Girl, 16: Five-Star Fiasco

by Sue Limb

  ‘Pizza?’ suggested Jodie, whose greed was famous throughout the south of England.

  ‘You can’t have pizza at a dinner dance!’ objected Flora. ‘We’ve got to have a proper buffet with cold chicken and stuff.’

  ‘What’s the, uh, budget?’ asked Ben Jones.

  Jess’s heart gave a nervous leap. A budget! Of course! They should have had a budget. Her mouth went dry with panic.

  ‘I – I’m not sure …’ she faltered.

  ‘Oh, Jess, you idiot!’ sneered Jodie. ‘Don’t say you don’t even know what your budget is?’ She glanced swiftly at Ben Jones, as if she belonged to his club of people who were savvy enough to understand the concept of budgets.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Ben. ‘The tickets were, uh, seventy-five pounds per couple, right?’

  ‘So that’s thirty-seven pounds fifty per person,’ added Flora, the Queen of Maths.

  ‘How much of that is going to pay for the food?’ asked Tiffany, biting her nails in a lazy yet charismatic manner. Jess was jealous of her for a moment. To Tiffany, this whole conversation was just something to pass the time on a gloomy Sunday. She didn’t have to organise it. Tiffany hadn’t organised a party since the awful occasion of the minestrone-soup bra inserts – Jess shuddered at the memory. But if there were embarrassing moments in Jess’s past, that was nothing compared to the terrible looming crisis: in less than a fortnight, Chaos would be breaking over her head like a thunderstorm.

  ‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ Jess was panicking now.

  ‘Thirty-seven quid?’ Mackenzie shook his head. ‘Get real! You guys have massively undercharged. This is a dinner dance, right? I saw tickets for a dinner dance in Monterey advertised on the internet for five hundred dollars!’

  ‘You’re right, the sky’s the limit,’ murmured Fred ironically. ‘Why stop at five hundred? Why not make it an even nine? We can always ask for an extra eight hundred pounds per person on the door.’

  All this jokey talk of money when they had lost thousands of pounds made Jess feel desperate and faint.

  ‘What other expenses are there apart from food?’ asked Ben Jones, rubbing his beautiful right hand across the gorgeous blond stubble of his head. ‘Sorry if I’m being stupid …’

  ‘Hire of the hall, for a start,’ said Jodie. ‘How much was that?’ She turned unexpectedly to Flora.

  ‘Me?’ Flora looked startled. ‘How should I know? How much was it, Jess?’ It seemed Flora wanted to distance herself, too. Well, that was only fair: ultimately it was Jess and Fred who had cooked up this almighty mess, all by themselves.

  ‘I don’t remember!’ Jess felt as if she was being tied up with sticky tape, like an insect struggling in a spider’s web. ‘Fred’s dad booked the hall for us at the same time as getting the bar licence. How much was it all, Fred?’

  Fred looked clueless and gormless and he gave a shrug.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Jodie sighed in exasperation, as if Fred was somehow letting her down personally. ‘Ring him and ask, Fred!’ she urged.

  ‘He’s out,’ said Fred furtively, ‘all day.’

  ‘My mum might be able to find out,’ Jess said bravely. ‘The paperwork’s in my bedroom …’ A few scrappy notes were all the ‘paperwork’ that existed.

  ‘Ring her now!’ commanded Jodie.

  Jess’s blood boiled. How dare Jodie start acting as if this was her event and Jess was some kind of servant! Under the table, Jess secretly dug her fingernails into her palms to avoid letting fly with a stinging blow across Jodie’s chops. Her only comfort now was that Jodie’s spots were even worse than her own. But in a way Jodie was right. How could they organise the buffet without knowing all this tiresome stuff and doing some sums? Luckily Flora was by her side.

  Jess got out her phone and discovered there was a text waiting, coincidentally, from Mum herself.

  GUESS WHAT! HAVE MET HALF-GORGEOUS MAN CALLED MARTIN. CURRENTLY LUNCHING AT ALFREDO’S. HE MIGHT STILL BE AROUND WHEN YOU GET HOME TONIGHT. LOVE, MUM X

  Jess’s brain reeled. In the midst of her Chaos crisis, Mum had to go off on some kind of romantic escapade. This was giving Jess a headache.

