Girl, 15: Charming but Insane (6 page)

Chapter 7

Jess was walking down a street, a crowded street, maybe Oxford Street, and all the faces coming towards her were staring, staring. Suddenly she realised she was only wearing a bra from the waist up. No T-shirt. No top. People were leering and jeering. Desperate, awful shame flooded over her. Suddenly, at her feet, a manhole cover opened, in the middle of the pavement, and Fred looked out. He held up his hand.

‘Come on – quick!’ he grinned, and Jess jumped in beside him. The cover slammed shut over their heads. Fred didn’t let go of her. They were running hand in hand across a vast beach where an ocean growled and crashed. Shining birds wheeled and plummeted overhead and rainbows danced in the spray. ‘We’re going to see the Tiger!!’ cried Fred. Jess didn’t know what he meant, but she held on tight. His hand was warm.

Suddenly, she awoke. For a split second she could still feel the grasp of Fred’s hand, then it vanished. She was in Fred’s bedroom. A huge poster depicting intergalactic warfare gloomed down at her. Welcome back to the real world of testosterone. It was eight o’clock. At home, of course, Jess would have turned over and gone on sleeping for another four hours: her Sunday treat. But she could hear somebody moving about downstairs, so she got up and quickly dressed.

Fred’s mum was making tea. ‘Tea, Jess? A waffle?’

‘A waffle! Wow, yes, please! I could live here for ever! Are you looking for a lodger?’

Fred’s mum laughed. ‘We’ll have it in here. Fred’s fast asleep on the sofa.’ She closed the kitchen door. ‘His mouth is wide open, as if he’s singing. Have you ever seen Fred asleep?’

‘Oh, frequently!’ laughed Jess. ‘Don’t forget we’re in the same set for French, English and history!’

It was warm and merry in the kitchen. A cat dozed on the laundry basket by the French windows. Sunlight twinkled in the garden beyond.

‘I love this time of year!’ said Fred’s mum as she expertly manoeuvred a waffle on to a plate and handed Jess the maple syrup. ‘Summer – flowers everywhere, it gets light so early. And not long till the summer holidays, eh?’

Jess agreed. Adults often raved madly about the summer, flowers, etc. Jess’s mum even went into rhapsodies about her bean plants. And when it was time to dig up the first new potatoes, she would come indoors with her hands covered in mud and a grin of pure ecstasy on her face. Perhaps it was because there wasn’t a man in her life.

Jess wondered what it would be like to have a stepfather. She had often fantasised about recruiting a rich one. But she supposed no rich man would look twice at her mum. She was the sort of woman admired mainly by other women. She didn’t even pluck her eyebrows. They looked like a hedge in a gale.

Anyway, Jess wouldn’t want a frightening control-freak like Flora’s dad in her life. Fred’s dad seemed OK. Big, dull, cuddly, addicted to football. What more could one expect of a male person? It must be intensely boring being a man. The very sound of a football crowd made Jess feel depressed, like hymn singing on Sundays. But all men seemed to have to be addicted to sport. Although, come to think of it, Jess’s own dad was completely uninterested in sports of all kinds.

Jess hadn’t seen him for quite a while. But he’d be coming up to town in the summer holidays. He was the very opposite of Fred’s dad. He was thin, anxious-looking, nervy and not at all cuddly. On the rare occasions when Jess saw her father, he gave her a hug carefully, as if he had prepared for it by reading a manual called
How to Cuddle Your Child
and he was afraid he would get it wrong. Bless him, the moron!

The waffle was delicious, and Fred’s mother, angel that she was, tried to tempt Jess to a second.

‘No, no, thanks, I really mustn’t,’ said Jess. ‘I ought to get off home because we’ve got to get ready for Granny coming. I’ve got to move out of my room.’

‘That’s hard,’ sympathised Fred’s mum. ‘But think of the Brownie points you’ll accumulate. Your mum will feel so guilty about it, she’ll never dare say no to you again!’

Jess hadn’t considered this possibility. It was certainly a cheerful thought. She thanked Fred’s mum effusively and they tiptoed towards the front door. They paused by the open door to the sitting room and looked in for a moment. Fred was lying fast asleep, half out of his sleeping bag, but his mouth wasn’t open any more. In fact, he was sucking his thumb.
Oh my goodness
, thought Jess,
how unbelievably sweet!

‘For heaven’s sake don’t tell anybody!’ whispered his mum. ‘He’d never live it down!’

