Tuesday 11 March
Kitchen (hooray: complete with roof and
fridge), 5 p.m.
I did it. I dropped in today on the way back from school. Luckily the shop was empty. John was doing something with the photo processor; he’d dismantled it and had all the bits on the floor around him. He grunted when he saw me. ‘Jammed/he said. ‘It’s eaten Mrs Rayburn’s WI trip to Salisbury Cathedral. Twenty-four exposures wiped out in one.’
‘Could have been worse,’ I said. ‘Could have been Mrs Rayburn’s once-in-a-lifetime safari in Tanzania.’
He laughed, but as he was still frowning at the time, it came out like a ‘harumph’.
He jigged the contraption back together. When he stood up, there was black stuff on his hands. He bent to wipe them on a paper towel. He was wearing his jeans. ‘Did I underpay you or something?’
‘What?’
‘Midweek visit. We’re honoured.’ He seemed to have noticed something odd about me, because he was giving me a funny look. Then he said, ‘Didn’t know your school wore uniform in the sixth form.’
‘It’s not uniform and I’m not in the sixth form!’ I was outraged. Under my mac, I was wearing a pale-blue Aertex shirt (fifty pence) and a dark-grey pleated skirt (twenty pence, bargain bucket), which I felt suited me rather well.
‘You’re not in the sixth form?’
I’d been so insulted by his attack on my clothes-sense, I’d completely forgotten about all that, the deception on which our relationship was founded. It’s why you should never lie. People say you’re always caught out in the end, as if a lie grows and grows over time, rolling down the road after you, collecting debris until it’s so HUGE it can’t be ignored any longer. But actually it gets smaller and smaller, shrinking to something so tiny and inconsequential that it slips through a gap without you noticing.
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘What I mean is, I am, but I don’t. Yes. Um. Well, you don’t have to. You don’t have to every day.’
‘You mean it is uniform, but you don’t have to wear it? It’s a question of choice?’
‘Yup. Yup. That’s it.’
His expression as he looked at me got even odder. I pulled in the belt of my pack-a-mac a bit tighter. I found my hands fiddling at my neck. ‘You’re a funny girl,’ he said eventually.
‘Anyway. The reason I’m here is to see if you’d like to come to my house for supper,’ I said.
‘Connie!’ He looked astonished. I think his cheeks may have gone a bit pink. ‘Are you worried I’m not eating?’
‘No. No. Well, you could eat something other than bacon sandwiches. But no. It’s just… well, I was talking about the job, my job here, with my mother, Bernadette, and she said how nice it would be to meet you properly. I mean, I know she’s been in once or twice…’
‘Has she?’ He looked puzzled. ‘I don’t remember. Oh yes! The lady with the beehive.’
‘The beehive? No. No, that’s Granny Enid. My step-grandmother.’ I smiled at the thought of how different Mother was to Granny Enid; what a surprise he’d get if that was what he was expecting. ‘I suppose she hasn’t been in much since I’ve been working here. I can buy what she needs. Which reminds me.’ I had a sudden inspiration and turned to the shelves. I pulled out a bottle and brandished it. ‘She’s about to run out of Neutrogena T/Gel Anti-Dandruff Shampoo!’
He ran it up on the till.
I said, ‘Yup. Neutrogena T/Gel Anti-Dandruff Shampoo. She lives on the stuff’,
He still looked unfazed. Had he forgotten the valentine card? ‘Four pounds thirty,’ he said.
I rummaged in my pocket. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Actually, I haven’t got enough. Perhaps I’11 get it on Saturday.’
‘You sure?’ he said.
‘Yeah. No problem.’ I laughed. ‘So. Ms Neutrogena T/Gel Anti-Dandruff Shampoo, that’s what they call her.’
‘Who?’
‘My mother.’ He looked at me blankly. I gave up. ‘So, will you?’
‘Er…’
‘Come to supper?’
He made a face, which I couldn’t read. ‘Yes. OK,’ he said. ‘When?’
‘I was thinking tomorrow?’ (Mother never goes out on Wednesdays. She watches ER.)
‘Let me just consult my hectic social calendar.’ He tipped his head back, closed his eyes for a second and then opened them. ‘Actually, I appear to have a cancellation tomorrow. I did have plans with Victoria Beckham and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson – just a bacon sarnie round my place; always Tara’s date of choice – but they’ve come down with chicken flu. So – amazingly, considering the short notice – I’m free.’
‘Good. Eight o’clock. You’ve got the address, haven’t you?’
‘I have. And, to eat, will it be –?’
‘Fish. Yes, I expect it will.’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘Just so long as it’s freshly delivered from Newcastle, that’ll be fine.’
I don’t think I’ve ever got on with an adult as well as I get on with John.
The good news back in our house is that Mr Spence has finally finished redecorating the kitchen. The bad news is that he has started on the bathroom. I could hear him singing as I opened the front door. ‘It’s fun to stay at the YMCA,’ he was yodelling like some over-ebullient goatherd. I needed a wee, so I went in. The window was wide open and strips of peeled wallpaper lay over the bath like drunken maidens. He was up a ladder, scraping the ceiling. ‘Would you mind giving me a few minutes to myself?’ I said haughtily.
‘Wotcha!’ he said, climbing down the ladder.
I gave him a withering look. And then I shut the bathroom door in his face.
My room, 7 p.m.
I’ve just told Mother about John Leakey coming to supper. I want to thank him, I said, for giving me the job. ‘That’s sweet,’ she said. ‘So I can leave you to it and watch ER?’ I told her she couldn’t, that she’d have to tape it. Then I felt odd about it all. I am doing the right thing, aren’t I?
I’ve just rung Julie. ‘Connie,’ she said, ‘you’re a star.’