Girl, Going on 16: Pants on Fire (7 page)

Pulp Fiction
was Granny’s favourite, and normally she would leap at the chance of seeing it for the ninety-ninth time, but now she hesitated.

‘I don’t know, dear,’ she whispered. ‘It might disturb your mother.’ Granny rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. Mum’s study was above, and it wasn’t very well insulated. They could hear the murmur of Mum’s voice droning away up there and, just occasionally, a few words in a deeper voice from Mr Nishizawa.

‘I hope it goes all right,’ said Jess. ‘She’s getting one of her headaches.’

‘Well, of course, if she’d put the right time down on his letter, he wouldn’t have come till half past seven, and she’d have had time for a bite to eat and a rest,’ said Granny.

They ate the egg mayonnaise sandwiches in silence, listening to the voices mumbling away upstairs.

‘You said you’d had a dreadful day, dear,’ said Granny. ‘It can’t have been as bad as a woman in Bradford. It was on the TV news. There was a gas leak and her house blew up. Nobody was hurt.’ Granny looked a bit disappointed at the modest death toll. ‘But she’d just had the bedrooms redecorated.’

‘She must be gutted,’ said Jess. She sighed. There was a moment’s silence – even upstairs.

‘So tell me about your awful day, then, lovey,’ said Granny.

Jess sighed again. She seemed full of sighs ever since the row with Fred. She wasn’t sure whether she could tell Granny the whole story. She didn’t want her to think badly of Fred. And though she craved sympathy, she felt so tired she could hardly be bothered to embark on the complicated saga of the Christmas Show being replaced, disastrously, by Shakespeare.

Then she noticed something odd. There was still no sound from upstairs. Granny realised it at the same time. They stared up at the ceiling. Not a word.

‘Perhaps they’re reading something,’ said Jess. ‘Silently.’

‘But he’s supposed to be here for English conversation,’ said Granny.

They sat and listened some more. No sound. Absolute silence reigned upstairs.

‘It’s kind of creepy,’ said Jess.

‘I hope he hasn’t murdered her,’ said Granny. Granny was obsessed by homicide and always considered it as a possibility in any situation.

‘If he has murdered her,’ said Jess, ‘he must be just sitting there staring silently at the body.’

‘Unless he’s escaped through the window,’ said Granny. ‘But I think we would have heard him landing in the garden.’

They sat and listened for a bit longer. Still there was absolutely no sound from upstairs.

‘This is getting seriously scary,’ said Jess. ‘What shall we do?’

‘Go up and ask if she wants any more tea,’ said Granny.

Jess got up, feeling really quite nervous, and tiptoed upstairs. She listened right outside Mum’s study door. Silence. Not even the rustle of paper. Terror seized Jess’s soul. She tapped lightly on the door, opened it a bit and looked in.

Amazing sight! Mum was sitting cross-legged on the floor with her eyes closed – and so was Mr Nishizawa.

‘Oh, sorry,’ said Jess, astonished. ‘I just wondered if you wanted some more tea.’

Mum opened her eyes. ‘Mr Nishizawa’s teaching me to meditate,’ she said. ‘He saw me taking my headache pills and suggested a moment of contemplation. I feel better already.’

‘Oh good,’ said Jess. ‘Sorry to disturb you.’

As she went out again, she noticed their shoes. They had taken them off and put them by the door. Mr Nishizawa’s glistened blackly. They looked extremely smart next to Mum’s rank old trainers.

Shortly afterwards Jess fell into a light doze on Granny’s sofa. She woke up when Mr Nishizawa left, and helped Mum make a bizarre risotto which included both tuna and bacon. Neither of them was gifted when it came to cuisine. Jess didn’t think they’d have much success if they ever started a dating agency, either. Tuna and bacon! Hardly a match made in heaven.

After supper, Jess lay on the sofa all evening watching TV. Really she was waiting for Fred to send a text message. What on earth was he up to? Where had he been today? Was he suffering agonies, too? She jolly well hoped so. By ten o’clock he still hadn’t rung.

‘Didn’t you have any homework today?’ asked Mum suspiciously.

‘No – first day back,’ explained Jess briskly. Mum seemed to accept it without any trouble, and went off to have a bath.

At half past ten Jess realised she hadn’t rung Flora again as promised. But then, she had nothing to tell her. The situation with Fred was still a deep mystery. And Flora’s dad didn’t like people ringing after ten because he often had an early night after a long hard day importing bathrooms.

Miserably, Jess dragged herself off to bed. ‘Honestly, Rasputin,’ she told her bear as her head hit the pillow, ‘life sucks at the moment.’

Rasputin was just about to reply when her mobile vibrated. Maybe it was a message from Fred! Her stomach gave a huge, electric leap. Jess grabbed the phone and clicked on the envelope logo. The message was revealed.
thanks — fred
.

Jess’s heart plummeted down an abyss and smashed into a frozen lake. She felt her veins freeze with horror. Two words? A mere
two
? When Fred was the king of vocabulary? What sort of message was that? What did it mean? It was a freakin’ insult.

Jess’s blood stopped freezing and instantly started to boil with rage. ‘Thanks’ was an insult. And what did it mean? Thanks for warning him about his mum knowing he’d bunked of
f
? Or kind of ‘Thanks for everything – it’s been fun knowing you’? Jess had a dreadful feeling that this was Fred’s way of saying goodbye. After that she just couldn’t sleep, and it was well past 2 a.m. before she fell into a light doze and embarked on a series of bloodcurdling nightmares involving wardrobes with teeth.

