Girl, 16: Five-Star Fiasco (12 page)

‘I’m going,’ said Jess suddenly, lurching to her feet. ‘I’ve got to try and do something about the catering stuff.’

She was faintly aware of Fred looking up, startled, but not getting up, as she pushed past him, angrily heading for the door, and burst out into the street.

Snowflakes were spiralling down. It could have been a magical moment, but the boy who would have made it magic was back there in the cafe, stuffing his face with panini, and he evidently didn’t care enough about her to come rushing after her to find out what was wrong.

A lorryload of nachos washed down with a vat of cola was one thing that was wrong, for a start. Jess paused and rubbed her tum.
Waaaaaaarp!
A deafening burp exploded from her mouth just as two college boys were passing by.

‘Charming!’ said the tall guy.

Jess didn’t care. So what if people found her disgusting? She was full of toxic things – not just the nachos, but everything that had happened today.

Jess pretended to look in her bag for something, to give her an excuse to loiter, just in case Fred had bolted the last of his panini and was scrambling after her. But the door of the cafe remained firmly closed.

Jess embarked on a long trawl of the town centre. She went into restaurant after restaurant (plenty of them opened for Sunday lunch) and pub after pub, asking if they did outside catering, and received absolutely no encouragement whatsoever. Nobody seemed to want to take on her event. Everybody had organised their own Valentine’s evening
months
ago. Jess finally gave up after the thirteenth snooty refusal and escaped out on to the pavement, which was covered in slush. The snow had stopped and been replaced with tiny little daggers of icy rain. It seemed as if the whole universe was against her.

Jess walked briskly home. This was partly to keep warm, partly to stop herself from crying and partly to try and get her tummy feeling right again – there was an explosive quality to her digestion right now which was a bit unnerving. Though the day had been one of the worst ever, she would quite like to make it back home without vomming in the street – avoiding that would count, right now, as some kind of triumph.

Chapter 15

As Jess trailed wearily up the front path, she tried to summon up the energy to look positive and confident for Mum and Granny. They mustn’t know what a dire mess she was in. Her mind was racing with a thousand contradictory thoughts: one moment she felt furious with Fred, the next she felt it was all her fault and it was stupid to expect Fred to be able to organise anything. Her eyes filled with tears. She had half a mind to let rip with a massive crying fit – Mum and Granny would be sympathetic, and would make some lovely treats for her (maybe Granny would dig deep and even serve up some delicious cranberry muffins).

But as Jess opened the door, an unexpected sound met her ears. A stranger’s voice – a man’s voice – was coming out of the kitchen: ‘. . . Ten, plus it’s a double-letter score, so that’s twenty, uh, forty-six, I think.’

‘Martin!’ That was Mum’s voice, but sounding oddly deranged, as if she was performing in a play. ‘You’re so sneaky! I was saving up a certain something for that!’

‘A certain Z, I presume? Tough, baby.’

Ugh! They were playing Scrabble – in pretend American accents. This must be the famous half-gorgeous Martin. Jess’s heart plummeted right through the hall carpet. This was all she needed. She’d come home angsty and traumatised, and now she had to be polite to some weird stranger who had wormed his way into Mum’s affections while her back was turned and who didn’t have the courtesy to lose to her at Scrabble.

The sound of the TV echoed from the sitting room. Jess assumed Granny was in there, and, after closing the front door very quietly, she tiptoed in, avoiding the kitchen altogether. Granny was fast asleep in front of an antiques programme. ‘This is a quite wonderful, charming little piece,’ the jewellery man was saying, his fingers, in massive close-up, trembling slightly as he showed a tiny brooch to the camera. ‘And you know, it’s all about the symbolism of love. It’s a very romantic object which could have been given to a young lady by her sweetheart on the occasion of their engagement, or possibly on Saint Valentine’s Day.’

All this Valentine’s stuff was too much – tears burst from Jess’s eyes, and she ran upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom. She turned the bath taps on and pulled her clothes off, sobbing occasionally but looking forward to a long, hot, steamy, therapeutic soak. But something wasn’t quite right – where were the clouds of inviting steam that should be billowing out? Gingerly she reached out and touched the water: it was stone cold. Honestly, this house! Why did nothing ever work properly?

‘Jess?’ And now there was Mum out on the landing, pestering her!

‘What?’ Jess was so exasperated that she stopped crying and started to feel murderous instead. She preferred it, on the whole.

‘What are you doing, love?’

‘Well, I’d be having a bath if there was any hot water available in this useless house, but instead I’m getting dressed again!’ snapped Jess.

