Surely, no judge in the land would send her down for giving in to temptation and throttling her niece? The phrase ‘justifiable homicide’ rattled around Carrie’s brain with pleasing harmony. Yes, she’d almost certainly get away it. Teenagers were tricky little sods, although her sister might have something to say about it. Angela managed her daughter’s strops with understated equanimity, but then she was very good at putting up with things. Carrie, on the other hand, found it difficult not to react. How come she could cope with a class full of other people’s kids but was ready to strangle her own niece for being a first-class, there was no other word for it, madam? It would be wrong to come right out and call her that, strangulation was therefore entirely reasonable. Her fingers twitched. So, so tempting.
‘Told you we wouldn’t get in,’ Jade pointed out for the third time, in her loud ‘I’m disgruntled voice’, attracting pernicious interest from the people in the queue behind them. No doubt a score of parents were heaving fervent sighs that she wasn’t theirs.
Did Jade have any idea how close she was to having the very living breath choked out of her?
‘You should have booked the tickets online, like I said to. It’s ridiculous,’ moaned Jade, contradicting any pleasure she might have gained in being right.
Carrie scowled at her niece. One, she flatly refused to pay a two-pound fee, per ticket, mind you, for the luxury of booking tickets in her own home and two, especially not for a film you could flipping well see for free on television. Breakfast at Tiffany’s had been around for fifty years.
‘Now, now, I’m sure there’s something else we can see,’ said Alan, stepping back to look up at the bank of screens advertising at least another eleven films being screened.
‘Yes,’ said the girl at the desk, with a touch of desperation, trying to hurry them along. ‘One of the films starts in two minutes.’ Whose side she was on? She’d soon be out of work if people paid the over-priced booking fees and didn’t buy tickets at the desk.
If that happened and you had to do it all online, there’d never be any chance to be spontaneous and decide to see a film. Take pot luck. Not that Carrie had done anything that random in ages. With sudden dismay it occurred to her that spontaneity was in short supply these days. Did that happen to everyone with age? Was it growing up? Maturing? Or just her getting duller?
‘Which one starts in two minutes?’ asked Carrie, straightening up and flashing the girl a brilliant smile. ‘Wait. Don’t tell me.’ She turned to the others. ‘Let’s go for it. It’ll be a surprise.’
They all stared at her as if she’d gone mad. As well they might, where had that crazy thought come from?
‘What! We can’t do that,’ said Angela. ‘We don’t even know what it is. We might hate it.’
‘That’s the most ridiculous thing. Why would you do that? That’s so lame.’ Jade shook her head. ‘Anyway there’ll only be tickets left for the crap films no one wants to see.’
‘And also rather risky, darling,’ added Alan.
‘Or it could be fun!’ Her voice lifted with enthusiasm, looking back at the united front of three deeply sceptical faces. ‘We might see a film we’d never normally choose and enjoy it. Broaden our horizons. A voyage of discovery! You might love it and you’d never have known. And what about that sense of anticipation?’
‘Like who does that?’ Jade punctuated every word with a different facial expression.
If displeased gurning ever became
