Girl, 16: Five-Star Fiasco (23 page)

Home now – and as fast as possible. Thank goodness it was dark so nobody could see her crying. After about five minutes, though, Jess seemed to get through her pain and arrive at an angry place in her head, which felt much better. Instead of being devastated that Fred had let her down so badly and didn’t seem to care, she started to plan the best possible revenge.

She would rustle up the most fantastic hosting routine ever seen. Fred had shown himself to be completely spineless, so she’d do the whole thing entirely on her own. The hosting routine would be brilliant, pure comedy gold. But she didn’t have much time, because, of course, she also had to organise every other aspect of the dinner dance, at lightning speed and single-handedly. Jess was determined, and in a peculiar way it was almost a relief to know that it was entirely up to her now that Fred was out of the frame.

When she arrived home, the grown-ups were all sitting around the kitchen table: Mum, Dad, Martin and Granny. Mum looked relaxed, thank goodness, and even Granny seemed to radiate benevolence – maybe she had given up on the hopeless task of trying to organise a reconciliation between Mum and Dad.

‘No,’ Dad was insisting, ‘it must have been 1992, because that was the year I strained my shoulder looking at the moon.’

Mum was laughing, and Martin was refilling her wine glass in an attentive kind of way. Mum locked eyes with Jess, and suddenly looked concerned.

‘What’s the matter, love?’ she cried. Oh no! Jess’s mascara must have run, making her look like a panda.

‘Nothing,’ said Jess, heading out right away. She didn’t want Martin to see her looking like this.

‘Wait!’ Mum jumped up. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

‘Fred,’ Jess blurted out. Then a huge wave of despair hit her, almost like a wave of the sea buckling her knees, and she dropped into the nearest chair and gave a huge, shuddering sigh. ‘He’s basically just copped out of the dinner dance thing and left me to deal with the whole mess.’

‘Why is it a mess?’ asked Mum alertly. Jess sighed again.

‘I feel so stupid . . . We haven’t organised it properly. We didn’t get things done in time. Basically we haven’t got any catering sorted yet or any bands lined up. Fred said he’d got a band, then he admitted he hadn’t, then he – oh, anyway, because it’s Valentine’s they’re all booked already.’

‘But this is next Saturday, Jess!’ gasped Mum, clutching her face in a semi-hysterical way.

‘Yes,’ said Jess. An enormous fatigue seemed to creep over her. ‘Fred said we ought to cancel it.’

Mum looked thoughtful. ‘That’s an option, I suppose,’ she pondered. ‘But, Jess, why on earth didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t want you to know what an idiot I am. I wanted to do it on my own and make you proud of me. I didn’t want to come running back to you for support, like some needy little kid. This is the worst evening of my life!’ Jess sank down into her sweater, pulling the chunky collar up around her face.

‘Uh, Jess,’ said Martin, his head cocked on one side and his eyebrows raised, ‘did you say you hadn’t got any music?’

‘Well, we’ve got a DJ, but he’s not brilliant, and we really wanted to have a proper band so the DJ could just take over in their breaks. I mean, you’ve got to have a band at a dinner dance, right? And it’s not just music for teenagers – it’s a family event. Fred said he’d organise a band and he hasn’t. I don’t even know what he did, or which bands he asked, and he’s just completely given up and left everything to me.’

‘Well . . . it’s probably not your sort of thing, but I play in a band,’ Martin confessed shyly, rubbing his head and looking embarrassed. ‘It’s probably too old fogeyish for what you have in mind, but we play jazz . . . and other things, too.’

‘Really?’ Jess’s heart gave a feeble little skip of hope. ‘Jazz! That’s what we wanted! Could you . . . would you . . . are you free on the fourteenth?’

‘Yes, we are, as a matter of fact,’ said Martin. ‘We didn’t fix up any gigs on Valentine’s this year because our singer’s daughter is getting married, so the singer wouldn’t be available. But we could probably do enough instrumental numbers to get you through the evening – slow smoochy ones and some uptempo stuff – we’re quite versatile really. But I’d have to call the other guys and see if they’re available.’

‘Use the landline!’ cried Mum in rapture, gazing adoringly at Martin – he was clearly the nearest thing to Superman available locally. ‘In fact, why don’t you go upstairs and use my study!’ Eagerly she ushered him out of the kitchen.

Granny came up to Jess and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘Cake?’ she enquired softly.

‘Thanks, Granny, but this is too big a crisis to be solved by cake,’ sighed Jess. ‘No, I’ve changed my mind – gimme a massive slice the size of a sofa!’

Speedily Granny did the honours and placed a huge slice of lemon drizzle cake in front of Jess.

‘It’s one of Deborah’s signature cakes,’ said Granny proudly.

Jess opened her jaws. Intense, magical, sensational lemonyness exploded in her mouth.

‘Wow! Wow! Wowzer!’ raved Jess, spraying cake crumbs everywhere. ‘Never mind the dinner dance! I’m going to elope with this cake! Where did Deborah learn to bake like this?’

‘Oh, she was a pâtissière, dear,’ said Granny. ‘She was what they call a station chef at the Queen’s Hotel for years. She still turns out for them if there’s a crisis.’

‘What about our crisis?’ asked Dad. ‘Could Deborah save Jess’s bacon? What’s the catering situation, Jess?’

‘Desperate,’ admitted Jess. ‘I thought I might have to just get a lorryload of ready meals from the supermarket.’

‘Hmm,’ said Dad, frowning doubtfully. ‘Doesn’t quite sound good enough for a dinner dance, does it? Do you think Deborah could organise something, Granny?’

