One More Little Problem

by Vanessa Curtis

  ‘Hi,’ it says. ‘Boys are so dull. Fancy getting together for some Girl Action?’

  I take action right away.

  I press the ‘delete’ button. Hard.

  Caro thinks that my dating adventures are hilarious.

  ‘These dudes all sound shit,’ she says, sparse as ever. ‘Except maybe that guy with the Italian name. He sounds OK. If you don’t want him, chuck him my way and I’ll eat him with gravy for dinner.’

  ‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘How do you know about the guy with the Italian name?’

  Caro tries to look ashamed but then she ruins it by smirking.

  ‘Your password isn’t exactly difficult to crack,’ she says. ‘ I mean – “Zelah”. Not very original, is it?’

  I give her a faint smile. I’m getting used to having Caro around now. I’ve realised that much of what she says sounds rude and insulting but actually hides a shy and unhappy little person underneath.

  And she’s right in that Alessandro does sound kind of OK. Well – as OK as somebody you’ve never met can do, I s’pose. Which is why I said yes when he suggested that we meet up.

  But I’m so tired and fed up with the entire summer holiday that I can’t be bothered to dress up again in the long skirt and silver flip-flops and dangly earrings so when Saturday comes around again I just get up, do my scrubs and jumps and put on jeans and a white T-shirt and a pair of plimsolls.

  I brush my hair one hundred times on each side ’cos I’m stressed and it’s raining again and I don’t really want to go on the tube to Central London to meet Alessandro but that’s where we’ve arranged to meet.

  Fran turns up at ten and looks me up and down in despair.

  ‘Zelah!’ she says. ‘You can’t go on a date looking like you haven’t made any effort!’

  Fran is wearing a short flippy pink skirt, which flares out when she walks, pink flip-flops with diamond-studded edges and her best denim jacket. Her hair has been smoothed into two heavy plaits and tied at the ends with pink stretchy bands.

  ‘Fran,’ I say, looking at this vision of pinkness. ‘You’re such a – girl.’

  Fran looks at her dainty pink watch and gasps.

  ‘We’ve got to go!’ she says. ‘Quick – let me just do your hair.’

  Standing in front of the hall mirror she performs wonders with my frizzy black bush of hair, tying it back into a pony. She takes off her gold hoop earrings with a tiny pink flower dangling from each and wipes them on a tissue. Then she inserts them into my ear lobes.

  ‘Not as good as the other day,’ she says. ‘But you look better with the earrings in.’

  We bolt out of the door for the tube.

  Tube is gross.

  I forgot how much the underground makes my OCD flare up.

  There are greasy poles in the middle of the carriage and ’cos there’s no room to sit down I’m standing right by one trying not to touch it except that I have to or else I’d fall over on top of a load of horrid smelly unwashed bodies and die from Germ Alert and Dirt Alert.

  Fran lets me grab on to the bell-shaped sleeves of her pink gypsy top instead when the train lurches to a stop in every station.

  ‘Thanks,’ I whisper.

  I’m starting to get a gurgling sinking feeling of nerves in my stomach.

  Yuk.

  I hope this Alessandro bloke is worth it.

  And more to the point, I hope he’s clean.

  Oxford Circus is this vile mass of moving, pushing, sweaty human bodies.

  ‘Horrid,’ I mutter as Fran pulls me by the sleeve up the escalator and then steers me out of the exit and into the harsh sunlight.

  ‘Eughhh,’ I say as we fight our way down Oxford Street towards the mega Topshop on the other side of the road.

  I keep hold of Fran’s sleeve. People are rushing past me and bashing my elbows and bottom, which is major Dirt Alert AND Germ Alert so I do my ‘phoo, phoo,’ breaths to try and stay calm.

  Not much chance of that.

  There are so many people piling past us when we stand by the big concrete pillar outside Topshop that I go giddy.

  A lot of boys smile at Fran, I notice.

  She tosses her plaits and sticks her snub nose a fraction higher in the air. The only thing Fran’s got her eye on is a sleeveless pink sundress modelled on a dummy as thin as a piece of cheese-wire.

