Girl, Going on 16: Pants on Fire (14 page)

Just keep my bum discreetly veiled from the general public
,
Lord
, she prayed silently,
and I will never wear a miniskirt again. I will only wear ankle-length skirts or possibly a whole robe in the biblical manner
.

‘Mrs Chideock had to have a breast off,’ said Granny, with a sad sigh. ‘And I knew a chap once who’d lost a leg in the war, and, strangely enough, his wife lost a leg, too, because of circulatory problems.’

‘How awful!’ said Jess. A number of extremely tasteless jokes cropped up cheekily in her mind, but she was sure they were the work of Satan, and she refused even to think of them in case God was watching.

A woman was walking towards them holding a small child’s hand on one side and a dog on a lead on the other. Ever since they had left the house, Jess had been dreading the approach of small animals. What if the small child looked up at the wrong moment? What if the dog jumped up for an impudent snif
f
?

Dogs were so awful about that sniffing business. Just because they loved sniffing each other’s bottoms didn’t mean they could take liberties with the human race. Jess had once been hoisted right up into the air by the nose of a German shepherd who had taken a fancy to the seat of her jeans.

‘I’ll just change sides, if you don’t mind, Granny,’ said Jess, hastily going round the other side of Granny and taking her arm nearest to the road. ‘I’m a little bit scared of dogs, to be honest.’

‘But it’s only a little one,’ said Granny.

‘The little ones are the worst,’ said Jess.

The woman walked past without mishap. Jess uttered another silent prayer of thanks.

‘Then,’ Granny resumed her catalogue of amputees, ‘I knew a woman once who lost a finger in a circus. She was holding a horse by the harness and when she let it go, the harness got caught in her ring. She was quite all right, though. Those surgeons can do wonders these days.’

‘Don’t worry, then, Granny,’ said Jess. ‘If you’ve been feeling dizzy, I expect the doctor’ll just cut off your head, and you’ll be fine and dandy.’

Granny laughed. Luckily she had a very macabre sense of humour.

They arrived at the doctor’s and Jess thanked God again that the surgery was on the ground floor. But when they arrived in the waiting room, her blood ran cold. They would obviously have to sit down. And what happens when you sit down? Your skirt rides up! Disastrously, sometimes.

And then when you get up again . . . Jess had frequently observed girls wearing miniskirts getting up from a sitting position. And basically what happened was that frequently you got a flash of knickers. And if there were no knickers, well, Jess couldn’t bear to think of what might happen.

‘I’ll stand up, Granny,’ she said, after Granny had checked in. ‘You go and sit over there.’ Luckily there weren’t many seats available. The waiting room was, as usual, crowded. People all sitting rather too close together and a horrid embarrassed atmosphere.

Jess went over and stood with her back to the wall. Granny sat down, sighed and smiled. Then her beady little eyes caught sight of the magazines on a low coffee table just out of reach, in the middle of the room.

‘Pass me one of those magazines, will you, Jess, love?’ said Granny. For a moment Jess felt that, though she loved her granny passionately, decapitation could not come a moment too soon. In order to pass her the magazine, she would have to bend down, offering a glorious view of her bottom to the people seated behind her, pick up the magazine, and then bend down again to offer it to Granny – exposing herself all over again. A kind of encore.

Jess fell to her knees as if about to pray. Some people looked a bit startled. Then she sort of shuffled to the coffee table on her knees, keeping her back bolt upright. Making sure her heels were clamping her skirt safely up against her buttocks, she reached forward stiffly, like a marionette, picked up a magazine by the corner and threw it to Granny, who fumbled. Of course, it fell on the floor.

‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry, love,’ said Granny. ‘Pick it up, would you?’

Now the whole roomful of people was watching in amusement. Jess hesitated. One or two women exchanged looks which meant, ‘Teenagers! Too lazy to get out of their own way!’

‘Sorry, Granny,’ said Jess. ‘I’ve ricked my back really badly and I can’t bend over.’

A man sitting next to Granny bent over and picked up the magazine. Jess silently asked God to forgive most of that man’s sins immediately and reserve a specially comfy cloud for him in heaven. Granny received the magazine with a gracious smile.

Jess also picked up a magazine. Just because she was marooned on the carpet, sitting on her feet, wearing a short skirt and no panties, didn’t mean she couldn’t catch up with what the celebs were doing. She was planning to wait until everybody else had gone before getting up. Until then she would just kneel here pretending to read this magazine.

OK
, she thought,
my situation is majorly ghastly. But it could be a lot worse
.

And that was the moment when Fred walked in.

Chapter 16

Fred’s eyes kind of flared when he saw her, and he blushed. Granny looked up and gave a little cry of pleasure.

‘Oh, Fred!’ she said. ‘How are you, dear? I haven’t seen you for a day or two.’

‘Er, fine, thanks,’ said Fred, and hesitated. There was only one empty chair. On one side of it there was a woman holding a struggling, whimpering baby, and on the other side there was an old man who looked as if he might be the source of a rather unpleasant smell. No wonder nobody had sat there.

