Girl, 16: Five-Star Fiasco (4 page)

‘Except now it’s midwinter,’ Fred pointed out, making it sound like some kind of terrible curse.

‘Maybe we’ll get snowed in!’ suggested Flora, her eyes sparkling at the thought. ‘So romantic!’

‘Yeah,’ agreed Jack. ‘It’s an amazing sight – the beach covered in snow. Weird!’

‘Can you actually see the beach from your house?’ asked Jess.

‘Yeah, it’s right on top of a cliff, and there’s a path that goes down to this little cove.’

‘Oh wow!’ screamed Jess in ecstasy. ‘It sounds deee-vine!’ She clutched her cheeks to prevent her face from flying apart with sheer excitement.

‘Yeah, it’s good,’ Jack conceded modestly. ‘Last year, George – that’s my bro who’s at uni – made a Loch Ness Monster suit and went in the sea. This family arrived on the beach, yeah? With little kids and stuff. And George went swimming past with this, like, dinosaur neck thing poking out of the water. The kids went mental! We were hiding in the dunes. I laughed so much I nearly puked.’

‘I can’t wait! I so adore the sea!’ Flora’s eyes were already a kind of aquamarine at the thought. Fred’s, however, remained grey and his face seemed somehow veiled in mist. Suddenly he got to his feet.

‘Excuse me, guys,’ he said, his lanky body wobbling, a bit like an embarrassed giraffe saying goodbye to its favourite tree. ‘I gotta go – Mackenzie asked me to drop by his place to talk about some bands we might get for Chaos.’

He gave a sort of awkward nod, and was gone – without even looking at Jess! They’d been planning to walk home together! They always did after school! He hadn’t even given her any eye contact! Jess felt as if she’d been stabbed terribly in the guts, but somehow she had to hide her horrible wound and be bubbly and vivacious as usual. If Fred had behaved badly, that wasn’t Jack’s fault. Or Flora’s. He was being an idiot.

‘Fredianus,’ said Jack fondly, watching Fred leave the cafe with just the tiniest hint of a slam. ‘What a legend!’

They chatted for a bit longer, but Jess’s thoughts were elsewhere: with Fred. She didn’t quite believe that excuse about organising the music for Chaos. She had a feeling Fred just wanted to escape for some reason. He could be a moody beast at times – the best thing to do was ignore him.

Jess ignored him all the way home, even though he wasn’t technically present. She was on her own. Flora and Jack had gone off to Flora’s, wrapped round each other, because Jack was going to ‘help her with her homework’ – something, incidentally, Fred never did for Jess. Distracting her from her homework was more his style. Jess spun several revenge fantasies in which Fred pleaded for her to be kind to him, but instead she imperiously dismissed him with a contemptuous flick of her long raven tresses. In reality, Jess’s hair was short and spiky. But she was planning to have heavy, thick, glistening hair right down her back one day.

In this way, half an hour was agreeably passed until she arrived home. As she went up the path, the front door opened and Granny came out. She was wearing her faux sheepskin coat and looked rattled.

‘Your mother’s in there with one of her precious boyfriends off the internet!’ she snapped. ‘I’m going round to Deborah’s! She’s taken leave of her senses!’

Jess assumed this referred to her mum, not Deborah – a friend of Granny’s who was about as sane as anybody had ever been, possibly because she spent all her time making and devouring delicious cakes.

At this moment Jess’s phone bleeped to indicate a text had arrived. She stopped on the doorstep to check it out – it would be Fred apologising, with any luck. But no. It was from Dad.

HAD A V V BRILL IDEA FOR PROJECT WE CAN DO
, it said.
HAVE SENT U EMAIL WITH DETAILS. REPLY ASAP. LUV, DAD, OR, AS I WANT TO BE KNOWN FROM NOW ON, LORD VOLCANO.

Jess sighed, put her phone away and got out her key. She had the feeling she was being overwhelmed by several kinds of madness.

Chapter 5

As Jess entered the hall, her mum popped out of the sitting room, heading for the kitchen. Seeing Jess, she stalled, looked agitatedly towards the sitting room, flapped her hands to show she wanted to say a thousand important things but must remain silent, then put on her public face.

‘Jess!’ she said in her public voice – the light-hearted one, which she used whenever they didn’t want to mention the corpse on the carpet. ‘Hi, darling!’ Her mum never called her darling except in emergencies. ‘How was school?’

‘Delightful, as usual.’ At least Jess was determined to keep the conversation normal. ‘An endless succession of wonderful treats.’

‘Come and meet Ken,’ said Mum, a strange expression masking her face, as if she was possessed by a demon. They entered the sitting room and were enveloped by a strange and sickening smell.

A man was sitting on the sofa. The smell could only be coming from him, unless a crocodile had died behind the sofa some days ago and it had somehow escaped their notice. The man was small and dark and, spookily, he seemed to have borrowed the head of a much bigger man. Maybe he had bought it on eBay.

As heads go, it wasn’t unpleasant. Basically, it was a low-budget Roman emperor, with black slicked-back hair, a long hooked nose, bristling eyebrows and a strong stubbly chin – you could see he had to shave about three times a day. He was wearing tracksuit bottoms and a rugby shirt, with a thicket of dark hair sprouting out of the top. He was not so much a possible date as some kind of wildlife park.

On seeing Jess, he got to his feet and extended his hand, his face cracking open to reveal a ragged row of yellow teeth. The handshake was disastrously limp – you’d have got more of a touchy-feely thrill from a dead handbag.

