by Sue Limb
Jess re-entered the sitting room red-faced from coughing, and with her left eye so smudged, she looked like some kind of pirate. It became clear the moment she entered that it wouldn’t have mattered if she had grown a third eye out in the kitchen and lined it with red mascara – nobody would have noticed.
Flora had moved and was sprawling on the rug at the feet of the boys. It would be impossible for anybody sitting on the sofa to avoid looking down her cleavage and up her skirt at the same time. Jess peeped sideways at Ben Jones to see if he was looking down Flora’s cleavage. He certainly was. Well, he’d have had to fix his eyes on the ceiling to avoid it.
‘Cheers,’ said Mackenzie, picking up the glass of milkshake. He downed it in a single gulp.
‘Haven’t you got any bigger glasses, Jess?’ asked Flora with a superior little frown. ‘These are wine glasses.’
‘I know these are wine glasses, for goodness’ sake,’ snapped Jess. ‘The tumblers are dirty. What does it matter anyway?’
‘No need to get narky with me,’ said Flora with a strange, hostile glare. She turned to the boys, and Jess saw her face glide from irritation to seduction. Mackenzie and Ben were both looking down Flora’s cleavage with the kind of eager, addictive stare that suggested a crucial football match might be taking place across her chest.
‘Tell me about this band of yours,’ said Jess.
‘Yeah, it’s ace! Wicked!’ said Mackenzie. ‘We’re gonna start band practice as soon as we can find somewhere to rehearse – hey! What about here?’
‘You can’t,’ said Jess hastily. ‘My granny’s going to be living with us.’
‘A granny!’ said Mackenzie. ‘Cool! Is she hot? Maybe she could front our band!’ Everybody laughed, although Jess felt slightly sick and guilty, and wished her granny lived in Alaska and had never been mentioned.
‘We can’t rehearse in my house,’ said Flora, ‘because of my dad. I won’t even be able to tell my parents I’m going to sing in the band. Jess – when I go to band practice, can I say I’m coming round to see you?’
‘Yeah,’ said Jess. ‘Whatever.’
A dull ache sprang up in her insides. She dreaded a phone conversation with Flora’s terrifying father. ‘Where is Flora exactly, Jess, please?’ he would say, in his ferocious successful-businessman’s sort of snarly voice. Jess almost fainted at the thought. This evening was getting worse and worse. It was turning into an absolute nightmare. Ben Jones had hardly spoken a single word, yet. There was only one thing for it – to take refuge in fantasy.
‘It is quite close indoors,’ said Sir Benjamin. ‘Would you care to take a turn around the shrubbery, Miss Jordan?’
‘I should like that very well, Sir Benjamin,’ said Jess, putting down her Pepsi – no, no, her teacup – with a trembling hand.
‘The azaleas are in bloom. It is a lovely sight. Miss Flora, would you be so kind as to clear the tea things and attend to the fire?’
Miss Flora nodded modestly and obediently. Such a sweet girl. A shame about her massive red nose and irregular green teeth.
‘So, what are we going to call ourselves?’ asked Mackenzie. ‘How about Wicked? That would be wicked. Ha ha!’
Jess supposed this was what Flora referred to as Mackenzie’s rapier wit. ‘Haven’t you thought of the name yet?’ she asked. ‘I would have thought of the name first. That’s the best bit, thinking of the name. After that it’s downhill all the way.’
‘We’re still fighting about it,’ said Flora. There was something irritating about that we. So they were a we, were they? The three of them. Having fun fighting excitingly.
‘So what’s the shortlist?’ demanded Jess.
‘Well, Mackenzie thinks it should be Insane Carrot,’ Flora began, ‘B.J. likes Killer Toads and I go for Archaeology.’
Jess tried to look interested. But instead she was mesmerised by Flora casually calling Ben ‘B.J.’ She had never heard him called that by anybody else. It must be a special nickname invented for him by Flora.
‘How about Poisonous Trash?’ suggested Jess between gritted teeth.
The phone rang. Jess suddenly felt a lurch of guilt. OK, her mum had said it was all right for Flora to be there – but what about the boys?
‘Quiet!’ she hissed and grabbed the phone.
‘Jess?’
‘Dad!’
‘How are you, love? What have you been up to? Sorry I haven’t rung for a couple of weeks – I’ve had a rather tragic bout of flu.’
