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They were my worst nightmare.

Need I say more? Oh, reeeeeeally? Do I have to go through it again?

Well, there was nothing wrong with either of them, I’m sorry to say. Dean was smiley and tall and more-or-less handsome (which surprised me for some reason, as I thought he’d be all Weirdy Beardy Scientist. Maybe he’d pilfered some handsomeness genes from a patient and plunged them into a vein … and one day his supply would run out and he’d go back to looking like a brown-trousered, bow-backed super-nerd instead of someone who might run a Ted Baker shop … and maybe I’d stop thinking weird stuff about perfectly normal people and figure out why I had this image of scientists when I actually want to BE one, for the love of Newton …).

As for Aggie – what is there to say? There was nothing wrong with her AT ALL. How unfair and utterly annoying is that? Seriously, I stared at her for a good few minutes
, doing a scientific assessment while she gave my mother chocolates and a half-handshake that turned into a giggle and a bit of a hug. Pretty but no Dolores. Smart but no me. Not fat or thin or breasticularly challenged or poke-you-in-the-eye bosomy, and dressed in the kind of outfit I could see myself in if it wouldn’t make me look even more like an ironing board – a chintzy, faded, empire line dress over silvery leggings and finished off with a simple pair of trainers.

I totally wanted to dislike something about her, so I went for the hair. Everyone has better hair than me, so there was bound to be some mileage in Aggie’s hair … But no, dammit! It was … you know,
fine.
Darker brown than mine, almost chestnutty, but still basically brown. Straight but not swishy, with a tell-tale ridge above her right ear that smacked of extensive use of the GHDs, and shiny but in a clean, healthy way, not a salon-supplied sheen. Actually, now I looked properly, she looked like Dean in a wig, with boobs. Which is funny, because apparently I look like my dad in a wig. No boobs though. And a really bad wig.

Then suddenly she was staring right back at me (green eyes but sludgy hazel, not bright emerald mermaid gorgeousness or anything), half-smiling, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear and obviously wondering why I was gawping at her like an idiot. Everyone else was looking at me too, and Mum was saying, ‘Aren’t you, Cat?’ like I was meant to have been paying attention and possibly even joining in.

I nodded and shrugged at the same time, hoping that would cover all possibilities of what I was supposed to have been listening to. ‘Yeah, you know …’ I said vaguely.

And
right then, Aggie revealed her demonic evil side. ‘I’ve got a couple of friends in Year 12 at Trevellyan,’ she said with a quick widening of the eyes.

Oh,
I knew that look. It said: I’ve got you covered. Here’s the thing we were talking about, and you can pick it up from here like you weren’t ignoring everything we said while you weighed me up like someone on Dragon’s Den. 

I was just about to join in and ask her which Year 12s were her friends, when she played her ace. ‘I’d like to have gone to Trevellyan too,’ she said, ‘but it’
s way too academic for me.’

Gotcha, I thought. Now I know your game, lady. She was trying to be nice. Nice! To out-nice me by flattering my braininess as well as handing me get-out-jail cards like Smarties.

Ha. Nobody can out-nice me. Not even Dolores. And definitely not Miss ‘Let’s-be-sisters’ over there.

By
now everyone was looking at me again as if I was supposed to say something. Mum had practically turned purple trying to send me telepathic messages.

So I just said, ‘Ah well. It’s not for everybody.’

Mum nodded quickly, almost sighing with relief.

And then I added: ‘But they let my friend Dolores in, so it must be possible for not-so-bright people to get in too. Maybe you should try next year for Year 13?’

I know, I know. I was trying to be nice, really I was. Extra nice, to out-nice Miss Nicely Mannered, but somehow it came out a bit wrong. Aggie paused while she thought about how to respond, a slightly odd expression on her face, then said, ‘Thanks. I’m actually leaving at the end of Year 12 though, I think.’

Okay, so I probably gawped.

‘What, and not go to university?’