Jess walked home in five minutes, but she could feel her warm, positive mood slipping away with every step, and a chilly foreboding creeping back over her. She wondered in agony how she was ever going to get all her stuff into that tiny box room. Her huge posters would just have to stay rolled up under the bed. And what about her clothes? There wasn’t even a wardrobe, just a tiny chest of drawers about big enough to hold a Barbie doll outfit.

And, oh no! Her Barbie dolls! All twenty-eight of them! She hadn’t played with them for years, of course – not for years and years and years. And years. They lived in a huge cardboard box under her bed. She was saving them up for when she had a little girl. (By genetic engineering, obviously, or cloning. No man would ever want to marry her.) But even though she never ever played with her Barbies now, she would always keep them. They were part of her history.

The box room. No bigger than a coffin. It would be like being buried. Maybe she wouldn’t keep her Barbies after all. She would make a huge bonfire in the back garden. She would burn her clothes. She would burn all her old toys (except her old teddy bear Rasputin, obviously – he was more of a guru and personal trainer than a toy). She would burn all her make-up. She would shave off all her hair and burn that. She would wear only a pair of Oriental black pyjamas. She would sleep in the box room on a small mat made of rushes. The only item in the room would be a plain white saucer for her tears.
Then
they’d be sorry.

By the time she got home, her insides had screwed themselves up into a dreadful knot, and she wished she hadn’t had the waffle. Indeed, there was a danger that any moment the waffle might, in some rather grisly sense, be born again. She was dreading seeing her mum. Would she be angry? How angry? Or perhaps she had gone stark staring mad and would be crouching in a corner mumbling, her clothes reduced to rags, muesli scattered on her head?

But her mum’s car was missing. Oh no! Had she gone to drive off a cliff somewhere, leaving a note?
Owing to the difficulties with my daughter I no longer wish to be a burden to her
.

Jess let herself in and immediately saw that her mum had indeed left a note, on the hall table.

Dear Jess,

I
’ve gone to get Granny, as i
t
’s quite a long drive and I want to be back by teatime. Sorry about yesterday. I
t
’s really unfair of me expecting you to move into that poky little box room, so
I
’ve moved into it myself. All my stuff is in there in plastic bin bags. You can have my bedroom.
I
’ve put all your stuff in there and you can do whatever you like with it.

Love Mum

Jess ran upstairs and charged into what had been her mum’s bedroom – the best room upstairs, by miles. It had two windows! It had a built-in wardrobe! It even had a little fireplace where Jess was already planning to have a real log fire! Tears of joy ran down Jess’s cheeks. Curse this premenstrual tension. But her mum was so kind! Jess loved her so much! Here was this lovely, palatial room and she could do whatever she liked with it. Her mum had placed Rasputin the bear on the bed and he seemed to be waving to her – regally, of course. This was the best Sunday since Sundays were invented.

The phone rang. A cold spear of fear went through Jess’s heart. She was sure her mother had been killed in a road accident. Just at the very moment when she loved her more than everyone else in the world put together, she had been cruelly snatched away. Jess fell on the phone.

‘Yes?’ she gasped, preparing for the cold voice of a police officer or possibly an Accident and Emergency nurse.

‘Hey, Jess!’ It was Flora. ‘Everybody’s dying to hear – what exactly happened last night between you and Whizzer?’

Chapter 8

Jess and Flora met in a cafe. Unfortunately, their part of town was completely lacking in style, and the only place open on Sundays was a little religious charity place which sold snacks made by poor people in Africa.

‘Is this actually food or some kind of building material?’ Jess growled as she tried to free her teeth from a cereal bar made of tree bark, gravel and superglue.

‘It’s OK, we should eat more of this sort of stuff,’ Flora assured her. ‘The starving –’

‘Yes, yes, I know! Don’t give me a hard time about the starving! I get enough political harassment from Mum at home! There’s no need to start preaching just because it’s Sunday!’

‘Sssssh!’ whispered Flora.

The middle-aged woman who ran the place looked disapprovingly at them over her owly glasses. She was polishing some mugs adorned with portraits of Jesus.

‘Please don’t say anything loud and satanic,’ Flora whispered. ‘Or we’ll get thrown out, and there’s nowhere else open.’

‘So how was the party?’ asked Jess. ‘How did you get on with Mackenzie? I hope you broke his heart with a resounding crack audible at the North Pole?’

‘He is so cool!’ confided Flora. ‘We spent the whole evening together. He’s really witty and, like, confident and stuff, and he told me I’m beautiful, which is rubbish, of course.’ Flora’s modesty could be irritating. She was always insisting that she hated her eyes, nose, mouth, skin, hair, etc, despite the fact that when He created Flora, God was on tip-top form and really cooking on gas.