which is the boring suburb where I am doomed to dwell; her dad always gives me a lift. So Mum said all right, in that case she would let me go, and I rushed off to ransack my wardrobe and see what I had that was even remotely wearable, and to ring Dee and tell her that she could go ahead and book a table, or get her mum to.
Of the three of us, it was always Dee who did the organising. Chloe was too scatty, she would be bound to get the wrong day, or the wrong time; even wrong year. Mum used to say she was “mercurial”. Dee and I just said she was useless. I am not useless, but Dee is one of those people who always has everything under control. She’s the same at school. She always knows what’s been set for homework, she’s always done her homework. She’s the one who’s always filled in her timetable correctly, the one who tells the rest of us where we’re meant to be, and when. I bet you anything you like she’ll end up as head girl, keeping us all in order.
But, oh dear, it was so sad! So unfair. The day before our celebration poor old Dee was carted off to hospital with an asthma attack. She has asthma really badly; her mum said she would never be fit enough by Thursday evening.
I was really upset for her, especially after all the hard work she’d put in, but also it meant I had to tell Mum that Mr Franklin wouldn’t be picking me up any more.
He probably would have done, if I’d asked him, but Mum wouldn’t hear of it. She said, “We can’t impose on people like that!” But Mum herself couldn’t come and fetch me, she had two sessions booked for that evening, and she said she certainly wasn’t letting me make my own way back.
“Not at that time of night. Not in this town. No way!” She told me I was to ring Albert and get myself a cab. Albert is one of her regulars, he’s been coming to her for years. He also happens to run a minicab service, which comes in useful as Mum says he can be relied upon. She wouldn’t normally let me go anywhere near a minicab, but Albert is like a mother hen. When I was little he quite often used to pick me up after school, and always got most tremendously fussed if I wasn’t waiting exactly where I had been told to wait.
“A lot of bad people around! You can’t be too careful.”
I couldn’t help feeling that a cab all the way from the High Street out to Tanfield was a bit of an extravagance when there was a perfectly good bus that would take me practically door to door, but I didn’t say anything as I knew Mum would freak if I even so much as hinted at jumping on a bus. Instead, I concentrated all my energies on what I was going to wear.
It is so important, deciding what you are going to wear! There are different clothes for different occasions, and if you don’t get it right you can find that you have turned up in jeans and trainers while everyone else is dressed to kill. Or even worse, you are dressed to kill and everyone else is in jeans and trainers. That is truly squirm-making!
Actually, however, since the contents of my wardrobe would probably fit quite comfortably into a couple of carrier bags, I didn’t really have much choice. I only seem to have clothes for two occasions, one of them being school and the other being – everything else! Which is OK as I am not really a dressing-up sort of person, being tallish and skinnyish without actually having any figure; not to speak of. No bum, no boobs. Just straight up and down. What can you do?
I used to envy the others so much! They might not be drop dead gorgeous, but even Dee, who is so slim and bendy, has some shape. She also has silvery blonde hair, cut very smooth and shiny, and always looks just so so neat. Chloe is just the opposite.
She is very small and chunky and has no dress sense whatsoever, but because of being vivacious manages to look really bright and perky, like a little animated pixie. I probably look more like sort of … stick arrangement. Mum says that I will “grow into myself”. Meaning, I think, that I will be OK when I finally manage to achieve something resembling a figure.
Meanwhile, as I await that glorious day, I tend to wear … you’ve got it! Jeans and trainers. Which is what I put on for the celebration. Dee once told me that I looked good in jeans as I have these very long legs, like I’m walking on stilts. They are, however, not particularly inspiring – the jeans, that is. So to go with them I found a sparkly top, pale pink, that I’d hardly ever worn. I did my hair into a plait, one of those that’s tight into your head rather than a pigtail. I think pigtails are a bit childish, all thumping about, but Dee said that having my hair pulled back made me look sophisticated. To top it off, I wore this very chic hat that I found in a charity shop. It’s like a man’s hat, I think it’s called a fedora. It’s got a high crown and a small brim, and is made from soft felt. It looks really great with jeans!
I was quite pleased when I studied myself in the mirror. The only thing wrong was the trainers. What I would really like to have had, what I had been positively lusting after ever since I’d seen them in a shoe shop in town, was a pair of glitter boots. You could get them in either silver with red tassels, or gold with green. It was the silver ones I was lusting after!
I’d shown them to Mum, who predictably had said they were totally impractical and wouldn’t last five minutes. But five minutes was all I needed! I was busy saving up, and was praying they would still be there when I’d reached my goal. Saving money, though, is so difficult. I kept finding other things that I just desperately had to have! Entire continents could come and go by the time I managed to get fifty pounds in my account.
So I wore my tatty old trainers and my tatty old denim jacket, and Mum got the car out and drove me into town. As she dropped me off outside the Pizza Palace she said, “Shall I ring Albert and book a cab for you?” I was horrified. I said, “Mum, no! I can do it.” The last thing I wanted was Albert turning up, all mother hennish, and dragging me off before we’d properly finished. It’s horrid if you’re the first one to leave. You imagine all the others staying on to have fun after you’ve gone.
Mum said, “Well, all right, have it your way – but I want you back no later than nine o’clock. You’d better ring for a cab at 8.30, just to be on the safe side. And don’t you pull that face at me, my girl! You may think you’re some kind of big shot, being in Year 8, but you’re still only th—”
“Yeah, yeah!” I hopped out of the car and slammed the door shut behind me. I’d just seen Mel Sanders go mincing into the restaurant, all got up like a Christmas tree.
What was more, she was wearing my boots. I could see the little tassels swinging as she walked. Fortunately she’d gone for the gold ones, not the silver; all the same, it was a bad moment.
“Joanne?” Mum was banging on the window at me, pointing at her watch. I flapped a hand.
“It’s all right, I heard you. Don’t fuss!”
Of