  I’ve told Alessandro that I’ve got frizzy black hair and will be standing outside Topshop with my beautiful ex-best friend who will probably be dressed in a lot of pink. I’ve said that Fran’s beautiful to avoid the awkward moment where his mouth gapes open and it’s obvious to us both that he wishes he could go on a date with her instead.

  Fran’s peering across the road back towards the tube exit with a frown.

  ‘That boy looks familiar,’ she says.

  I follow her gaze but it’s difficult with all the other people jostling about in the middle of the road, dodging buses and taxis and hanging about in big untidy groups.

  ‘Can’t see a boy,’ I mutter. I’m getting grumpy and hot.

  ‘There,’ says Fran, pointing.

  I can see the tip of somebody’s head but that’s about it.

  ‘I’m sure I know him,’ says Fran. ‘Oh well – it can’t be Alessandro anyway. He’s late, by the way.’

  She glances behind us at the window of Topshop again. I can practically hear the money screaming to get out of her purse and into the cash till.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m getting a bit fed up waiting as well.’

  I turn around and look into the window of Topshop at a pair of silver flip-flops a bit like mine but with a big white daisy stuck on the front.

  Hmm. Nice.

  I’m just wondering whether I should give up the whole dating thing and go shopping with Fran instead when I realise that she’s talking to somebody.

  ‘I knew I recognised you!’ she’s saying. ‘Weird! I mean – I only met you that once.’

  I turn round with a scowl, prepared to tell Fran to stop chatting up strangers and concentrate on the matter at hand – me.

  I smell him before I see him.

  Shower gel.

  Deodorant.

  Faint whiff of tobacco.

  ‘Hi, Zelah,’ says a gruff voice.

  Topshop starts collapsing behind me and I fall against the concrete pillar for support.

  Dirt Alert fades into the background. I try to prop myself up, make some words come out of my mouth.

  But all I can manage is:

  ‘Y–you!’

  Chapter Seventeen

  He’s sort of grinning at me, all shaved head and light olive skin.

  His dark eyes are shining with amusement.

  ‘Sol,’ I manage. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Same as you two,’ says Sol. He’s grinning like a demented alley cat now.

  ‘What – staring at dresses in Topshop?’ I say.

  Fran is looking from me to Sol and back again. Some sort of light has been switched on in her face.

  ‘Oh, I get it!’ she says.

  ‘I wish I did,’ I say. ‘Get what? We’re here because I’m supposed to be going on a blind date, by the way. But the stupid idiot never turned up.’

  ‘Zelah,’ hisses Fran. ‘Haven’t you switched your brain on today?’

  I continue to stare at Sol and then at Fran and then around the area outside Topshop just in case my blind date is standing there all lonely and ignored.

  Sol is laughing now. Proper loud laughing, not the quiet shoulder-shaking sort he used to do at Forest Hill.

  ‘Zelah,’ he says. ‘I am that stupid idiot.’

  He and Fran fall about while I try to pick my brains off the floor where they’ve been trampled by sale shoppers.

  ‘But,’ I start. This is way too weird. ‘But – I’m supposed to be meeting somebody called “Alessandro”.’

  ‘And?’ says Sol. ‘Here I am.’

  Fran gives me a virtual shoulder-pat, a big grin, and then rush
es into Topshop with a purposeful glint in her eye.

  ‘See you here at five!’ she yells as she sinks down on a crowded escalator into the bowels of the shop.

  I watch the top of her shiny head until it disappears, just to give me time to find some words.

  Sol is still grinning.

  ‘You weren’t very hard to track down,’ he says. ‘I mean – Zelah! You can’t use your own name on a networking site when it’s that unusual!’

  I draw myself up from the pillar and give him a hard stare.

  ‘Well, at least I’m not hiding behind a fake name,’ I say. ‘I mean – Alessandro! What’s that all about? Sounds like a creepy waiter in an Italian restaurant!’

  Sol’s turn to look aggrieved now.

  ‘Actually, that’s my real name,’ he says. ‘But I’ve always been known as “Sol” at home.’