‘I don’t know whether she could take on anything so big,’ frowned Granny, shaking her head doubtfully. ‘How many people are coming, Jess?’

‘Ninety-two, at the last count,’ said Jess, pulling an anguished face.

‘Hmmm,’ Granny mused, ‘that sounds like an awful lot to me. Deb’s only a pâtissière – she specialises in baked goods and pastries and so on.’

‘So let’s have pastry wall-to-wall!’ yelled Jess. ‘Please, please, at least ask her, Granny.’

‘Not now,’ said Granny firmly. ‘It’s past Deb’s bedtime. But I will call her first thing in the morning.’

‘Excellent!’ cried Jess, crossing her fingers. ‘And if she needs help I’m sure I can find people to give her a hand.’

‘Now, sweetheart.’ Dad rubbed his face in a thoughtful way. ‘Have you fixed up the lighting?’

‘Lighting?’ Jess’s heart missed a beat. ‘What lighting? Do I need lighting? I mean, uhh, there’s lighting in the hall, surely, isn’t there?’

Dad smiled indulgently. ‘What, a few light bulbs in the ceiling?’ he asked satirically. ‘Do you want your dinner dance to have all the atmosphere of a groove down the morgue? You want lasers; you want gobos, strobes, mirror balls; you want fibre optics, dance-floor lighting . . .’ Jess was stunned, and could only gawp at her aged parent’s unexpected mastery of an art she had so far completely overlooked.

‘Tim, Tim!’ Granny laughed. ‘Don’t get carried away! What’s your budget for lighting, Jess?’

‘Er, pass,’ said Jess, cringing at the familiar revelation that her brilliant organisational skills had not included the novel concept of budgeting.

‘Don’t worry about it!’ cried Dad cheerfully. ‘This is on me! I’ve got a friend who runs an events lighting business, and he owes me a favour. As soon as Martin’s off the phone I’ll give Jim a call. And don’t forget I was a lighting designer for dozens of shows when I was at uni.’

‘That’s news to me, Dad!’ said Jess teasingly. ‘I thought you just spent your time getting wasted and looking at the stars!’

At this moment Martin came back into the kitchen from phoning his band members. ‘What do you want – the good news or the bad news?’ he asked, looking mischievous. Jess reckoned that if the bad news was really bad, he wouldn’t have been so perky.

‘The bad news first, to get it out of the way,’ she said, folding her hands feverishly in prayer.

‘Don can’t make it – he’s the trumpeter. And Ian’s busy, too – he’s the trombonist. But we’ll still have piano, drums, bass and sax. We’re normally called The Martin Davies Sextet because there are six of us, so because we’ll only be four maybe we could call ourselves The Martin Davies Quartet.’

‘Brilliant!’ cried Jess, jumping up and down and pumping the air as if she had won Wimbledon. ‘Re-sult!’

It really did feel like a triumph, even if it was the parents who had ridden to the rescue like the US cavalry in cowboy films. The terrible icy dread which had been rising, like dangerous floodwaters threatening to drown her, had receded. The music was sorted, the lighting was sorted, and though the food was still not organised, perhaps it was the one aspect of the evening which could be improvised by amateurs. She wanted to hug everybody in a huge frenzy of relief and thanks.

But though her terrible icy dread was gone, Jess had another, different bad feeling buried beneath all her relief, and once she went up to bed this other black, gloomy sensation spread through her veins. Fred had let her down so badly, it was as if he really didn’t care for her. OK, they’d had rows in the past, but deep down she’d never doubted that he cared. This time she felt he’d abandoned her to the wolves, and run like mad to save his own skin. Thank goodness they’d never gone on safari together. Fred was always joking, in a self-deprecating way, that he hadn’t got a backbone. But somehow he’d always made up for it and convinced her that he was, though maddening, kind of irresistible.

This time she had an awful sickening sense that the way he’d let her down, first in Dorset, and more significantly over the dinner dance organisation, showed a real, horrible flaw in his character. She couldn’t depend on him, and that made her feel that perhaps he wasn’t so very irresistible after all. He wasn’t just letting her down – he was letting himself down. Fred should have been better than this.

What was he feeling now? Her finger itched to send him a triumphant text telling him that she’d sorted it. But as Fred might be suffering a certain amount of agony – at least, she hoped so – it seemed only right to allow him to go on suffering it for a little while longer. Besides, he’d ‘resigned’, so really it was none of his business any more. Jess was beginning to enjoy the feeling of independence and progress. She’d show him! As she drifted off to sleep, she began to develop some ideas about how to host Chaos, maybe as a postmodern Cinderella . . .

Chapter 29

School was going to be difficult. Jess hadn’t slept well and got up early to disguise the bags under her eyes and re-pluck her eyebrows. She wasn’t going to speak to Fred, obviously; in fact, she wouldn’t even look vaguely in his direction if she could help it. But if he looked at her, she wanted him to be stunned by her magnificent, cruel beauty. As a cosmetics project it was a huge challenge, since currently she looked like a hamster who has gone ten rounds with a Jack Russell terrier.

Jess had been dreading seeing Fred, but at least she had sorted most of Chaos so she felt she could face all her friends who had bought tickets – before, she’d been feeling so guilty, it was as if she’d secretly murdered somebody they loved and hidden the body under her patio. However, as she approached the school gates, looking as magnificent and cruel as possible, Gemma Fawcett ran up. She was a small girl with a straight black shiny bob which Jess had always admired. If only her own hair would agree to hang quietly in one direction, instead of sticking up here and there randomly all over her head like a neglected vegetable plot in winter.