Girl, (Nearly) 16: Absolute Torture! (2 page)

‘No, Granny, I’m going to be a stand-up comedian, remember?’ said Jess. ‘Not as glamorous as airport security, obviously, but somebody’s got to perform the back-breaking drudgery of making people laugh.’

Granny picked up her teeth and for a moment used them in a kind of ventriloquist act.

‘Hello, Jeff!’ she said in a squeaky voice she always used for the teeth. ‘What’f for fupper?’ Granny made the teeth chomp together in a hungry kind of way.

This little cabaret had amused Jess quite a lot when she was younger, but now, quite frankly, it was beginning to lose its allure. Jess was desperate to escape and fly to the arms of Fabulous Fred. She laughed politely and backed off down the hallway towards the front door.

‘Let’f go and watch the news,’ said Granny, ramming her teeth back into her mouth with panache. ‘There’s been an explosion in Poland, it’s terrible. Hundreds feared dead.’ Granny was quite ghoulish in her addiction to catastrophe.

‘I’ve got to go out, Granny,’ said Jess, looking at her watch in an important way. ‘I’ve got to say goodbye to my friends before I go on holiday.’

‘Ah! Our lovely trip! I’m so looking forward to it, dear, aren’t you? Grandpa and I spent our honeymoon in Cornwall, you know.’

Jess had heard this story approximately 99,999 times.
Please don’t say anything more about it, Granny
, she thought desperately,
or I might just have to bundle you away affectionately but briskly into the cupboard under the stairs
.

‘And,’ Granny went on excitedly, ‘I’m taking Grandpa’s ashes so I can throw them into the sea!’

Jess smiled through gritted teeth and reached behind her to open the front door.

‘Lovely, Granny! Fabulous idea! Ashes, sea – go for it! Kind of like the afterlife is a scuba-diving holiday!’

Granny laughed. She was amazingly broad-minded and would probably laugh at her own funeral.

‘Now you must excuse me, Granny – I really must go! Flora’s waiting for me in the park!’

‘Oh, all right dear – I’ll keep you posted on the Polish explosion when you get back!’ promised Granny.

She trotted eagerly into the sitting room, heading for the TV. It was already two minutes past five and she might have missed some glorious brand-new disaster. Granny had come to live with them fairly recently and it had certainly brightened things up in the Jordan household. However, right now Jess’s thoughts were elsewhere.

She ran out of the house and sped down the road. It had been a lie about Flora waiting for her in the park. An excuse to get away. The person she really had to see was Fred.

Please God
, she prayed as she hurtled off towards the sacred house where the divine Fred Parsons lived.
Save me, please, from this terrible holiday! Sprain my ankle! Sprain both my ankles! And please let Fred be in!

Chapter 2

As she ran to Fred’s house, Jess tried to get a grip on the situation. But it was totally out of control. The best summer ever had turned into howling darkness in less than half an hour.

Jess and Fred had only just become an item, and they had planned to spend the whole summer together in the park. They were going to have a picnic lunch under a different tree every day. They had even planned some bus trips out of town, to wander through forests or walk hand in hand on a beach, ‘like an insurance ad’, as Fred had put it.

And of course, once it got dark, they would probably have spent hours and hours practising the tiresome business of kissing and cuddling. Every night for the past week, by the park gates, in a private dark place under a tree, Fred had kissed her goodnight. Jess’s skin sort of sizzled at the memory of it.

‘I suppose we’d better go through the whole meaningless charade of a goodnight kiss – if we can manage it,’ Fred had murmured the first time. ‘In fact, I’ve been chewing gum all evening in preparation for this moment.’ He had spat out his gum – quite stylishly into a rubbish bin – and they had gone for it.

Their first kiss. It had been long, slow and delicious. Jess’s heart had gone into overdrive. And eventually, when they pulled apart, Fred had whispered, ‘What do you think of that? Awful, wasn’t it?’

‘Nauseating!’ Jess had sighed, and laid her head on his heart.

What fatal instinct had made her mum choose this moment to plan a holiday? The very moment when suddenly just being at home had become heaven on earth? Normally, of course, Jess would have loved nothing more than to go down to the seaside and visit her slightly crazy but totally cute dad, and help him with his rather gloomy paintings of beaches and seagulls. But just right now . . . the thought of going away was torture.