  There’s a short silence during which I become aware that I want a big hole to appear and swallow me up, that my hands need a good wash and that my throat has dried to cinder toast.

  Sol sees me looking down at my fingers.

  ‘Still got the OCD, yeah?’ he says in a softer voice.

  I nod. Can’t speak for a moment.

  Memories of Forest Hill come flooding back.

  The first time he opened up to me about his mum dying and his father going to pieces.

  The last time I saw him out of the back of the car window as Dad and Heather drove me home.

  ‘Your dad!’ I say, remembering the email I had last week. ‘How did he end up in prison?’

  Sol sighs.

  He looks around and then gestures towards a cafe down a side street on the other side of the road.

  ‘Let’s go and grab a drink,’ he says. ‘I’ll fill you in.’

  We walk down Oxford Street in silence. Not touching, of course. That would be major Germ Alert and Dirt Alert.

  But close.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It’s been three months since I last saw Sol at Forest Hill.

  I study him across the table in the cafe while he glances down the menu.

  He looks better than he did then.

  His face has filled out, even though his cheekbones are still to die for.

  He smiles a lot more.

  And most amazing of all, he talks in great non-stop streams of speech.

  ‘Wow,’ I say after he’s put in an order for tea, coffee, cake, biscuits and beans on toast. ‘You’ve gone the opposite way. Now you won’t shut up!’

  Sol flashes me one of his dazzling grins and settles back in his orange plastic chair.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘I was surfing the net and I just kind of wondered how you might be doing. Typed in your name and went right to that website. The rest was pretty easy.’

  I’m racking my brains to see if I said anything embarrassing in my emails to the bloke I thought was ‘Alessandro’ but I can’t think of much at all with him sitting there grinning.

  Real live Sol. Sitting there in front of me.

  About thirty plates of food turn up on our table.

  I pull out my own knife and fork from the pocket of Fran’s jacket and inspect all the plates to make sure there’s no specks of dirt or crumbs where there shouldn’t be.

  Sol watches me, his dark eyes scowling under heavy brows.

  ‘I thought maybe Forest Hill had sorted you out,’ he says.

  I pick up a piece of toast in a white napkin, inspect it for any foreign bodies, check the underside twice and bring it gingerly to my lips.

  ‘Kind of. A bit,’ I say. ‘I’ve cut down my jumping and scrubbing. But it’s been a bad summer.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ says Sol. ‘You mentioned that you’ve got Caro staying with you. Nightmare. How come?’

  I explain how she just turned up on my doorstep like a lost satanist and Sol laughs in a fearful way.

  ‘Good luck with that,’ is all he says, but his eyes sparkle.

  Then he demolishes a big plate of beans and stuffs in a couple of cakes.

  I wait until he’s finished ’cos I quite like gazing at his smooth shaved head while he’s eating and then I ask him about his dad.

  Sol wipes his mouth and leans back in his chair again.

  ‘It was good for a while, yeah?’ he says. ‘I went back to live with Dad for a few weeks. He made like a really big effort. He was amazed that I could talk again. Then we started to talk about what happened to Mum. That was when he sort of started going to pieces.’

  I nod. I remember Sol telling me about his parents.

  ‘Then what?’ I say, peeling a cake out of a white wrapper with a tissue clamped to my hand.

  ‘Then he started staying out later and later,’ says Sol. ‘And one night he didn’t come home. I rang the police and they said they’d arrested him for burglary. That was the last time I saw him out of prison.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. I can feel my eyes going all watery. Sol all abandoned and orphan-like, with a mother dead and a father locked up.

  He gives a brief laugh and mops a piece of bread around what’s left of his bean plate.

  ‘You don’t need to feel sorry for me,’ he says. ‘I’ve moved in with my granddad in East London. It’s cool. We get on kind of OK. He’s got a girlfriend who’s ten years younger than him.’

  I nod.

  ‘Hey, what’s this about playing in a heavy metal band,’ I say, remembering the emails. ‘Maybe you should be going out with Caro.’

