Girl, Going on 16: Pants on Fire (13 page)

‘What was, dear?’ Granny had got caught up again with
Miss Marple
and was watching a woman loitering suspiciously by some flowerbeds.

‘Nothing, just your so-called heart pain,’ said Jess, giving Granny a sly dig with her elbow. ‘You just had that massive burp, and it all went away, didn’t it?’

‘Oh yes, dear. I should never have trusted those pickles,’ said Granny, not taking her eyes off the screen for an instant.

Having been assured that Granny was not really ill, Mum went back to work. She seemed to think it was OK for Jess to stay at home, as long as she ‘made up the work tomorrow’. Ha! Poor deluded soul. Little did Mum know that Jess still hadn’t made up the work she’d missed from way back last
year
.

Jess felt quite exhausted by the frenzied bout of lying she’d had to do, so she drank a bottle of Coke, curled up on the sofa cuddling Granny and tried to tune in to
Miss Marple
. But though usually she loved nothing better than to follow the exploits of the brilliant old sleuth, today she just couldn’t concentrate.

All the ingredients of her massive crisis kept swirling round and round in her head: the two most frightening teachers in school baying for her blood! And darling old Fred, looking at her as if she was something unpleasant on the pavement.

Later she and Granny shared a cheese omelette with salad, and Jess drank another bottle of Coke. Then they watched a whole new
Miss Marple
. Jess was half-asleep by now, but making plans. A bit later she would ring Flora. She’d call her on her mobile, after school. She simply had to pour out her heart.

In fact, she would invite Flora round and they could have a heart-to-heart up in her room. Oh no! Wait! Jess was supposed to be escorting Granny to the doctor’s this evening. Never mind, she and Flora could have a telephone heart-to-heart instead.

Miss Marple solved the crime, and Jess drank a glass of Coke. (Was she addicted or something? Possibly.) Then she nipped to the kitchen and dialled Flora’s number.

‘Answer it, answer it,’ she breathed. She just had to talk to Flo. If she didn’t, she would burst.

‘Hi, babe!’ said Flora. ‘Are you OK? Where did you disappear to after the fabulous pants show?’

‘Oh, I just bunked off home,’ said Jess. ‘I didn’t fancy seeing Mr Powell before his lunch. You know he’s a major carnivore. How are you? Everything OK?’

She always tried to be polite. However, she was preparing to download her epic tale of disaster as soon as Flora had said she was OK.

‘OK – fantastic!’ said Flora. ‘Guess what?’

‘What?’ This was slightly irritating. This wasn’t on the agenda.

‘I’ve got a part in
Twelfth Night
!’

‘No! Fantastic! Congrats, old bean!’

‘And guess what? I’ve got Viola!’

‘Viola! The lead role, brilliant! You’ll be brilliant!’ said Jess, trying to ignore a terrible wave of cold jealousy which was rising up her legs off the kitchen floor.

‘And guess what!’

Jess was a bit tired of all this guessing.

‘What?’

‘Jack Stevens is playing Orsino! So I’ll have lots of rehearsals with just him and me! I can’t wait!’

‘How completely fabulous. I’m thrilled for you!’ said Jess. But secretly she was gutted. She couldn’t spoil Flora’s high by starting to drone on tragically about her own problems, could she?

‘Gotta go now, babe,’ said Flora suddenly. ‘I’m running out of charge. I’m meeting my mum in town for a celebration tea at Luigi’s!’

‘Cheers, enjoy!’ said Jess.

That was it, then. Jess trudged dolefully up to her room and prepared to spend the evening wallowing in lonely misery. She kind of half wanted to go to the loo, but she was so miserable, it seemed like too much of an effort.

She was halfway through the first wave of tragic despair when her mum came home, rushed upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom. This was annoying. Jess had been planning to have a pee in a moment or two. She must have drunk about six pints of Coke today.

‘Mum!’ She hammered on the door. ‘I want a pee!’

‘Use the outside loo!’ called Mum. ‘I’m having a quick shower! Nori will be here any minute!’

What disastrous timing! Jess ran downstairs. The outside loo was primitive beyond words. They had plans to convert it and the adjoining coal shed into a swish new bathroom for Granny, but they hadn’t managed to raise the necessary cash yet. So it was basically just a rather smelly outside loo where lots of horrid spiders lived.

Granny used it sometimes in the daytime if she couldn’t face the stairs. In fact – oh no! She was in there
right now.

‘Granny!’ called Jess, increasingly desperate. ‘Sorry to disturb you, but will you be long?’

‘I’m afraid I might be some time, dear,’ said Granny. ‘I’ve been wrestling with my lazy bowel all day, and I want to get it sorted before we go to the doctor’s.’

‘Say no more!’ said Jess, adding a silent ‘
please
’. ‘I’ll go upstairs, don’t worry. Relax!’

There was only one thing for it. She was going to have to pee
in her own back garden
. She ventured down towards the picnic table. It was shaded by a couple of trees and fairly secluded down there – but only fairly. The windows of all the neighbouring houses were sort of looking down on her. Jess edged behind a bush near the picnic table, and pretended to have dropped something. She bent down and peeped up to see if anyone was watching. It seemed nobody was.