  ‘She’s not at home right now.’ Jess shrugged and pocketed her phone again.

  Fred stirred in his chair. ‘And, of course, once we’ve organised the buffet,’ he murmured, with a sly subversive grin, ‘don’t forget we need chandeliers, fountains, lasers, a flock of white doves …’

  ‘Shut up, Fred!’ snapped Jess. This was so not the time for stupid irrelevant jokes. How could he be like this, knowing what deep trouble they were in?

  ‘So this buffet,’ drawled Tiffany, yawning. ‘What are you going to have?’

  ‘I’ve seen some great menus on the internet,’ said Jodie with a self-important toss of the head. ‘Get this: prawn fritters, filet mignon, or a veggie and cheese pancake for vegetarians.’

  ‘I want lasagne!’ said Mackenzie. ‘Filet mignon – that’s steak, right? You’re talking big bucks. Plus, I hate prawns – they’re gross, like insects.’

  ‘How do you make fritters?’ asked Ben Jones. ‘Don’t you have to, uh, like, deep-fry them?’

  ‘Yeah, of course. Why?’ demanded Jodie.

  ‘Have you got a deep-fat fryer?’ asked Tiffany. ‘My dad’s a junk-food addict – maybe you could borrow his.’

  ‘There should be one in the kitchen,’ said Mackenzie, frowning.

  ‘What kitchen?’ asked Ben Jones. ‘Sorry to be a bit thick.’

  ‘The kitchen of the venue where we’re holding it, dummy!’ Mackenzie grinned.

  ‘So does St Mark’s Church Hall have a deep-fat fryer?’ asked Ben.

  ‘Never mind the prawn fritters, then!’ exploded Jodie. ‘We can have something simpler!’

  ‘Why simpler?’ muttered Fred, still staring at the ceiling. ‘Why not Indonesian stir-fry? Why not roast swan?’

  ‘I don’t think we should try and do the catering ourselves!’ Flora interrupted nervously. ‘I think Jess and Fred were planning to get caterers in, right?’ She turned to Jess, for whom the whole concept of caterers was welcome, novel and also terrifying.

  ‘Yeah, caterers,’ Jess croaked.

  ‘Who’s doing it, then?’ demanded Jodie.

  ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ murmured Jess, feeling faint.

  ‘Who have you spoken to?’ asked Mackenzie. ‘Ask them how much it would be for lasagne. Everybody likes lasagne. And it’s cheap.’

  Jess was silent. By now, obviously, she should have worked out what the budget was, spoken to heaps of caterers, got quotes from them and discussed menus. Above all, she should have opened a bank account and stashed all the money safely away in it. Instead of all the big important stuff, she had just let life roll along as usual, playing Scrabble with Mum, watching movies with Fred and wasting hours discussing their stand-up routine.

  Just then Beast Hawkins and some other rugby guys burst into the Dolphin.

  ‘Rugby match in twenty minutes!’ he boomed. ‘Ashcroft Pumas versus Christchurch Colts! Come on, guys – we need support!’

  Jodie scrambled to her feet, followed by Tiffany, Mackenzie and Ben Jones, for whom sport was something of a religion. Flora also got up and then turned to Jess with a kind of apologetic cringe.

  ‘I promised Jack I’d meet him there,’ she said. ‘I ought to go … Don’t worry, guys, it’ll all be fine. Catch you later, OK?’ Then she was gone – everyone was gone, and Jess and Fred were left alone together in an atmosphere of dust, ashes and ruins.

  Chapter 14

  Suddenly Maria turned the music up; evidently she was going through an emotional patch. She marched to their table and cleared all the coffee cups.

  ‘Are you having lunch?’ she demanded moodily. The unspoken message was: ‘Order some food or clear out’. One of the charms of the Dolphin Cafe was the mercurial charisma of Maria, who had a passionate, Mediterranean temperament and occasionally threw china if one of her beaux let he
r down.

  ‘Let’s eat!’ Jess shouted above the music. ‘We might as well! I’m starving now!’

