Then I heard Jas’s mum shouting from somewhere, “Why does Georgia want to know about Robbie? Isn’t she off to New Zealand?”
Jas shouted, “Yes, she is. But she’s desperate to see him before she goes.”
I said to Jas urgently, “Jas, Jas, I wanted to find out when he’s back, I didn’t want to discuss it with your street.”
Jas went all huffy. “I’m only trying to help.”
“Well don’t.”
“Well I won’t, then.”
“Good.”
There was a silence. “Jas?”
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m not helping.”
I’m going to have to kill her.
“Ask Tom when Robbie is due back.”
“Huh. I don’t see why I should, but I will.”
She shouted out again, “Tom, when is Robbie back?”
Jas’s mum yelled, “I thought he was going out with Lindsay?”
Tom yelled back, “He was, but then Georgia and him got together instead.”
Jas’s mum said, “Well, Lindsay will be very upset.”
This was UNBELIEVABLE.
Tom yelled back again, “Tell Georgia he’s not back again until late Monday.”
Next Monday! Next Monday. By that time I would be being bored half to death by Maoris. I tried to be brave so that I wouldn’t upset Jas. “I know I can joke about it and everything, but I have fancied Robbie for so long. And it’s not just because he is in The Stiff Dylans. You know that. It’s a whole year since I started stalking him. It was so groovy when he kissed me, I thought I would go completely jelloid and start dribbling. Luckily I didn’t. And I think he will forget about that chunk of my hair snapping off, don’t you?”
There was this clanking noise and then Jas said, with her mouth full, “Hello? Hello? What were you saying? I just went and got myself a sandwich while Tom was shouting at you.”
Qu’est ce que le point?
7:30 p.m.
I can’t believe Jas. She is dead to me. Like in the Bible, when somebody goes off and becomes a prostitute or something. She is now the girl who has no name.
9:00 p.m.
Phone rang. I leaped downstairs.
It was Rosie, Ellen, Jools and She Who Has No Name (Jas) calling me from the phone box at the end of our road. Rosie said in a fake Chinese accent, “Bringey selfey to phone boxey.”
I put on some mascara and lippy so that no one would know about my broken heart. Not that it made the slightest difference to Mutti and Uncle Eddie– they were too busy trying to trap Angus.
He’s lurking on top of my wardrobe. I know he’s got a few snacks with him because he dropped a piece of mackerel on my head when I passed. He’ll be happy up there for hours. Serve them right if they can’t find him. Catnappers!
I don’t want to be rude to the afflicted but Uncle Eddie is bald in a way which is the baldest I have ever seen. He looks like a boiled egg in leather trousers. Once he came round and after he and Mum had had their usual vat of wine he fell asleep in the back garden face down. So I drew another face on the back of his head. Very, very funny indeed, especially as I did it in indelible pen. He got his own back, though, by turning up to a school dance on his pre-war motorbike and asking all my mates where I was because he was my new boyfriend.
Still, that is life for you…one minute you are snogging a Sex God and have got up to number six on the snogging scale without crashing teeth. The next minute you are made to go to the other side of the world and hang out with Kiwi-a-gogos. Whose idea of a great time is to sit in mud pools and eat toasted maggots. (This is very, very true as I have been reading a brochure about Kiwi-a-gogo land and it says it in there.) Oh pig’s bum!! Or as our tiny French friends say, Le gran bum de le porker!!!
9:30 p.m.
When I got to the phone box the gang were all in there. They squeezed open the door and Jools said, “Bonsoir, ma petite nincompoop.”
Once I was in we were all squashed up like sardines at a fish party. Rosie managed to get a hand free and give me one of those photobooth photographs.
“We brought you a present to remember us by.”
It was a picture of her, Jools, Ellen and Jas (She Who Has No Name), only they had their noses stuck back at the tip with Sellotape so that it made them look like pigs with hair.
On the back it said, GRUNTINGS from your mates. STY in touch. This is a PIGTURE to remember us by.
It made me a bit tearful, but I put on a brave face. “Cheers, thanks a lot. Goodnight.”
We had to get out of the telephone box because Mark (the boy from up the road with the enormous gob who I went out with for a fortnight but dumped me because this other girl Ella let him “do things to her”) came to use the phone. He just looked at us as we all struggled out. He really has got the biggest mouth I have ever seen. I was lucky to escape from snogging him with my face still in one piece.
BG (Big Gob) said, “All right?” in a way which meant, “All right, you lesbians?”
What do I care, though? My life is over anyway.
We all walked back to my house arm in arm. I wouldn’t link up with Jas though because she has annoyed me. Uncle Eddie must have eventually got Angus into the cat basket because the gardening gloves he was wearing were lying in the driveway with the thumbs torn off.
We all hugged and cried. It was awful. I’d nearly got to the door when Jas sort of threw herself at me. She couldn’t speak because she was crying so much and she said, “Georgia, nothing will be the same without you…I…I love you. I’m sorry I ate my sandwich.”
Wednesday July 21st
Dawn– well, 10:00 a.m.
Phoned my dearest friend Jas who loves me. Huh.
Now that she thinks she has got a “proper” boyfriend she acts like she is one hundred and eighty.
“Look, Gee-gee, I can’t talk really because I am on the dash to meet Tom. Dig you later, though. Ciao for now.”
…Ciao for now? I wonder if she has finally snapped? Nobody really cares about me.