It came out without my permission, but seriously …
Not get A levels and A starred this and that and go to open days and do a degree in filling in UCAS applications? This I could not get my head around, and I think I actually stared at her with my head on one side and knitted eyebrows, as if she were in a specimen jar. Aggie: the lesser known Perfectlius Ordinarius …

Anyway, before I could open mouth and insert foot any further, Mum glared at me, grabbed the bottle of wine from Dean and marched us all into the kitchen. She slugged back a large bucketful at the breakfast bar while she was pouring Dean’s glass and offering Aggie one … Yes, Aggie was offered one but not me. Aggie, seventeen already and in Year 12, about to leave school and go and be
officially grown up, versus me, barely sixteen and still in school, about to do exams followed by more exams and then some more exams for the next forty two years. At this rate I might never be offered a glass of wine by my own mother. She’d become an old lady and die before she ever considered me grown up enough.

‘Oh, no, thank you, Rachel,’ Aggie said to my mother. ‘I’d rather just have water.’

‘Yeah, me too, thanks, Mum,’ I said quickly, as if I had an option.

‘Good,’ she said, pouring another half-bucket into her own glass. ‘I’ll have yours then.’

‘I’ll have the rest,’ said Dean, holding out his empty glass pointedly. ‘Aggie’s driving.’

Oh, spare me, I thought, while we
young adults eyed each other cautiously and the old adults made overly-bright conversation about work and cars and the weather as Mother Dearest got the pizza out of the oven.

So that’s Aggie
, I thought. Perfectly normal and normally perfect. She doesn’t drink, she drives already, she’s got non-straight hair that can be straightened and shiny, and to top it all off, she’s nice. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. I decided there and then to hate her no matter what. To thwart her, I just needed to find her Achilles heel …

For a long while I thought it was going to be impossible. We sat on four sides of the pizza, trading niceness for about an hour. During that hour I discovered that she liked ski-ing, making her own clothes (hence the dress) and
was studying hair and beauty at college. Aggie and her dad had been on their own since her mum died when she was thirteen – she didn’t say much more about that, other than they’d “worked out how to manage”.

‘Maybe you can pass the info
on to my mum,’ I said with a wink at my mother, and Aggie actually laughed.

‘I’m sure your mum does fine,’ she said.

Stop right there, madam, I thought. I was not handing her chances to oil up to my mother. It was time to let her know the truth about Mother Dearest.

‘I had to get the pizza
myself,’ I told her. ‘And put it in the oven.’

Mum pretend-coughed into her hand. ‘SNITCH!’

Dean laughed, and I saw instantly where Aggie got her fake niceness from. ‘We parents all have to rely on pizza – and our kids – when we’re on our own.’ And he actually held my mother’s hand across the table.

Both Aggie and I stared at the entwined fingers as if they were about to explode, and then Aggie broke the tension.

Of course.

‘So Dad tells me you’re a translator, Rachel. That must be interesting.’
Perfect. Smart and nice and perfect. Hate you hate you hate you …

Mum smiled. ‘It started out being interesting. I’d work on politica
l debates and the like, and we lived in some lovely places around the world. But then Cather … Cat’s dad and I split up and it made sense to be back here permanently. I mostly translate books these days.’

True enough. When our cosy family unit evaporated, Mum said she didn’t have the heart for more arguments, which was mostly what the political stuff entailed, so she went for other translation
work she could do from home as I started at Trevellyan. That’s how she met Dean, translating some PhD thesis that he needed to read for his genitals. Acchh! Darn you, Dolores.
Genetics
.

‘Wow. So where have you lived?’ Aggie turned to me like she was genuinely into the whole thing.

‘Dubai. Berlin. Brussels. Jersey.’ I shrugged. ‘Mostly at international schools, and all while I was little so I don’t really remember them much apart from Belgium.’

Did I say she was
only pretending to be interested? Well, now I knew for sure, because suddenly she became all animated and fascinated, and not at the sound of the cooler places like Dubai or Germany. ‘Ooo, the lead singer in this band I like comes from Jersey. Maybe you’ve heard of them …’

‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘I don’t like bands apart from seventies rock groups.’