It’s my dad! Jess mouthed. ‘S’cuse me, Dad – I’ll just go and use the upstairs phone – we’ve got some people here.’ She replaced the phone and pulled a face. ‘I’ll be right back,’ she promised. Oh, why did her dad have to call tonight of all nights? His timing was catastrophic.
She picked up the phone in her mother’s study. ‘Yeah, Dad, sorry to hear about the flu,’ she said. ‘Are you better now?’
‘Still got a bit of a cough,’ he said. ‘Wait a minute – there’s one coming along now. It sounds like a hen-house being demolished – listen!’ He coughed extensively to demonstrate. Such a hypochondriac! Jess loved her dad, but over the years she had learned a lot more than she cared to know about his lungs and his large intestine. Jess asked him how life was in St Ives, and made him promise to let her come and stay.
‘Well, I suppose we could arrange something.’ He hesitated, as if having your daughter to stay involved building a whole east wing and hiring a camel-train of three hundred to accompany her on her journey. ‘Although I’m not sure where you could sleep. Maybe I could get some kind of large kennel …’
‘I can sleep anywhere, Dad,’ Jess assured him. ‘On the sofa. On the floor. I don’t care. I haven’t even seen your new house and you’ve been there for ages. And it’s by the sea. It’s such a waste.’
‘I’ll talk it over with Mummy,’ said her dad. ‘I’m not sure she would let you come and stay. She thinks I have no discipline. You’ll have to promise to read the Bible all the time and go to bed at 7.30.’
‘7.30!’ cried Jess in mock outrage. ‘I’d be fast asleep long before that!’
‘And you’d have to vacuum the house from top to bottom before a meek breakfast of tinned fish and vitamin pills,’ said her dad.
‘Well, obviously,’ replied Jess. ‘And I’d perform ten-mile walks in sensible shoes.’
‘That’s settled, then,’ said her dad.
But Jess wasn’t at all sure that it was. She didn’t completely trust her dad not to wriggle out of it. He could go along with swapping jokes for ages and then suddenly – crunch – he’d sort of change gear and go boring and serious and grown-up. And he did just that, right now.
‘Could I have a quick word with Mum, please, love? She sent me an e-mail saying she’s been having a bit of trouble with Granny.’
Jess hesitated. ‘Mum’s out,’ she admitted. ‘She’s gone to get Granny and bring her back here to live. But the car broke down on the way home so they’re staying the night somewhere.’
‘Who’s looking after you, then?’
‘I don’t need anybody to look after me, Dad – I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself!’ There was a quiet, anxious pause. She just knew Dad was picking his fingers and beginning to get nervous indigestion.
‘But you said you’ve got friends in?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, just Flora and a couple of others.’
‘Girls, Jess? Or those horrible boy-type things?’
‘Mackenzie and Ben Jones from school, Dad – there’s no need to sound so disapproving. They’re totally harmless. I mean, you were a boy once. You didn’t do anything terribly bad, did you?’
‘I was an almost ingeniously boring boy,’ said her dad, rather sadly. ‘The nearest I ever got to a wild night out was organising a disco for my pet hamsters. So what are you doing? Watching some dire film, I suppose?’
‘No – the TV isn’t even on, Dad. We’re just trying to decide on a name for our band.’
‘You’re in
a band? Wow, I’m so out of touch.’
‘Well, I’m not actually in it. Flora’s the singer. I’m the manager.’ Jess liked the idea of being a manager. Perhaps she would offer her services for real. ‘I’m the manager of Poisonous Trash.’ It had a certain ring to it.
‘And are these boys staying the night? It’s half past ten already.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Dad, chill out! Of course not. Mackenzie’s dad is coming to collect him in five minutes!’ Suddenly it didn’t seem such a bad deal, having a dad who lived two hundred miles away. It was certainly easier to spin him a line. Reassured by the idea of a grown-up arriving to break up the teenage misbehaviour, Jess’s dad rang off, pausing only to enquire whether she had done her homework. Jess assured him she had. Oh well. She could do it tomorrow morning, at the breakfast table.
