I’ve left the house all ready. There is a cake, plump and sweet, sitting in the ice-cream carton we use as a tin in the kitchen. I dusted it with sugar, so it would look like the kind of cake they have in French patisseries. (Julie and I spent a lot of time in French patisseries on the day trip to Boulogne.) There are cucumber sandwiches – Victor Savonaire definitely looks like a cucumber-sandwich man – under cling film in the fridge. And there is a tray ready-laid, complete with teapot, cups and milk jug (the one Marie decorated with kangaroos at one of those do-it-yourself pottery places. Or I think they’re kangaroos. They might be cows).

When I showed Mother what I’d done she said, ‘Monange.’ She was a bit distracted because Marie and Cyril were fighting over the plastic dinosaur that came in a new packet of corn pops. I hope she remembers to sieve the sugar.

I walked to work feeling very organized and bossy, omnipotent like a Roman emperor, or the matriarch of some large ungainly family, like in the Mafia or something. I was unbeatable. I keep thinking how impressed Julie will be with me.

I was brought down to earth before I got to the chemist’s, because I met William in front of the station. He was waiting for his brother and he seemed to be in a bad mood.

‘Where’re you off to?’ I said. ‘Football? Away match in some hellhole end of the universe?’

‘Nope,’ he said, scowling. He had a little scrap of loo roll stuck just below his ear. ‘No, Kevin wants to go on the march today. You know, in the park?’

I did know. I’d seen it on the news – there’s been bombing in the last few days; a lot of buildings blown up, some casualties – but Victor Savonaire had put it out of my mind.

‘That’s good,’ I said, noticing that William looked quite handsome now his hair was growing out a little bit. Mind you, it needed a wash.

‘No, it’s not.’ He rubbed his hand across his nose (not attractive). ‘We’re away at Arsenal. I want to go to that. And what’s the point of marching? What difference will we make? It’s all happening too far away. It’s nothing to do with us. It’s pointless.’

I was still thinking about that when I arrived at the shop. John Leakey was behind the counter, looking cross.

‘So your mum’s boyfriend’s happy?’ he said when he saw me.

I didn’t immediately grasp what he meant. I must have just stared at him blankly.

‘A show of might and all that.’ He gestured to a new poster in the window. It was advertising the march in the park. ‘Troublemaking, I’m afraid. Some of us feel it’s not a good thing seeing innocent people die. Let alone the knock-on effect on merchandising or whatever it was.’ His beetle-brows seemed to meet in the middle.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Awful.’ But I didn’t really mean it. I was thinking how magnificent some people look when they’re angry.

He stared at me. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘Yes, it is.’ He gave his head a little shake and then said, ‘Right. Sorry. Connie, can you and Gail manage this morning? I’ve got Sanjay, the locum, coming in. I’m off to –’

‘The march?’ I said, gesturing to the poster.

He nodded. ‘Yup. Sorry. I just think it’s important to make a stand. You know, when you believe in something strongly’

I nodded. ‘Of course.’ I got my overall on and picked up the price gun.

But I couldn’t concentrate. I’d forgotten about the war. I’d been so determined to watch the news and follow it. And I haven’t, really. Not a lot. My own life has taken over. It’s all begun to seem such a long way away – like William said – and nothing to do with me. Also, worst of all, I did see the news last night and I did see the bombs go off, but I’d been too busy worrying about Victor Savonaire’s cake to think any more about it.

After a while I said, ‘Mr Leakey, I mean John?’

‘Yes?’

‘I think you’re so good to go on the march. I think you’re magnifi–remarkable, really You know, to care and to notice and…’

He didn’t look up from his accounts. ‘You have to make a stand.’

‘Even if it doesn’t make a difference? Even if it isn’t the right thing? I mean, how do you know whether a war is a good thing or a bad thing?’

He looked up now. ‘That, Connie, you have to work out for yourself. You mustn’t listen to me, or your mum’s boy friend. You have to work it out for yourself. It’s that simple.’

‘I know’ I priced a few more toothpaste tubes and then stopped again. I wanted to tell him something –something really awful – and I was worried that if I did he wouldn’t like me any more. But I also knew that he would listen. There is something so understanding about him. He takes you seriously, even if you’re only fourteen.

‘Mr Leakey? John? You know last night, the bombing? I saw it, and the houses being destroyed, and I knew there were real people in the houses who were being killed, but it’s only now, talking to you, that I sort of realize they are people like you and me. They didn’t seem –’ Could I tell him? ‘They didn’t seem as real somehow. Do you know what I mean?’

He’d been working on the other side of the counter to me, but when I said this he came round and leant against the shelves just by me. ‘That’s very honest of you.’ He considered for a while. ‘It’s very easy to feel that. It’s like watching a film. It can even be exciting. That’s why war is a dangerous thing. It’s desensitizing. It becomes something other than it is, which is everyday and brutal.’

I nodded, but I didn’t look up. I felt shy suddenly because he was so close. He took my hand and squeezed it. His grasp felt firm and warm. His breath smelt of tea and mints. He said, ‘Connie, at sixteen, you have to start listening to other people and drawing your own conclusions. Don’t just follow the crowd, or me.’