‘This is my daughter, Jess,’ said Mum faintly. ‘Jess, this is Ken.’

‘Hi, Ken,’ said Jess, trying to hide her deep disgust.

‘Hi, Jess.’ Ken’s voice was unexpectedly deep, dark and masculine. Presumably Mum had seen a flattering photo emphasising the Roman emperor side of things, been impressed with his telephone voice and then been horrified to be enveloped in his aroma.

I mustn’t be prejudiced
, thought Jess urgently.
He might be really nice once you get past the smell
.

‘Ken was just telling me about his CD collection,’ said Mum with an anguished glare. ‘He’s into classical music.’

‘Yes,’ said Ken, ‘we were discussing the
St Matthew Passion
. Do you like classical music, Jess?’

‘I’m afraid I’ve never really got into it,’ said Jess defiantly. ‘It makes me feel kind of depressed and Sundayish. Although I do like . . . What is that thing, Mum?’

‘Prokofiev,’ replied Mum edgily.

‘Prokofiev!’ boomed Ken. For a moment it sounded as if he’d sneezed or coughed. Foreign names can be like that. ‘Prokofiev’s a bit showy for my taste,’ Ken went on. ‘You can’t compare him to the
St Matthew Passion
.’

‘What exactly was St Matthew’s Passion?’ asked Jess. ‘Mine is ice cream.’

Ken didn’t even register the joke, he just kind of launched himself into a stream of words. ‘It’s the Passion of Christ, obviously the crucifixion, you know?’

Jess did know – she was planning to crucify Ken in a few minutes’ time. In fact, she’d already chosen the exact place on the wall where he would fit in nicely: between Mum’s graduation photo and a print of Van Gogh’s sunflowers.

‘There’s nothing to beat the
St Matthew Passion
performed on period instruments,’ Ken rolled on. ‘You can’t beat the Netherlands Bach Society,’ he informed them.

He pronounced ‘Bach’ like ‘Bark’, making Jess briefly wonder if there was a choir composed entirely of dogs and, if so, whether they could be persuaded to chase Ken down the street and over the horizon, snapping ferociously at the seat of his pants.

There was a split second of silence.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Jess eagerly, longing to escape to the kitchen. ‘I often put the kettle on – they say it suits me.’

‘Jess wants to be a comedy writer,’ explained Mum, with a feeble smile. ‘She’s occasionally charming but mostly insane, I’m afraid.’

‘Comedy. Ah! Ha ha!’ Ken produced something clearly intended to be a laugh, but which would have qualified him to sing bass in the Netherlands Bark Society, along with the mastiffs and bloodhounds. ‘Comedy, eh, Jess? Good luck! I think you’re marvellous!’

Jess retreated towards the door. Though she was committed in a general way to being marvellous, she’d just as soon Ken found her utterly vile, thanks very much.

‘Do you like biscuits?’ she enquired, trying to sound as un-marvellous as possible. In fact, she delivered the question with a sinister sneer, as if she was planning to slip him a flapjack made of toad’s skin.

‘Usually I avoid biscuits,’ boomed Ken, ‘because of the sugar and the wheat, you know – they can make me a bit hyper.’

‘
A bit hyper
’, thought Jess.
If he’s like this now, what will he be like when he’s got a couple of chocolate biscuits inside him?

‘But I’m suffering a bit from low blood sugar,’ Ken informed them menacingly. ‘It often dips at this time in the day.’

‘Biscuits it is, then!’ cried Mum, and she and Jess ran out to the kitchen together.

Behind them, Ken sat in a horrible silence. If only they had a recording of something played on period instruments! Although Mum owned a CD or two, the CD player had stopped working after an unfortunate accident involving the Christmas tree and a pot of tea.

Mum filled the kettle, staring at a robin on the bird table out in the garden. You could see she was longing to elope with that bird.

‘So, how was school?’ she asked again, loudly. Their conversation could obviously be overheard in the sitting room, even with the kettle seething quietly towards boiling point (an emotional state quite accurately reflecting Jess’s).

‘School was fine,’ said Jess distractedly. Mum was scribbling something down on a piece of paper. ‘History was the best lesson today, because Mrs Fitzherbert had a coughing fit.’

‘Oh, good, dear,’ said Mum absently. She pushed the note across the table. It read:
For goodnes
s
’ sake, get rid of him
.
‘And how’s Fred?’

Jess grabbed the pencil.
HOW???
she wrote. ‘Oh, fine. Fred’s organising the music for the dinner dance.’

‘Oh, lovely,’ said Mum, scribbling again.
Pretend to be ill
, she wrote.

Wha
t
’s that horrible stink?
wrote Jess. ‘How was your day?’ she trilled, in a conversation that was taking place somewhere on another planet.

‘Oh, not too bad. Alison’s going down with a cold so we must remember to take our vitamin C,’ replied Mum. Then she seized the pencil.
I was supposed to go out for a drink with him. Say you feel sick and then
I
’ll have to stay here
.

At this point the kettle boiled, the tea was made, and Jess cracked open a packet of chocolate biscuits and stole a few of Granny’s custard creams.

Lay it on with a trowel
, added Mum, with heavy underlining.

They carried the tea tray into the sitting room. Ken was sitting upright like a robot. Jess wondered all over again how such a big head could have been assigned to such a short man. She wasn’t against short men in principle – Mackenzie at school, for instance, was cute and cuddly – but Ken had nothing going for him except his possible departure.