the shattered, dripping remnants and stuffed them in the rubbish bin.

Lying in bed later, she felt that it hadn’t been as bad as she’d feared. Nobody would know about the minestrone. Nobody would know about Bonnie and Clyde. True, she had appeared topless. But she’d rather be seen topless than squeezing her spots like Jodie.