Girl, 16: Five-Star Fiasco (9 page)

HAVE YOU GOT CHEQUES OR CASH FOR CHAOS? MAJOR PANIC: CAN’T FIND ANY HERE!

Five minutes later a reply arrived from Fred:
NO, THINK YOU HAD THE MUNS. REMEMBER YOU WOULDN’T TRUST ME WIV IT? HA HA! HAVE LOOKED EVERYWHERE, EVEN IN MY RIGHT NOSTRIL (USUAL HIDING PLACE FOR TOP-SECRET ITEMS) BUT NO LUCK. CU TOMORROW X

Honestly! How could Fred joke at a time like this? Jess threw her phone violently across the room. It landed softly, somewhere on a pile of clothes. If it rang in the night she wouldn’t be able to find it in the dark and it might wake Mum up and she’d be hopping mad. Jess clenched her eyes tightly shut. When was this nightmare going to end? What had she done with the money?

Chapter 11

At school next day Jess and Fred argued, privately (at the edge of the football pitch to avoid being overheard), about who had last had the bundle of cheques and cash.

‘Look, it’s bound to be somewhere,’ Fred tried to reassure her. ‘It’ll be in your bedroom, right?’

‘Or your bedroom!’ Jess insisted. ‘Listen, Fred, you’ve got to go home this evening and ransack your room! In fact, I’ll come and help!’

‘Ransack your own room!’ retorted Fred. ‘You’re not coming snooping about in mine! I have weapons of mass destruction stashed away in there! Anyway, I’m busy after school today – there’s chess club practice.’

‘Fred, you
have
to help me organise this dinner dance! Put chess club on hold for a few days!’

‘Sorry.’ Fred started walking backwards, away from her, one of his infuriating habits when cornered. ‘No need to panic for another forty-eight hours, though, is there?’ He raised an eyebrow in a way that Jess occasionally found lovable. But not now. A full-scale panic had already got going in her insides; her tum had dissolved into a kind of bubbling witch’s cauldron.

That evening Jack had a rugby match and Fred had his precious chess club, so it was a chance for Jess and Flora to walk home together. Jess hadn’t mentioned the money crisis to Flora, because, of course, it was Flora’s family’s money as well as everybody else’s that she had lost. Instead she tried to enter into a slightly feverishly festive mood.

‘It feels like a treat to have some time to ourselves!’ sighed Jess. ‘Men! Aren’t they just a waste of space!’

‘Totally,’ agreed Flora with her rippling laugh. ‘Oh my goodness, it’s so cold! Where’s my hat?’ She pulled her fur-trapper’s hat out of her school bag and rammed it on her head. Flora didn’t usually wear hats, because she thought they made her hair go limp and horrid, but today was so cold, the pavements seemed to be made of iron.

‘Yeah, totally arctic,’ agreed Jess, snuggling into her scarf. It was already getting dark – they’d stopped for a hot choc at the Dolphin Cafe – and now their breath billowed in the faint glow of the street lamps.

‘What time is it?’ Flora looked at her watch for the hundredth time that day.

‘Stop showing off that freakin’ watch.’ Jess grinned. ‘I know your boyfriend is a billionaire and never stops loading you with bling, but we Neanderthals do have feelings, you know. My only watch came out of a cracker.’

‘Shut up! Don’t be an idiot!’ Flora laughed, admiring the watch again before plunging her hand back into her sheepskin mitt. ‘It was rather fabulous of him, though.’

‘I can’t imagine what it’s like having a boyfriend who spends over a hundred pounds on you!’ Jess shook her head. ‘I’m trying to imagine Fred spending anything on me at all. He’s notoriously tight.’ It seemed impossible to get away from the horrible subject of money. ‘Fred did write me a poem once, but he even asked me for the paper to write it on.’

‘Oh, but Jack could never write a poem!’ cried Flora. ‘You’re the lucky one! Fred is so clever! Jack is, like, totally without imagination.’

‘All the same – that watch . . .’

‘He did get it cheap off the internet, and it was a sort of late Christmas present. And he did earn quite a lot working on his dad’s business website.’

‘OK, OK.’ Jess smiled. ‘I’m just dead jealous of you, you pampered princess!’

Flora laughed, and a cute little twinkly pair of dimples appeared on the flawless jewel of her face.

Once home, Jess turned her room upside down. There was still no sign of the money. She racked her brains. In the early stages when people had been buying tickets, she and Fred had tossed the envelope of money to and fro like a hot potato, always meaning to open a bank account for it and never getting round to it, making a kind of joke – a joke! – about who was more likely to lose it. But her bedroom was totally and utterly ransacked – she had flung all her possessions about in a kind of panicky madness – and there just wasn’t any money anywhere. That was a fact.

