Girl, 16: Five-Star Fiasco

by Sue Limb

  Jess took loads of photos with her phone – which, incidentally, hadn’t received any more texts except one from Mum which simply said: MARTIN AND I ARE AT THE ARBORETUM! It seemed Mum had struck lucky at last with the half-gorgeous Martin, just at the very moment when Jess’s love life had shrivelled away into nothing. Jess wasn’t sure whether she was longing to get home again, or dreading it.

  Chapter 27

  Jess got back home on Sunday evening. There had been room for her in the Stevens’ people carrier because Humph had gone off, hitching, to see his uncle in Bristol, or something. There had been absolutely no message from Fred at all, just a howling silence. The only way to sort this out was to go round to Fred’s and grab him. Anyway, she had to return his bag with his pyjamas, sponge bag and books.

  He was the great escaper – phone on voicemail, emails ignored, texts unanswered. Jess was raging. If he had indeed managed to fix up a band – for, oh help, next Saturday! – she would forgive him. But she couldn’t leave it till tomorrow at school: it had to be now, Sunday night, even though it was quite late and the darkness made it seem even later. She put her trainers on and sped through the night – in a knock-kneed, porky kind of way, admittedly.

  It was 9.30 when she reached the Parsons’ house. Fred’s family usually stayed up late; his dad was often glued to his beloved football till midnight. Jess rang the doorbell and prepared a polite, businesslike smile, because she knew Fred would not be the one to answer the door. As expected, it was Mrs Parsons who did the honours.

  ‘Oh, hi, Jess! Come in! Isn’t it cold? How are you? How’s your mum?’

  Fred’s mum couldn’t have been nicer. She was always so motherly towards Jess, and seemed to think that she was a good influence on Fred. Ha! Little did she know that Jess’s influence on Fred had shrunk to absolute zero. Jess stepped inside. The familiar sound of football drifted out of the sitting room.

  ‘Let me take your coat,’ said Fred’s mum, her fluffy hair shining in the hall light, her friendly blue eyes twinkling. ‘Did you have a lovely time in Dorset? Fred said it was brilliant.’ Jess was surprised. Fred had said it was brilliant? What a liar! ‘He said you were partying all last night,’ said Mrs Parsons with a merry laugh. ‘No wonder he looked so shattered when he got back. He was asleep on the sofa for a couple of hours this afternoon.’ Partying all night? If Fred had been partying all night, it certainly hadn’t been in Dorset. Jess gritted her teeth and tried to carry on smiling.

  ‘When did he get back?’ asked Jess lightly. ‘I came back a bit later with the Stevens.’

  ‘Oh?’ Mrs Parsons looked confused. ‘Fred turned up about lunchtime today. He’s upstairs trying to finish off his homework. Fred! Fre-e-e-ed!’ she called up the stairs.

  Lunchtime today! Jess’s brain reeled. Where had Fred been for those twenty-four hours? More than twenty-four, actually. Had he been sorting out stuff for Chaos? If so, she could forgive him. Just.

  ‘I need to have a word with him about the dinner dance,’ said Jess.

  ‘Fine!’ Fred’s mum beamed. There was a muffled thump from upstairs, the sound of a bedroom door opening and Fred appeared at the top of the stairs, looking pale and shocked. ‘Jess has come to see you,’ his mum informed him. ‘Is your room fit to entertain a lady?’

  ‘What lady?’ Fred raised his eyebrows in what was supposed to be a comic pose, but it had no conviction.

  ‘Oh, take no notice, Jess!’ laughed Mrs P, who hadn’t noticed the undertone of awkwardness. ‘Go on up! If you want a hot choc or something, tell Fred to come down and make you one. I’m trying to encourage hospitable behaviour!’

  Jess stared up at Fred. He looked about as hospitable as a deer who has spotted a tiger on the horizon. As Jess climbed up towards him, he sort of flinched and stood aside.

  ‘Do you want a hot chocolate?’ he asked, catching her eye for a horrible moment – horrible, because there was nothing in his expression but terror and confusion.

  ‘No,’ said Jess softly. ‘This won’t take a minute. I just want a quick word.’

  She went through into Fred’s bedroom. He followed and shut the door. Usually this manoeuvre was followed by some big hugs, but today Fred stood back, and the empty air between them made the whole bedroom seem cold and threatening.

  ‘So,’ said Jess, turning and facing him. ‘What happened? Why didn’t you answer my texts? Did you fix up a band? And where were you last night?’