She raced back downstairs. Mackenzie had joined Flora on the rug – not in any sinister sense. They weren’t wrapped around each other. But it sort of signalled he was, well, slightly more going out with her than Ben Jones was. Jess found this reassuring. She didn’t quite dare to sit down beside Ben on the sofa, though. That would be kind of crude and obvious. So she sat on a low stool beside the TV, although the minute she had arrived there, she began to feel it did nothing for her in the style stakes. One cannot lounge gracefully on a low stool. One can only squat in a Neanderthal manner with one’s knees up around one’s ears.
‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘It was my dad. He lives in St Ives.’
‘St Ives?’ Ben Jones spoke at last, and looked really impressed. ‘Cool! That’s … by the sea, yeah?’
‘Yeah, it’s great. I’m going down to stay with him in the holidays,’ said Jess. ‘You can come if you like. You can all come.’
‘Oh, I so love the sea!’ cried Flora. ‘In fact, my granny is at this moment waterskiing in Barbados. That is so not fair! I hate her for it!’
‘Barbados!?’ gasped Ben Jones, and his eyes opened very wide. St Ives was instantly forgotten.
‘Barbados!’ yelled Mackenzie. ‘Wow! Ace! Wicked! Now you’re talkin’! And can we all go out and stay with her?’
Compared with Barbados, St Ives was so boring. Jess was tempted to seize the nearest heavy object and take a mad swipe at Flora, but managed to control herself. Rise above it, rise above it, she thought urgently. Flora wants to be the centre of attention. So let her be. Let her bask in the limelight. It’s a sign of immaturity. All the same, Jess didn’t feel all that mature, crouching in the shadows on her stool.
Suddenly Mackenzie’s mobile phone began to tweet. He grabbed it, scowled, stood up and went over to the window.
‘What!?’ he snapped.
Everybody else eavesdropped silently. Suddenly Jess became aware that Ben Jones was looking at her. Their eyes met, as Flora had predicted. Not across a crowded room, though – across a half-empty one. He performed one of his slow, crooked grins. Just for her.
Something very nice happened in Jess’s ribcage, though she wasn’t sure what. He had smiled at her – when he could have just stayed ogling Flora’s cleavage and imagining himself sunbathing with her in Barbados. Perhaps he did like Jess a little bit after all.
‘Why?’ grunted Mackenzie on the phone. ‘ ‘S’not fair! … All right, all right … twenty minutes.’ He rang off and turned to face them with a tragic shrug. ‘I’ve gotta go,’ he sighed. ‘My mum is, like, eating the carpet.’
First, however, he said he needed to visit the bathroom.
‘I’ll show you where it is!’ said Flora, seizing the initiative and giving Jess a meaningful look. Flora and Mackenzie left the room and thundered upstairs. Then there was the murmur of their voices, and a sudden silence.
Ben Jones sniffed – divinely, of course. The silence deepened. Jess began to panic. It was her job to think of something to say, partly because she was the hostess, but also because boys were famously lacking in the ability to form sentences or even have an idea. Except Fred, of course.
‘What’s your favourite subject?’ she blurted out, lamely. This was the most boring thing she had ever said.
Ben Jones looked startled. ‘Um … physics, I guess,’ he replied.
Jess’s heart sank. She hated physics. The physics lab stank of rubber and gas. It made her think of hospitals and horrible operations involving iron masks and red-hot tongs.
‘Oh yeah! Physics is so cool!’ she lied. She had read a magazine once that said you should share your boyfriend’s interests. ‘What do you want to be when you leave school?’ she asked, bizarrely. What was happening to her? She sounded like a careers teacher.
‘Er, well, I did think, maybe … an investment broker,’ said Ben.
Jess frowned. ‘What’s that?’ she asked. ‘Sorry to be so dumb.’
Ben Jones laughed, but it wasn’t a jeering, sneering sort of laugh; it was a friendly, appreciative one. ‘It’s to do with, like … um, finance,’ he said. ‘Money. Yeah. What about you?’
Jess panicked. She couldn’t tell him – it was too absurd. Oh, all right then.
‘I want to be a stand-up comedian!’ she confessed.
Ben Jones’s eyes widened in amazement and he made a strange little whistling sound.
‘Cool!’ he commented, eventually. Then he got to his feet and zipped up his jacket.
Silence fell again. Jess clambered up off her stool – with difficulty, as it was so low. Flora would have soared up gracefully like a gazelle disturbed while grazing. Jess lurched up like a hippopotamus struggling out of a swamp.