It was impossible to tell her mum, hopeless to try and explain. If Jess even tried she would be in the worst trouble ever. Because Jess’s mum wasn’t what you’d call boy-friendly. She wasn’t a man-hater exactly, but she only ever let men into the house if the washing machine wasn’t working.

Jess sometimes thought she would never have the courage to defy her mum’s disapproval and get married. She would have to go and live thousands of miles away in Kalamazoo and pretend her husband was a large dog called Henry.

Jess arrived at Fred’s house, panting. She had run all the way.
If you want to get fit
, she thought,
don’t join a gym – fall in love
. She rang the doorbell and tried to put on a casual, glamorous expression, even though her cheeks were bright red and her lungs were wheezing like an old church organ infested with termites.

Fred’s father opened the door. Behind him, Jess could hear football on TV.

‘Is Fred in?’ she panted.

Fred’s dad shook his head.

‘He’s gone out,’ he said.

‘Oh no! Do you know where he’s gone?’ cried Jess in dismay.

Fred’s dad shrugged.

‘Sorry,’ he said in a final kind of way. He didn’t invite Jess in to wait till Fred got back. Fred’s mum would have known what to do. She would have invited Jess in, offered delicious food and drink, and settled her down to wait with albums full of adorable photos of the infant Fred.

But his dad was a complete duffer.

‘Excuse me,’ he said now, as the sound of the football crowd soared in excitement on the TV, ‘I must get back to the football.’ And, with a regretful smile, he shut the door in her face.

Jess was devastated, paralysed and appalled. Fred’s whole street seemed to go dark. Black clouds were gathering, and she had a feeling that vultures were circling overhead. For a moment she was on the verge of tears, but she managed to get rid of them by sort of swallowing the back of her nose. It tasted vile. What should she do now? Where should she go? She was facing disaster, and where was Fred when she needed him? Mysteriously and infuriatingly out.

She only had one hope. She had to go and see her best friend Flora. Thank goodness Flora hadn’t gone on holiday yet. She was due to leave in a couple of days on a ‘Costa Rican Adventure’. Jess wasn’t sure exactly where Costa Rica was, but the photos in the brochure suggested that Flora would be trekking through rainforests full of beautiful birds and butterflies and relaxing on tropical beaches under swaying palm trees.

Flora’s family could afford such treats because her dad was very big in bathrooms. But this time Jess hadn’t felt jealous of Flora’s holiday at all, because nothing in the world could be better than just hanging out in the park, all summer, with Fred.

There had been a slightly dodgy moment a few weeks ago, before Jess and Fred had got together, when Flora had revealed that she was crazy about Fred. But once Fred had confessed his perverted preference for dark, imperfect Jess rather than blonde, perfect Flora, Flora had dug deep into her character and produced an unsuspected angelic streak. She had only sulked about it for three days.

Jess broke into a run. She desperately needed some sympathy and Flora was usually very prompt with the hugs and hot chocolate.

The front door was opened by Flora’s older sister, Freya. Freya was at Oxford, studying maths. Like all Flora’s family, she was blonde and almost illegally beautiful. She was kind of vague and dreamy as well, which somehow added to her angelic charm. If Jess had tried to be vague and dreamy it wouldn’t have worked. She would just have appeared overweight and idiotic.

‘Oh – er – hello, Jess . . .’ murmured Freya. ‘Flora’s . . . where is Flora? Er, yes, um, I think she’s in the sitting room with Mummy . . .’ And she drifted off to do some very hard sums or possibly rinse her hair in extract of camomile flowers. Jess took off her shoes (one always had to do this at Flora’s because of the blonde carpets) and tiptoed to the sitting room. How soon would she be able to get Flora on her own and cry on her shoulder?

But an amazing sight met Jess’s startled gaze. Flora’s mother, who on a good day could pass for a minor movie star, was lying on the sofa with a badly bruised cheekbone and a black eye, and with her leg in plaster! What on earth had happened? It seemed that Jess would be expected to provide sympathy instead of receiving it. How unfair life was!

Chapter 3

‘Come in, Jess, darling, don’t be scared – although I do look like something out of a horror movie!’ called Flora’s mum.

Flora was sitting on the floor by the sofa. You could see she had been crying for hours. Her eyes had gone pink and piggy. Although, of course, she still looked a lot more beautiful than Jess, whose eyes were piggy every day of the year.

‘What happened?’ said Jess, sitting down on the floor beside Flora.

‘I had a stupid fall when I was getting out of the bath,’ said Flora’s mum. ‘It was that slippery bath oil – rose geranium.’