‘Sorry, I forgot to switch the immersion on when we got in. What’s wrong, Jess? How was your day?’

For a moment Jess was so, so tempted to confess what a deep, soggy, stinking mess she was in. ‘It was fine,’ she lied instead. She couldn’t let herself get upset now with this Martin person in the house.

‘Oh good! Come downstairs and meet Martin. He’s lovely – you’ll love him,’ Mum prattled on in a confident way which Jess found deeply irritating, though under the irritation Jess knew she ought to be happy for her mum. At last, it seemed, she’d met a man who was halfway human. ‘We saved some cottage pie for you and it’s still warm in the oven.’ After delivering this interesting piece of news, Mum could be heard going downstairs.

Jess sat on the end of the bath, pulling on her socks and having a think. That cottage pie was calling to her suddenly, all warm and savoury and slightly crusty, the way things are when they’ve been waiting in the oven. It doesn’t suit some things but it certainly suits cottage pie. Jess’s mouth began to water – it was a big improvement on the eyes watering a few minutes ago. She stood up, wriggled into her boots and pulled her jumper down. A brief look in the mirror assured her that, though pale and preoccupied, she didn’t look too weird or mad, and besides, however nice the half-gorgeous Martin was, she basically didn’t give a flying fandango whether he thought she looked weird or not.

So, moments later, Jess marched into the kitchen. Mum and Martin were sitting at the kitchen table with a Scrabble board laid out between them. Martin turned round in his chair and looked up at Jess. He had short brown hair, a wide, open, friendly face and large, twinkly eyes.

‘Martin, this is Jess,’ said Mum, looking pleased that Jess had come down. Martin scrambled clumsily to his feet and held out his hand; he was tall and rangy.

‘Hello,’ he said with a broad smile. ‘How very nice to meet you!’ He had a proper handshake and he seemed kind of energetic and well-meaning. Jess began to be ashamed that she hadn’t wanted to meet him.

‘Jess has spent today organising a dinner dance,’ said Mum, also getting up. ‘It’s in aid of Oxfam. I’ll get your supper out, love.’

‘A dinner dance? Wow!’ said Martin, pushing the Scrabble board aside. ‘Tell us about it.’

Jess was annoyed with her mum for mentioning Chaos, and Martin’s eager smile and sympathetic manner made things worse. But the smell of cottage pie was truly divine and Jess started to feel ravenous. She must have walked for hours up and down the town centre, looking for caterers.

‘Oh, it’s really boring.’ Jess took a deep breath, picked up her fork and tasted the first mouthful of cottage pie. It was delicious. ‘Mum, this is great. Thanks.’

‘Jess likes organising things,’ Mum went on, foolishly boasting. If only she knew. ‘Last Christmas she and her boyfriend Fred put on a wonderful comedy show in school and raised loads of money for charity.’

‘Amazing!’ said Martin. ‘What’s Fred like?’

‘He’s hilarious!’ said Mum, beaming. Jess was annoyed that, at the very moment when she was totally furious with Fred, Mum had somehow become his PR officer.

‘He is funny.’ Jess had to agree. This was not the time or place for an anti-Fred rant. She had to swallow her rage with him. It wouldn’t be appropriate to let rip now, in front of Martin. ‘He’s kind of shy, but he hides it with jokes and stuff,’ she admitted between clenched teeth. ‘The Christmas show was basically Fred’s idea – he inspired the whole thing, wrote it and directed it.’ It was inconvenient, right now, to remind herself of just how talented Fred was.

‘Did he?’ asked Martin, his big eyes kind of expanding in surprise and admiration. ‘That must have been amazing. Tell me about it!’

So Jess told him all about the Christmas show while she ate her cottage pie, and after about twenty minutes somehow she felt almost herself again. Martin seemed really nice – genuinely interested in everything, and he’d really tuned in to the kind of guy Fred was. In fact, what he’d said had revived her sympathy for Fred. She began to believe that everything was going to be all right after all.

Maybe, this time, Mum really had struck gold. She’d only known Martin for a few hours at most, but already Jess was starting to think that if she had to have a stepfather, Martin would be a very sweet and friendly one.

Then the doorbell rang.

Jess jumped up – she assumed it was Fred, and raced to the door because she couldn’t wait to welcome him and assure him that everything was fine, she totally understood and there was no need to worry. She flung the door open, and there, in the frosty lamplight, stood Dad, carrying two cases. He gave her a doleful, tragic and self-pitying look.

‘My life,’ he said, ‘is in ruins.’

Chapter 16