Fred must have it – even though he’d texted her to say he didn’t, she secretly suspected that he hadn’t even started to look yet, because he was sure that she had it. But of course she
didn’t
have it, so he must have it, and as soon as Fred started to look in the enormous pile of debris that formed his approach to interior design, he would certainly find it. This reassured her slightly, and she was able, at last, to think of other things, some of them potentially just as awful, but in new, exciting ways.

On Saturday night Jess had to prepare for the ludicrous double date with Mum, Ed the Builder and Polly. He already sounded like a character on a children’s TV programme. Jess was half expecting him to be constructed of cheerful yellow plastic, with a detachable head. As for his daughter Polly, it was essential that Jess manage to look cooler than her. Although not knowing what Polly was like was a slight disadvantage when planning what to wear.

At first she let rip, in the privacy of her bedroom, with a pink sequinned vest, cute black jacket and black drainpipe jeans. Were her legs thin enough for drainpipes, though? What if Polly was also wearing drainpipes, only her legs were endless and slim? Jess went downstairs and confronted Granny, who was watching a documentary about Jack the Ripper.

‘Granny! Look! Do I look OK?’

‘Lovely, dear,’ Granny assured her, dragging her eyes with reluctance from a period homicide. Then she focused. ‘Is it a disco you’re going to?’

‘No, Granny! It’s that double date with Bob the Builder – sorry, Ed – and his stupid daughter.’

‘Don’t you like her, then?’ asked Granny.

‘Well, I haven’t actually met her yet,’ said Jess irritably, ‘but I expect she’ll turn out to be Miss Totally Freakin’ Perfect.’

Granny looked thoughtfully at her ensemble. ‘What is it again – pizza?’

‘Yes, a movie then pizza.’

‘Well, dear, don’t be upset . . .’

‘Of course I won’t be upset! I need your advice.’

‘Well, I do think you might have overdone it a bit.’

Jess was upset.

‘You look a bit – how shall I put it? – like a Christmas tree decoration.’

Jess was outraged. ‘Granny, how dare you!’ she yelled, managing – just – to keep it good-natured. ‘I wanted your input, not a character assassination.’

‘Well, you can never go wrong if you’re
under
-dressed, dear,’ explained Granny, her eyes swerving towards the irresistible TV screen. ‘In the sixties, we all wore sequins all day: girls, boys, dogs, the lot. But nowadays it does look a bit – dressy.’

Jess ran back upstairs, threw off her sparkles and pulled on jeans and a stretchy leopard-print top. A Christmas tree decoration? Honestly!

They’d agreed to meet in a little cafe called Gino’s, near the cinema. Mum was holding on so tightly to Jess’s arm, they were both getting pins and needles in their hands.

‘I tried on about thirty outfits this evening,’ whispered Mum as they approached Gino’s – quite slowly, as Mum had got her high heels out of mothballs and was teetering along the pavement in a rather worrying way, as if a trip and a sprawl weren’t entirely off the cards.

‘You look great,’ Jess told her. Mum was wearing her dark dress, the one she always used for winter funerals, with a little grey and pink cardy to soften it up. It was all, however, hidden by her massive quilted coat, which made her look like a walking duvet – though Jess didn’t have the heart to say so. She left that kind of hurtful truth-telling to her tactless grandmother.

‘Why ever did I let myself in for this?’ groaned Mum as they reached the door of Gino’s.

‘Never mind you!’ growled Jess. ‘Why did you let
me
in for it? How are we going to recognise them?’

‘He said he’d be wearing a denim jacket,’ said Mum, ‘and he promised we’d notice Polly as soon as we got inside.’

‘What’s so special about this precious Polly?’ grumbled Jess. Then they barged into the cafe and saw her.

Chapter 12

Polly was a goth. Her face was chalky white, her hair was a dyed-red Mohican, she was wearing a kind of black fishnet top under a black leather jacket, and she had so many piercings that when she turned her head towards them, her face tinkled.

‘Wow!’ muttered Jess. ‘We’re into hardcore gothic here.’

‘Shush!’ hissed Mum. ‘Come on!’

Barging clumsily between the cafe tables in her duvet coat, she headed for the person she guessed must be Ed the Builder, a man with a gut so massive you would’ve thought he was expecting twins. He had close-cropped ginger hair and his face was covered with freckles. The hint of attractiveness which Mum had noticed in his photo was mysteriously absent in person.