Swiftly she pulled down her pants and let rip. But, horror! As she peered through the leaves towards the house, she saw the back door swing open. What? Mum was in the shower, Granny was in the outside loo – who on earth was it? Jess watched in helpless horror as
Mr Nishizawa
came out into the garden! He headed down the path for the picnic table right next to where Jess was still having the longest pee in the history of urination. Any minute now he would catch sight of her! What could she do?

Chapter 15

Jess reckoned she had about five seconds to act. In a flash she realised that it wouldn’t be the standing up that was the problem – it would be the pulling up of the pants that gave the game away. So with one deft move she cut short the pee (in itself a major physical triumph), stepped right out of her pants and sort of kicked them under the bush, while surging upwards, tugging her skirt down and producing a glamorous and confident smile.

Mr Nishizawa was looking at her. She wasn’t completely sure whether he had seen her peeing or not. Thank goodness he was Japanese. They were the most polite people in the world and she was sure he wouldn’t mention it. And anyway, he didn’t have the necessary vocabulary.

‘Good evening!’ said Mr Nishizawa, bowing and smiling. ‘Door is open – ring bell, nobody answer. Look for teacher in garden.’

‘That’s fine, OK, terrific!’ said Jess. ‘I was just looking for herbs – you know!’

He looked puzzled. She picked a piece off the nearest bush and sniffed it in rapture. He smiled and bowed again.

This is what it must be like to be the Queen
, thought Jess.
People bowing all the time
. Although she doubted if the Queen had ever been caught short and had to pee behind a bush in her own garden.

This thought made Jess laugh out loud, but because it seemed rather mad to do so, she turned it into a kind of Moment of Rapture.

‘Ha ha! Hee hee! The garden looks so fabulous at this time of year!’ she cried, tossing the handful of leaves in the air with crazy joy.

‘Garden – beautiful!’ agreed Mr Nishizawa.

‘Come on – I’ll tell Mum you’re here!’ said Jess.

Mr Nishizawa bowed yet again (what an elastic back that guy must have) and indicated that she should go first.

Jess accepted, and led the way back to the house. She was becoming rather anxious about the shortness of her skirt, since she was, for the first time in her life, without any underpants in public.

There was only one step up into the house, thank goodness, and just before she climbed it, she turned round to Mr Nishizawa and said, ‘Do you think it’ll rain? Look at that cloud!’ and made a sweeping gesture towards the sky. Mr Nishizawa obligingly looked up over his shoulder, so he missed what might have been a cheeky flash of Jess’s lower buttock as she skipped up the step.

Jess and Mr Nishizawa walked through the kitchen and into the hall. Granny suddenly appeared from behind them. She had finished in the outside loo and was already wearing her coat and carrying her bag.

‘Oh, hello, dear!’ said Granny to Mr Nishizawa. She’d never attempted to pronounce his name.

‘Good evening!’ he said, bowing.

‘I’ve given up on my silly old bowel, dear,’ Granny went on in an undertone to Jess. ‘Now come on – we must go, it’ll take us ten minutes to get there.’ Jess nodded. She wanted desperately to go upstairs and get a pair of pants. But how could she, with Mr Nishizawa and Granny standing in the hall and staring up the stairs? If she went upstairs now, they’d get the kind of view normally only available in rather sordid nightclubs.

‘Granny – do you want to take Mr Nishizawa into the sitting room so he can wait there?’

‘Never mind all that, dear. Your mum will be down in a minute – Madeleine!’ bawled Granny. ‘Your pupil’s here!’

‘OK!’ shouted Mum from the bathroom. ‘Coming!’

‘Would you like to wait in the sitting room, Mr Nishizawa?’ asked Jess.

Mr Nishizawa bowed. ‘Rain a lot in England. Rain also in Japan much time.’ He was really rather cute. All the same, Jess couldn’t help wishing he could be wafted right back to Japan immediately, on a pillar of fire. At least until she’d got her underwear sorted.

‘Your mother very good teacher!’ Mr Nishizawa smiled and stood gazing up the stairs, impatient to see the vision descending: his honoured and revered teacher.

‘Come on, dear, we must go,’ said Granny, heading for the door. ‘I hate being late for the doctor.’

Jess had only two choices: she could either go upstairs now and show her bare bum to Mr Nishizawa (and, less crucially, to Granny), or she could accompany Granny on a trip to the doctor’s, wearing no pants at all.

Mr Nishizawa smiled with great politeness. There was no contest. Jess was going to have to leave the house without pants.

Out in the street, she took Granny’s arm. Granny was blathering on about all the people she’d known who had had bits of their bodies cut off. And in each case, the amputation had been preceded by a visit to the doctor.

But Jess was barely listening. Or rather, she was barely not-listening. The bareness of her bum was her only concern. This was like some appalling living nightmare. Her skirt was above the knee. This meant that, as long as she stayed bolt upright, nobody should see anything embarrassing.

Jess silently thanked God that she wasn’t wearing a skirt in a light material, or with playful pleats that would flicker in the slightest breeze. Instead, it was a rather dull grey school-type skirt. Jess remembered turning it up secretly, taking ten centimetres off its length, sewing away laboriously, determined to have a skirt that was nearly illegal according to school rules. She was being punished for it now.