  Fred nodded and did the honours; he queued for a panini and brought a plate of nachos for Jess. A big power ballad was blasting from the sound system – always a sign that Maria was on a downer.

  ‘So,’ said Fred perkily, ‘Chaos – The Never-ending Story. How shall we play the hosting thing? In character? In fancy dress?’

  Jess couldn’t believe it. Fred was still obsessing about the hosting stuff, when they hadn’t got any further with the music or the food or, most importantly of all, the money. Of course, they did also need to get their act together – literally. Jess had tried to think of some fun ways of hosting the event, but she’d never managed to concentrate properly – she’d been snowed under with all the other stuff.

  ‘Fred!’ yelled Jess. ‘Never mind the hosting bit! Where’s the freakin’ money? And what are we going to do about the food and the music?’ She scooped some sour cream and guacamole on to her first nacho and raised it to her lips.

  ‘Ah, the money,’ he said in an offhand way. ‘Maybe you should –’ Fred started to talk, but the cappuccino machine kicked in with its deafening blast of steam.

  Though Fred was talking to her, he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were roving over the whole room and Jess couldn’t help feeling that this symbolised Fred’s failure to focus on the problems they faced, starting with his refusal to accept that the money was definitely under his bed, because she knew for a fact it wasn’t under hers.

  Something horrid happened to the nacho in her mouth: it turned to leather, the sour cream curdled into some kind of horrible scum and the guacamole became engine oil. It wasn’t the Dolphin Cafe’s fault – their nachos were, if not sublime, at least always very tasty. Jess forced it down with a gigantic swig of cola (another new year’s resolution gone!) and then began to wonder what would happen to the enormous ball of gas she seemed to have swallowed. Abruptly the cappuccino machine finished its noise.

  ‘I didn’t hear a word of anything you said then,’ said Jess loudly, watching in faint disgust as Fred shoved a huge bit of panini into his mouth.

  He then went off into a comedy routine about trying to talk with his mouth full: ‘Ommmggg umggggh ughmmmm gummity gummity gummmngh …’

  Jess felt anguished. Fred seemed so completely oblivious to the turmoil she was in. His clowning about might have been amusing once, but for the first time in her life, Jess was not finding Fred funny. The ball of gas Jess had swallowed had somehow turned into a heavy sack of poison that was hanging down inside her.

  Desperate to escape into something, Jess tore into the next nacho. She wasn’t going to be beaten by a plate of corn chips; she forced them down relentlessly, like a garbage lorry swallowing black plastic sacks, only with rather less enjoyment. Fred was still talking, but, it seemed, more at her than to her. She recognised the expression on his face – it was the way he looked when he was endlessly flannelling, the way he looked when spinning loads of yarns to a teacher whose homework he had somehow neglected to complete. How had she turned into a teacher for Fred? Where was their old effortless understanding? This was horribly wrong. Suddenly the power ballad finished its dramatic climax.

  ‘Look,’ said Fred in the sudden silence, ‘if you organise the food and the music, I’ll write the script. How about that?’

  ‘Fred!’ yelled Jess. ‘I keep telling you! Chaos will be fine without our stand-up routine, but if there’s no food and no music, people will go mental and we’ll be famous till the end of time for our disastrous event! Plus Oxfam will get nothing and all those starving kids we should have helped will still be desperate! That was why we wanted to organise this in the first place, remember? To help those poor little kids in Africa, where they’ve had that terrible drought and there’s literally no food! Now listen – no way can I organise everything! You’re being totally unhelpful and annoying. The first thing you’ve got to do is find the money!’

  ‘I’ve looked, honest,’ said Fred hurriedly. ‘It’s definitely not in my bedroom.’

  ‘It must be!’ raged Jess. ‘Look again!’

  ‘All right, all right!’ Fred looked really uneasy. ‘I’ll look again! And I’ll organise the music!’

  ‘Well, make sure you do!’ Jess was feeling terrible now, both furious with Fred and sick because of the nachos she’d stuffed in her face. She hated the nagging teacherish person she seemed to have become, but was seized with dread at the feeling that Chaos would never get organised. It would be a five-star fiasco.

  ‘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.