be honest, I didn’t actually realise we were making any until a woman at a table nearby came over and asked if we could “be a little bit quieter … I can hardly hear myself think!”
So then I stopped to listen, and I had to admit, she had a point. I have noticed that adults are very sensitive to decibel levels, and ours was certainly well up. Chloe, sitting next to me, was screeching at the top of her voice, which is quite loud enough even when she isn’t screeching. Louise Patterson, at the far end of the table, was doing her best to stuff half her pizza into someone’s mouth, Carrie Newman was having hysterics (well, that’s what it sounded like), Lee Williams seemed to have got drunk on Coca Cola and Marsha Tate was tipping backwards on her chair, and honking like a car horn.
Our mums would not have been pleased. Nor would our class teacher, Mrs Monahan. She was always on about “gracious behaviour in public”. We weren’t behaving very graciously! But most of us hadn’t ever been out for a meal on our own before, i.e. without grown-ups to keep us in their vice-like grip. I know I hadn’t. I suppose it rather went to our heads, but it was the best fun.
I have to say, however, that it would have been even huger fun if Mel Sanders hadn’t been there. That girl is so … obnoxious! She is so obvious. Where members of the opposite sex are concerned, I mean. She is one of those people, she only has to catch the merest glimpse of a boy in the far dim distance and she goes completely hyper. If there is one actually sharing her breathing space, well, wow! That is it. Fizz, bang, wallop, firing on all cylinders. Eyes flashing, teeth gleaming, boobs thrust out as far as they will go. (Which isn’t very far, as a matter of fact, but she makes it look as if it is.) I guess it’s something to do with her hormones, she probably has too many of them, and she just can’t help herself. For all I know, it could even be some kind of disease. All I can say is that the effect is extremely irritating since boys, poor things, seem incapable of taking their eyes off her. It’s like she has some kind of mesmeric power.
In this case it was specially irritating as clever Chloe had managed to get us moved from the first table they gave us, where a girl came to take our order, to another one over by the window. She had been watching, with her beady eyes, and had seen that over by the window was where Dreamboy Danny operated. I hasten to add that I didn’t call him Dreamboy. I have better taste than that! Dreamboy was Chloe’s nickname for him.
“He’s over there,” she whispered. “Let’s move!”
She claimed she was too near the smoking area (“I get this really bad asthma”) so we all trooped over to the windows and there was Danny, with his order pad – and there was Mel, with her eyes going into overdrive, and I might just as well not have been there. If it is a disease that she’s got, I wouldn’t mind having a bit of it myself. Not enough to make me ill, or anything; but it would be nice to be able to mesmerise boys. As it was, I don’t think Danny even noticed me; or if he did, he didn’t show any signs of actual recognition. I guess maybe I look different when I’m not in school uniform. All the same … big sigh! He’d recognise Mel if she turned up in a bin bag.
Round about half past eight, people’s parents started arriving and I dutifully rang Albert on my mobile, only I couldn’t get through as the number was engaged, and while I was waiting for it to become unengaged I started thinking things to myself. It was totally stupid spending all that money on a cab when I could just as easily walk a few hundred yards up the road and catch a bus. I’d still be home by nine – well, nineish – and I wouldn’t need to tell Mum how I’d got there. Which meant I could put the money I’d saved towards the glitter boots! I wanted those boots more than ever after seeing Mel in a pair. I think I felt that if I had the boots I might also have the hypnosis thing and be able to get boys to take notice of me. Maybe. I know it was bad, when I’d given Mum my word, but I was, like, desperate. I’d just spent the whole evening being totally overlooked by the boy I loved! Well, OK, perhaps love is a bit strong, but I truly did fancy him like crazy. Believe me, if you have never experienced it, I am here to tell you that fancying a boy who has eyes Only for Another can make you behave in ways you normally wouldn’t dream of. At any rate, that is my excuse because it is the only one I can think of.
I snatched up my jacket and rushed out into the night. I wasn’t bothered about being one of the first to leave; I just wanted to add Mum’s cab money to my boot fund! Unfortunately, owing to the stupid one-way system, you can’t actually catch a bus to Tanfield directly outside the Pizza Palace but have to go trailing round the side roads, which at that time of night are more or less deserted.
I am not at all a nervous kind of person. I really don’t mind being out on my own in the dark – not that I am ever allowed to be – but I must admit, it was a bit scary, waiting for the bus at an empty bus stop in this great concrete canyon, nothing but slab-sided office blocks rising up on either side, and gaping dark holes leading into the bowels of underground car parks. Plus this really spooky orange lighting, and not a single human being to be seen.
I was just beginning to think that maybe I had better go back to the restaurant and ring Albert after all, when a little blue Ka pulled up and the driver wound down the window and called out to me.
“Joanne? It is Joanne, isn’t it?”
I’d been all prepared to turn and run. You’d better believe it! But when he called my name, I hesitated.
“Joanne? It’s Paul – Dee’s brother. Can I give you a lift?”
Well! I relaxed when he said he was Dee’s brother. I’d only met him once, a few weeks back, when mostly all we’d said was “Hi”; but obviously, being Dee’s brother, he had to be all right. So I said that I would love a lift, and I hopped into the car as quick as could be, feeling mightily pleased with myself. I’d be home well before nine, and could keep all of the cab money!
Cosily, as we drove, I prattled on about my boot fund, and our end-of-term celebration, and how Dee had done all the organising and how rotten it was that she hadn’t been able to come. I asked Paul how she was, and he said that she was much better and was out of hospital, and then for a while we talked about Dee and her asthma, and how it stopped her doing some of the things she would really have liked to do, such as horse riding (because of being allergic to horses) and playing hockey (to which I went “Yuck!” as I am forced to play hockey and would far rather not), but I have to say it was quite hard work as I was the one that had to do most of the talking. Fortunately I am not at all shy, but on the other hand I am not a natural chatterer like Chloe, and after a bit I began to run out of things to talk about.
Paul didn’t seem bothered, he just smiled and nodded. He did a lot of smiling, but practically no talking at all. I think it is so weird, when people don’t communicate. Even if I asked him a question, he mostly only grunted. Or smiled. Not very helpful. You do expect some kind of feedback when you’re making all that effort. If it hadn’t been for me we would have sat there in total silence. But it shouldn’t have been up to me! He was the adult. I couldn’t remember how old Dee had said he was, or even if she had said, but I knew he was her half brother and was