Fred checked himself in at reception, naturally avoided the empty chair and instead sort of sauntered over to a fishtank and leant on the wall next to it. He glanced briefly in, as if he wanted to make sure there was nothing in the tank which might cause a horrid surprise – a small but turbo-charged shark, for instance – and then he looked back into the room, and somehow his eyes kind of got caught on Jess’s. Her heart turned over. Fred looked as if he was just about to say something to her, when Granny spoke again.

‘What’s wrong with you, Fred, love? What’s a healthy young man like you doing in the doctor’s surgery?’

Jess cringed anew. Granny ought to know that you never ask people in a doctor’s waiting room what’s wrong with them. It might be something really embarrassing. Though nothing could be quite as embarrassing as what Jess was suffering from – a shortage of underwear.

‘Oh,’ said Fred, switching into his usual style, ‘where to begin? My elbows don’t quite match, for a start, and my toes have turned purple.’

A fat girl in the corner giggled. Jess made plans to kill her immediately.

‘But my main trouble,’ Fred went on, ‘is pain in my rollerblades.’

‘Oh, I had pain in my rollerblades once,’ said Granny. ‘It was too much gardening.’ A few people smiled. Jess made plans to kill them immediately.

‘Shoulder blades, you mean, Granny!’ said Jess.

‘Yes, well, it was when I had a greenhouse,’ said Granny, getting all nostalgic. ‘I used to stand there for hour after hour, sowing seeds in pots, you know, dear. I had over three hundred pots one year.’

There was a slight pause. Fred looked at Jess. There was a horrible public, embarrassed look on his face.

‘How’s Jim’s boil?’ a middle-aged woman said suddenly to an old lady beside her.

‘It’s burst now, thank goodness,’ said the old lady.

There was another silence. Fred looked at Jess, and there was desperation in his eyes.

‘Have you two been writing any more of your comedy routines for that Christmas Show at school?’ asked Granny, looking from Jess to Fred and back.

How dare Granny reveal the secrets of her private life to this whole room of people! Jess made plans to kill her immediately.

‘Oh, there isn’t going to be a show this year,’ said Fred. ‘There’s going to be a production of
Twelfth Night
instead.’

‘Oh, lovely, dear,’ said Granny. ‘And are you going to be in it?’

Fred hesitated and gulped. ‘Well, yes, I am,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think Jess is.’ He hesitated, and looked at Jess again.

‘I didn’t audition for it, Granny,’ said Jess. ‘I hate Shakespeare.’

A woman appeared at the doctors’ door and called Granny’s name. There were several doctors at this practice and Granny appeared to have struck lucky and had hardly had to wait at all.

‘Oh, that’s me!’ she said, getting up. ‘I won’t be long, dear,’ she smiled to Jess, and trotted off to her appointment.

A silence spread through the room. Fred looked at Jess and pulled a face – a kind of isn’t-this-a-nightmare sort of face. Jess shrugged and did a kind of false smile, the sort the prime minister does when he is trying to pretend he isn’t hurt by newspaper reports that he is more unpopular than ever.

‘Why aren’t you wearing the football shorts?’ asked Fred suddenly. Everybody in the room looked at Jess’s thighs. She blushed comprehensively. She made plans to kill Fred at the earliest opportunity. How dare he make fun of her in front of everybody?

‘Oh, if only I was, you’ve no idea,’ she said. Then silently, in her heart of hearts, she uttered one of her most hysterical silent prayers.
Dear God, I know I’ve begged you to rescue me from awful situations before, but this has got to be the worst yet: being tormented in public by the person who has broken my heart, while wearing no pants and sitting on my feet, which have pins and needles. Please, God, get me out of this and I promise I will never tell a lie again. And I mean it this time! Please, God – send a miracle. A power cut or something. Just a minor miracle will do
.

Moments after she finished her prayer, the struggling baby was sick all over the smelly old man. In the ensuing fracas, Jess kind of scuttled away on her knees into a corner, surged to her feet and escaped out to the lobby. Following a blind instinct to seek shelter, Jess rushed down a corridor where she knew there was a loo. She plunged in and locked the door behind her. A loo had never been more welcome. Not for its toilet facilities, but for its privacy. Jess would never leave. She would refuse to come out. She would live here for ever.

Then she noticed something. A mac was hanging from a row of pegs. It was a navy blue mac. And it looked nice and long. Jess tried it on. Oh joy! Oh bliss! It went right down to her knees!

God, you are ace!
she whispered.
You are Numero Uno! I shall never wear short skirts again, as well as not telling lies!

However, there was the slight problem that it was not her mac. There was, of course, the larger problem that it was navy blue – normally a colour which Jess would rather die than wear. No matter. She would endure any kind of style horror rather than feel the cold early autumn air on her buttocks for a moment longer.

She opened the door and peeped out. There was nobody about. She peered round the corner of the waiting room. She would ask Fred to tell Granny she was waiting for her outside. But Fred wasn’t in the waiting room any more. Evidently he had gone in to see the doc.

Hastily Jess walked out – right out, into the car park. She sat down on a low wall facing the back door of the health centre. When Granny came out, she would see her straight away. Jess just hoped that the owner of the mac didn’t come out and recognise it. It was so exquisitely comforting, sitting on fabric again. She would never take her pants off in future, in this life or the next.