  Sol shudders. ‘That girl,’ he says, ‘is related to the Antichrist. Anyway, she’s more goth than slash metal really.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I say. I don’t know much about either goth or metal apart from the weird noises I hear coming from Caro’s bedroom.

  Sol tells me about his band and the songs he’s been writing and then it’s nearly five o’clock already so he pays the bill and we head back into the street in silence.

  There’s no sign of Fran outside Topshop yet but then again she tends to lose track of time when surrounded by shoes and dresses so me and Sol stand back by the concrete pillar and he moves into my Personal Space which I always kind of need as it’s how I avoid Germ Alert and Dirt Alert and the thing is I kind of don’t mind because it’s Sol and he makes my heart thump faster but then another little voice in me is screaming in panic ’cos it looks as if he might DO something any moment and I kind of wish Fran would come back but half-wish that she’d get lost forever in the changing rooms of Topshop and I’m obviously looking a bit hot and flustered because Sol changes from moving towards me to kind of stepping back and nearly crashing into a group of girl tourists hanging about looking at maps behind him.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. I’m not sure whether he’s saying it to me or to the girls so I give a kind of half-smile.

  ‘Erm, don’t suppose I could hold your hand for a moment?’ he says, all hopeful.

  He bends his head a bit closer. I can smell the shower gel again.

  The last time I saw Sol at Forest Hill he held my hand. It was only for a couple of seconds but it was the first time I’d touched somebody on their skin for over two years.

  I can still remember what it felt like. Dry, warm, alive.

  Scary. But amazing too.

  I look down at my hands

  Then I start holding one out towards Sol but the hand develops a will of its own and dives back into my pocket again.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ I say. I want to die.

  I want to be rid of my OCD so badly that my guts twist and ache.

  ‘It’s OK,’ says Sol, but it isn’t really.

  We stand there like two awkward strangers at a bus stop, shifting from one foot to another and raising our eyebrows and saying ‘Well,’ and ‘Hmm . . .’ and ‘So!’ a few times until I think I’m going to expire with embarrassment and then Fran’s there again with a big handful of rustling bags and Sol is grinning at her and making some feeble joke about saving the environment and then the next thing I’m back on the tube with Fran and she’s gazing at me with big conc
erned eyes.

  We only speak about two words all the way home even though she’s bought me the silver flip-flops with the big flowers on which is really sweet.

  I want to get home and lie on the bed and cry for England.

  I want my OCD to go away.

  Chapter Nineteen

  All over the rest of the weekend I check my email about a zillion times but there’s nothing from Sol although there are some nice texts from Fran asking if I’m OK.

  Somehow I didn’t really think that there would be.

  I’m too screwed-up for him now. He’s sorted out his life and got on top of his non-talking problem.

  And I’m still scrubbing at my cheeks with a nail brush loaded up with harsh white soap and I’m still jumping until my feet get sore and I’ve even developed a new symptom which involves tapping ten times on the end of the banister before I do my jumps or else I’ve convinced myself that Heather will die in Slovenia and never come home to rescue me from this horrible school holiday.

  I probably looked like a hopeless case to Sol.

  Wouldn’t blame him if he never got in touch again.

  Monday.

  Caro gets up late but then goes out, refusing to tell me where she’s going.

  She comes back from wherever she’s been at the same time Dad arrives home from school.

  She’s got a look on her face that I recognise.

  It’s kind of smirking and self-important and superior and mysterious all at the same time.

  It’s the same look she used to get just before she teased Alice or Lib at Forest Hill House with some devastating insult that would have Alice in floods of tears or Lib speechless with anger.

  ‘What?’ I snap. I am not in the mood for Caro’s nastiness.

  And now Dad’s come home looking a little red around the eyes. Again. He’s bought us a Chinese takeaway as a treat but I can’t help looking at his eyes and wishing that Heather would come back and stop him visiting the pub after work.

  Dad’s missing Heather a lot. He won’t admit it, but I’ve caught him gazing at her photograph all moony-eyed and pathetic when he thinks I’ve gone to bed.

  He’s pining and lovesick.