‘At sixt–’ I began. I looked up and then remembered. Our eyes met. His lashes are so long you’d think they’d get tangled. I felt this weird tight feeling in my stomach, like butterflies and nausea muddled up, the feeling you get at the back of your throat when you’ve been running fast, or cycling, but it wasn’t in my throat, it was further down in the depths of my chest, like everything was taut.

I laughed to cover my embarrassment and said, ‘Anyway, the good news is he’s not her boyfriend any more.’

‘Who isn’t?’ He had returned to the till as if nothing had happened.

‘My mum’s boyfriend isn’t my mum’s boyfriend any more.’

He looked up from the roll of receipts he’d been studying and laughed. ‘That’s good, then, isn’t it? Because we don’t like him, do we?’

I laughed too. He was back on the other side of the counter, but for a moment there, it was him and me against the world. ‘No,’ I said, ‘we don’t.’

I asked after her mother, who is ‘bearing up’ in hospital, we sold some whitening toothpaste, and then she said, ‘And your young man, all well there?’

‘What young man?’ I answered.

‘The one on the bike, who spends the whole of Saturday afternoon cycling up and down outside the shop, pretending not to look in.’

‘He doesn’t!’ I looked out of the window, but the street was empty.

‘He does,’ she said in a sing-song voice. ‘Though I haven’t seen him yet today’

‘That’s because he’s gone to the march.’

‘Told you so!’ She thought she’d caught me out.

‘He’s not my young man,’ I insisted. ‘He’s just a friend. I don’t even –’

‘What?’ She was laughing at me.

I looked over my shoulder to check Sanjay wasn’t listening. ‘I don’t even fancy him. He’s not my type.’ (What is my type? Also, what’s William playing at? Why’s he spying on me?)

I wonder what’s happening at home. Victor Savonaire should be there now. I hope Mother remembered the icing sugar. I hope they’re having fun. Maybe they’ve finished tea and have moved on to wine. (French, I bet. There’s nothing poncey New World about him.)

I’m on the bus on my way to visit Julie with a heavy heart.

I opened the door very noisily – in case Mother and Victor Savonaire needed warning – but I needn’t have bothered. The sitting room was empty. So was the kitchen. Worse. On the counter was the tea tray, just as I’d left it. I opened the ice-cream carton to find an uncut cake. And in the fridge, twinkling defiantly out at me from beneath their cling-film wrapper, was a pile of uneaten cucumber sandwiches. Wrong. One corner had been disturbed. A pile of uneaten cucumber sandwiches minus one.

There was a sound upstairs.

‘Mother!’ I yelled.

‘Chérie!’ tinkled her voice from the bathroom. ‘How was your da-ay?’

I stuffed my earnings into the biscuit tin and went upstairs. The bathroom door was open. There was rose and geranium in the air, so there was still hope. ‘What’s happened?’ I said, bursting in.

Mother was in the bath. ‘I’m so glad you’re back,’ she said, craning, when she saw me. ‘Little Julie has rung. She would so like you to go and see her this evening. At last she is better. I’m glad to see you before I go.’

‘You’re going out?’ I said.

‘In a few instants, yes. Now, Jack will be bringing Cyril and Marie back at eight o’clock. You can get the bus to Julie’s, no?’

‘Yes. Yes. OK. But what happened? The cake? The tea?’

‘Oh.’ She took a sharp intake of breath. ‘Constance, after all that trouble you went to. That man didn’t come at all. I was waiting and no – nothing. But I had a sandwich. They were very nice.’

‘You mean he didn’t turn up?’

‘No.’ She sounded offended, in a high-horse kind of a way, but not upset. ‘He didn’t turn up at all.’

I pulled the loo lid down and sat on it. ‘I don’t understand. He said he would come. I gave him the address.’

She shrugged and reached for the soap. ‘Men,’ she said.

I stood up. I had to ring Julie and tell her I was coming straight away. She would know what to do. I needed advice. Input. I was halfway out of the door when I thought to ask Mother where she was going.

She checked her watch, which was on the side of the bath by her head, and made to get up. ‘I’m just going for a quick drink with Bert,’ she said.

I nearly died.

Chopsticks?’ I suggested.

‘Yes. Or toothpicks. You wearing a bra?’ she added.

‘Yep.’

‘Big improvement.’

Julie’s mum had made a real fuss of me at the door, telling me how thrilled Julie would be to see me. And she was thrilled. She’d been at the window, in her River Island daywear cotton drawstrings and a frilly T-shirt – and she did a Tigger-like bounce back into bed when I came in. ‘Company,’ she croaked. ‘Friendship. News from the great outdoors.’

‘Also homework,’ I said, handing her a copy of the previous week’s assignments (which she promptly chucked on to the bedside table).

There were flowers by the bed too, daffodils and baby’s breath. ‘Who’re they from?’ I asked.

‘Ade!’

‘Ade?’