‘Um, how about … if you want … we can get a … er, a coffee tomorrow after school?’ said Ben Jones suddenly.
Jess blinked. What? What was that again? Had he just asked her out, or was she imagining things?
‘Sorry,’ she stammered. ‘What did you say?’
Ben Jones blushed. He blushed! Wow! This was the best moment of Jess’s life so far.
‘Yeah, well, um, how about a coffee tomorrow after school?’ he repeated.
Jess shrugged and tried to look as if she couldn’t quite make up her mind, because there were so many other things she would rather be doing – extra physics, for instance, involving delightful rubber tubes and pieces of charming metal.
‘Sure,’ she said, with a shy grin. ‘Why not?’
Mackenzie and Flora came downstairs and the boys left. Ben Jones did not mention their date the next day in front of the others. He just gave Jess a kind of curt nod. For a moment they shared a secret. It was almost up to the excitement of the Sir Benjamin costume drama in Jess’s head. Although Ben did not, alas, drive off down the road in a shining carriage drawn by four fabulous white horses. His only means of transport was a pair of trainers, but they were, Jess had noticed, trainers of a particularly classy sort.
‘Guess what!’ Jess hissed in ecstasy, as soon as the boys had gone. ‘Ben Jones asked me out tomorrow! I have a date! He’s asked me out on a date!’
‘Terrific!’ cried Flora, hugging her and squealing with excitement. ‘And guess what! Mackenzie snogged me! In your bathroom! He snogged me and he said I was amazing! If you go out with B.J. and I go out with Mackenzie, it will be so coooooool! Oh, there’s just one thing, though. Guess what Mackenzie told me while we were upstairs.’
‘What?’ demanded Jess impatiently. She didn’t want to think about anything else. She just wanted to think about her date with Ben Jones. She wanted to think about it all night long.
‘You know Tiffany’s brother Jack?’
‘Yes, what about him?’ What on earth did Flora want to talk about this for?
‘Well, do you remember all those flowers and leaves and stuff in the girls’ loo at Tiffany’s party?’
‘Yeah – what?’
‘Well, apparently Jack fixed up a camcorder in there, like, hidden in the leaves, and he’s got footage of all the girls who went in there. Like CCTV or something! Gross or what! And everyone’s going round Tiffany’s the day after tomorrow to watch it! Thank goodness I didn’t hav
e to go to the loo all evening!’
Flora sighed in relief. Jess couldn’t speak. She was absolutely frozen with horror. Flora noticed – eventually. She wasn’t a complete monster.
‘Oh, no, Jess! You were sick in there, weren’t you! You poor thing!’
‘It’s not that I’m worried about,’ said Jess. A paralysing terror was spreading through her entire body, turning every muscle to stone. She didn’t have to worry about being sick on CCTV. What she had done was much, much worse. She had stripped to the waist. She had thrown her home-made bra inserts down the loo. And she had washed minestrone off her boobs – while talking to them and calling them Bonnie and Clyde! Jess wondered how far it was to the nearest nunnery, because her life was definitely over.
Chapter 10
‘Well … Jack says you’re the, um, like, star of the CCTV footage.’ Ben Jones grinned.
Jess felt sick to death. Here she was, sitting in the Dolphin Cafe with Ben. She had adored him for months. She’d lost track of the number of times she’d written his name on her hand, on her books … OK, even the walls of certain public loos. The merest glimpse of him in school had been enough to make her stomach turn somersaults. She had even, once, sat down on a bench he had just been sitting on, and felt the warmth left behind by his bum.
And now he’d actually asked her out! Here they were, on a date – and instead of being thrilled to bits, she was in agony.
‘Maybe we could pick up a burger tomorrow, yeah?’ he mumbled. ‘Like – before?’
‘Before what?’ stammered Jess.
‘Before the party, right? At Tiffany’s.’
Jess’s stomach plummeted through the rather tasteful Italian floor-tiles of the Dolphin Cafe, through the boiling centre of the earth, and emerged somewhere in the outback where men wear hats with corks dangling from them. Her stomach, it seemed, had emigrated to Australia, and after the shame and humiliation of the CCTV footage tomorrow night, Jess would have to follow.