Chapter 8

‘Jess! It’s half past seven! I’ve called you four times!’ Mum’s face suddenly appeared in the middle of a horrid dream about monkeys. Oh my goodness! Jess usually got up at seven, which left plenty of time for breakfast, finding the right shoes and extensive restoration work on her eyebrows. Right now she barely had enough time to throw on her clothes.

Then, with an appalling shock, she suddenly realised that she hadn’t done the extra homework Miss Thorn had set. She hadn’t written an account of her family. Miss Thorn’s laser-like eyes would certainly penetrate as far as her bone marrow at this news, and leave her a shattered hulk.

There was only one thing to do. Jess leapt out of bed, pushed past her mum, ran into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. She turned on all the taps, filled a glass of water, and then launched into a series of ghastly retching sounds.

‘Yeaurk!’ she spluttered. ‘Heurk! Honk!’ She threw glassfuls of water down the loo – kind of pure, delightful puke. Was it convincing?

‘Jess!’ Her mum knocked on the bathroom door, sounding concerned. ‘Are you all right?’

Jess suddenly remembered that French sounded like vomiting. She thought of the two boys who’d played a starring role in the French exchange recently: Edouard and Gerard.

‘Edouaaard!’ she yelled. ‘Geraard! Edouaaard!’

‘Darling!’ cried mum out on the landing. ‘Are you being sick?’

‘Yeah, I vommed,’ croaked Jess. ‘Must’ve been something I ate.’

‘Maybe it was that egg mayonnaise,’ said Mum thoughtfully. ‘Are you all right in there?’

Evidently the French had been very convincing. Jess would recommend it to all her mates. She turned off all the taps, flushed the loo and cleaned her teeth. Then she unlocked the bathroom door and staggered out, trying to look pale and nauseous.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I can go to school this morning. Maybe I’ll be OK by lunchtime.’

‘Of course, of course,’ said Mum, accompanying Jess back into her bedroom, fussing over her and tucking her in. Jess lay tragically on her side. Suddenly her tummy gave a deafening rumble, like distant thunder in the mountains. Secretly, she was absolutely starving.

‘Oh dear, your poor tummy is in a state,’ said Mum. ‘I shouldn’t eat anything for a couple of hours.’

‘A couple of days more like,’ groaned Jess, fighting off an urge to devour the whole duvet, raw. As soon as Mum had gone off to work, Jess would go downstairs and ransack the fridge. She would tell Granny she felt heaps better. Granny might even be persuaded to make her scrambled eggs. And then she’d do the homework for Miss Thorn.

This plan, like most of Jess’s plans, backfired. Granny was delighted to hear Jess was feeling better, but she wasn’t in the mood for cooking. She was smartly dressed in old lady’s festive clothes, and combing her hair.

‘Deirdre is coming in a minute to take me to the club,’ said Granny excitedly. ‘It’s our coffee morning and we usually play a round or two of bridge.’

‘You should play poker for money,’ said Jess. ‘I bet you’d clean up.’

So Jess had to make her own breakfast: cheese on toast and a mug of hot chocolate. How divine it was, not going to school. Jess looked forward eagerly to her life as an adult, which would involve getting up very late and taking breakfast with her poodle Bonbon on a balcony overlooking the Mediterranean.

Her mum had always insisted that financial independence was terribly important for women, whether they lived alone or with a partner, but Jess thought that if a millionaire turned up and offered her his hand in marriage, together with a house by the sea, that would be just fine. She wasn’t fussy – any old millionaire would do.

However, thoughts of love and marriage immediately led back to the awful situation between her and Fred. Since she and Fred had become An Item, she had occasionally fantasised about marrying him and having a couple of stylish and well-behaved children and a whole pack of beautiful dogs, their coats gleaming with conditioner and their breath smelling delightfully of roses.

But now this lovely daydream was beginning to wither. Jess wondered if Fred would ever hold her hand again, let alone lead her to the altar. That text message of his last night was so curt, it was like a knife to the heart. ‘Thanks – Fred’ indeed! A cruel dig disguised as politeness. A diabolical response to her kind warning about his mum being on the warpath.

Jess tried to get her head around the fact that Fred was behaving so horribly to her. The thought made her feel suddenly
really
sick. She must think about something else, quick, or the pretend vomming in French this morning might prove to be a rehearsal for the real thing.

She ran upstairs, went into her mum’s study and switched on the PC. She must describe her family so brilliantly that Miss Thorn would be captivated and revise her first bad impression, nay, become her most ardent fan. Jess put on a CD – music always seemed to stimulate her brain – and got stuck in.

My parents, strangely, met while queuing for a loo. It was at a party in London, where they were at college. My mum was immediately attracted by Dad’s shoulder-length blond hair and his obsessive interest in a range of skin ailments. He told her he was an art student, which was the thing to be in the olden days. She had already realised he was artistically inclined – his pink velvet jeans gave it away. Although everybody wore pink velvet in those days, so it was kind of a fashion cliché.

At first she didn’t suspect that he was gay. It was only years later when he moved to St Ives and set up house with a surfer called Phil that her suspicions were aroused. And when she found them dancing with Phil dressed as a frog, she had to accept that hers had not been a conventional marriage.