‘The guy from the party. Just before I got ill.’ She wriggled her shoulders. ‘He’s so sweet. He keeps ringing. He brought these round, though Mum wouldn’t let him up. Luckily. Look at the state of me. He’s not embarrassed to show he cares. It’s so totally sexy’

Her mum came in then, with two cups of tea. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she whispered in a little-girl-lost voice.

‘You,’ her mum said, ‘are well enough to get your own next time.’

Now she was leaning back against the pillows, with the duvet tucked over her. She looked younger without her heavy black eyeliner. Despite the vase of flowers on her bedside table, the room had that musty closed-in smell of illness, of breath and skin and stale flower water. Balls of tissue decorated the carpet like giant confetti. A copy of Sneak magazine and a novel with a cartoon girl in a pink miniskirt and thigh-high boots on the front lay abandoned on the bedside table.

‘Goss,’ Julie said when her mum had gone again. ‘Scandal. Tell me everything. What’s been going on while I’ve been stuck here at death’s door?’

‘I’ve got news,’ I said grimly. I took a deep breath and told her everything. I told her about bad-mouthing Uncle Bert, about scrumpling up his phone message. I told her about taking the day off school and accosting Victor Savonaire. I told her about the preparations for tea. I told her about Victor Savonaire not deigning to turn up. And finally I told her about Mother’s ‘quick aperitif that evening.

Her expression went from glee to mild disapproval to encouragement to excitement to disappointment – to horror. ‘Uncle Bert’s taking her out again?’ she croaked. ‘Tonight? I thought you said on the phone you’d split them up?’

‘I thought I had too.’

‘I thought you’d sorted everything.’

‘I know. I know. I thought I had too.’

Her mouth went into a hard line. ‘Right,’ she growled. ‘Where’s that list?’

‘That list?’

‘You know, the matchmaking list.’ Her voice was really going now. ‘The one we made right at the beginning.’

I produced the page in this book where it’s reproduced. ‘Now – business. Hah! Monsieur Baker.’

‘No.’ I remembered the nipples through the thin white shirt. ‘Please.’

‘We’re not talking stepfather material. We’re talking get us out of this fix.’

‘No,’ I said again.

‘OK.’ Her eyes scanned the page, then, ‘Aha! What are we thinking? It’s here! The answer’s here! It’s obvious and the beauty of it is it’s all set up. You’ve set it up already, you brilliant thing.’

‘What?’ I bent to pick up a tissue off the floor by my feet. But I think I already knew.

‘The Chemist Guy!’

‘No.’ I felt my face go wooden. ‘We can’t do that.’

‘Why ever not? Con, it’s perfect. You’re already in there. Remember, it’s why you started working there in the first place. A back-up! Now we need it. And by this stage in the game, he knows you. You know him. It’ll be easy. All you have to do is invite him round.’

‘It’s not fair,’ I replied. I was pulling the tissue to pieces, scattering paper petals all over the bed. ‘It’s… it’s… not right.’

‘I thought you liked him?’

‘I do…’

‘Well, there –’ Her voice was beginning to fade and she took a glug of tea to bring it back – ‘you go.’

I couldn’t think of any concrete reasons to say no. I said there were no French connections. She said I was being too fussy. I tried to say more about how having got to know John (‘John?’ she interrupted. ‘Mr Leakey,’ I corrected.) made me feel uncomfortable about it. She said she knew Uncle Bert: that hadn’t stopped her. Wasn’t it better to be working with people we knew than with people, like my Savonaire bloke, who might be half French but who didn’t even turn up when you’d gone to the trouble of making cucumber sandwiches? In the end I found myself agreeing. ‘Arrange something fast,’ she croaked. ‘We don’t want another disaster like today’

I feel troubled. I don’t want to let Julie down – again – and I do want to find a new man for Mother and stop her seeing Uncle Bert. But I’m just not sure John Leakey is right. He is nice, really nice, and he talks to people my age like they’re ordinary humans not creatures from Planet Zog. I’ve seen him give small kids free lollies too – and not look cross when he has to get the jar down again to let them swap their banana one for a strawberry one. He’s gentle and clever and good-looking and, as Julie also reminded me tonight, he’s got a great arse. I just can’t see him with Mother. I don’t know why But the thought of it makes my stomach do funny panicky things.

I’ve got Julie’s face in my head, her eyes pleading with me. Her eyes are lined with black kohl, whereas this evening they were make-up free, and I realize I’m remembering her as she was the other day when she came to meet me at the chemist’s. And I’m remembering how horrible it was when she and Carmen had their backs to me on the radiator at school and how left out I felt, and how wonderful it was when I realized it was only Uncle Bert that was stopping us from being friends. But am I letting her manipulate me? Is William right that she likes things her own way? Oh God, what am I on about? Friendship is just so hard.

I got home at 9 p.m. and Mother got back at about 10 p.m. – so not a long aperitif at all. She was in a thoughtful mood, which I took as a good sign. Or not a bad sign at least.

We watched the news together and ate the rest of the cucumber sandwiches. More bombing. More politicians. And 200,000 people marching through the streets of London. That’s 199,999 people. And John Leakey My chemist.