Actually that was pretty much true. Glam rock bands from the seventies, madrigal and choral stuff, and some Simon and Garfunkel duets that Mum made me listen to as we roamed the world.

‘Oh,’ said Aggie, obviously disappointed. ‘They’re quite big at the moment. Double Vision. I thou
ght you might have come across them.’

Aha. That lot. And stupid Jazzy Divine from stupid Double Vision was from Jer
sey, was he? I’d only been to the weeny island for about six months when I was just starting school. Back then, I definitely wasn’t interested in bands other than the Wiggles.

But suddenly
, and do NOT ask me how, it came out. All wrong. Too much. I blame Dolores
entirely –
otherwise, how could I have known about such matters?

‘Right, yeah, Double Vision,’ I said casually, nodding
as if to say, “oh, them! Well, of course I know about them.”

And then out it popped
. Unbidden. Unprovoked, apart from by the perfectly nice nature of Aggie. ‘And yes, I do know Jazzy Divine. He went to my school.’

Aggie actually screamed with joy and envy, and for a second I saw how well she’d get on
with Dolores. ‘No! You don’t. You know the Divine Jazzy D? Omigod, I can’t believe it!’

Mum was gazing at me across the table too. ‘Neither can I,’ she said slowly with a small smile, because 1) she always knows when I’m lying and 2) she remembers us being in Jersey better than I do and knew for sure that I never met a Jazzy Divine
while we practiced our alphabets.

What she didn’t know, though, was that I was texting Dolores under the table. The answer to my quick question arrived silently and I checked it while pretending to scoop up my serviette.

‘Well, he wasn’t called Jazzy Divine at school, Mum.’ I rolled my eyes as if I was talking to an innocent toddler. ‘His name was Jason Devaney. Two years above me.’

The second bit was a wild guess based on the fact that Dolores had texted me:

OMG, you finly get it! Jason Devaney 18

...
and I figured that 18 had to be his age and not part of his name, as if he was Jason Devaney the 18
th
from a long line of Jason Devaneys.

‘And you met him?’ This was Mum and Aggie together. Dean was
well stuck into his third cab sauvignon and looked like he couldn’t care less.

‘Sure,’ I drawled. ‘In fact, we’ve emailed
each other a little since then.’

Stop, Cat. Stop now.
Cease and desist. Somehow I couldn’t shut myself up. What was going on? Lies were pouring out of me faster than the wine into Dean’s glass …

‘You’ve got Jazzy D’s email address?’ squeaked Aggie, sounding more like a twelve year old with every question.

‘Well, yes … um, no,’ I said quickly. It was getting out of hand. Next she’d be asking me for it. ‘We talk via his … err … manager.’

At this, Aggie nearly fainted. Her voice, when it finally came out, was barely a whisper. ‘You’ve got Stephen Scowl’s email address? But nobody gets that!’

Especially not me, I thought. I’d barely even heard of Stephen Scowl. He didn’t feature much in choral competitions. Now, Gareth Malone I’d have known anywhere. Why couldn’t I have pretended to know Gareth Malone? He’s so chirpy and friendly he’d probably be willing to go along with a big fat lie if it meant getting a choral fan out of trouble.

‘I … explained
to Stephen that I was an … old friend from Jersey,’ I stuttered, anxiously shredding my napkin and wishing I could tear up the past five minutes as easily. ‘He’s really quite…’

Fortunately, or unfortunately as it turned out, Aggie had stopped listening. Suddenly she reached across the table and grabbed me by the upper arm. I mouthed ‘Ow’ silently and she loosened her grip a little.

‘Cat, you know what’s happening next week, don’t you?’ Her sludgey green eyes were swimming with happy tears. ‘They’re in town, playing at the Zed. Double Vision are right here. Could you … could we meet up with Jazzy Divine?’

It just got worse.
Worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. So much worse. Next she held my hand, as if I was a fairy godmother or something and could grant her wishes.