  ‘I stayed at Mackenzie’s,’ muttered Fred, looking sheepish and kicking an imaginary sock about. ‘On his floor – no mattress, on just the bare boards. He hasn’t got a carpet because of his dust allergy. It was like sleeping on concrete. I got, like, five minutes’ sleep.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come home?’ asked Jess, though she suspected she knew the answer.

  ‘I’ve got no guts at all.’ Suddenly Fred looked right into her eyes, and shrugged. ‘No need for the parents to know their son is a coward and will be shot for desertion.’

  ‘You’re not necessarily going to be shot for desertion,’ said Jess carefully. ‘Not if you and Mackenzie really did crack the music problem. Presumably you spent all night researching bands?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Fred, putting his hands in his pockets and kicking the imaginary sock again. ‘We did try for a while, but it was hopeless. So we had to cheer ourselves up by playing computer games.’

  ‘Computer games?’ hissed Jess, exploding with anger. ‘Fred! You told George you were coming home early to sort out the band!’

  ‘Well, I had to say something.’ Fred looked shiftily at the floor. ‘I could hardly tell him I’d got sick of their stupid macho messing about and that, yes, I was the spineless nerd they had suspected.’

  Jess’s heart gave another huge dismayed lurch. So Fred hadn’t come back to fix the music up at all! He’d left because he just couldn’t hack it!

  ‘Fred! They liked you, you idiot! They didn’t think you were a spineless nerd! They thought you were really funny! And George said he was sorry if their messing about had got up your nose!’

  ‘Big of him,’ said Fred sourly.

  ‘But, anyway, that’s not the important thing!’ Jess raced on. ‘In six days’ time a huge crowd of people is going to turn up at St Mark’s Church Hall, ready for a good time, and because we’ve taken their money, we’ve got to lay it on for them! So what are we going to do about the music? You promised to sort it, remember?’

  Fred shrugged. ‘Goldilocks have dumped on me again,’ he murmured. ‘How about Poisonous Trash?’

  ‘No way!’ yelled Jess. ‘You know Poisonous Trash are rubbish!’

  ‘Ironical, huh?’ Fred performed a little ghost of a joke. ‘Great name!’

  ‘Fred, this is serious! Parents and uncles and things can’t dance to Poisonous Trash! Nobody could dance to them! Nobody could bear to listen to them for a split second! Flora has refused to get up on a stage and sing with them ever again!’

  ‘Well, that’s good news, of a sort,’ quipped Fred.

  ‘Oh, stop it, Fred!’ snapped Jess. ‘Just be serious for once! We need a band and you said you’d find one.’

  Suddenly Fred sat down on his bed. It was as if his long spindly legs had just buckled under him. He leaned back and stared grimly into space.

  ‘I’ve failed,’ he said emptily. ‘I did try – slightly. I did ring some bands, really. But they already had gigs … I’ve let you down. You’re right. I’m useless. I resign.’

  ‘What do you mean you resign?’ Jess was furious, but had to keep her voice down. She didn’t want to upset lovely Mrs Parsons by horrid yelling on a Sunday night.

  ‘I resign from the Chaos committee,’ said Fred.

  ‘Committee? What committee? You and me, you mean? So you’re just leaving it all to me, then?’

  Fred shrugged again. Honestly, he was like a clockwork shrugging machine! Those shoulders were up and down so often they could have generated electricity.

  ‘I still think we should cancel,
’ he repeated dolefully. ‘It’s the only sensible thing to do.’

  ‘Fred, we can’t just do that!’

  ‘Why not? We could give people their money back. We could say it had to be cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances, like I said before.’

  ‘Yes,’ seethed Jess. ‘The mysterious absence of a backbone.’

  ‘Quite true.’ Fred almost smiled, maddeningly, as if he didn’t really care what she thought any more. ‘Cancelled due to illness, if you like – absence of a pulse. You decide.’

  ‘Oh yes, convenient, isn’t it – letting me decide all the time!’

  ‘Well, it was your idea originally,’ said Fred, sidling away from any responsibility even for the concept. ‘I just went along with it.’

  ‘I don’t believe this! How can you be so totally useless?’ cried Jess. ‘You can resign from organising it if you like, but I’m going to go ahead. We owe it to Oxfam. I’m not going to have starving kids on my conscience. I’ll organise the freakin’ music, the food, the lot! And it’s going to be such a mega success, you’ll be ashamed you bailed out on it. It’ll make you wish you’d never been born.’

  ‘I already wish I’d never been born,’ said Fred gloomily.

  ‘Oh, spare me your self-pity!’ snapped Jess. She headed for the door.

  ‘Wait!’ said Fred, lurching up off the bed. ‘I’ll see you at school tomorrow anyway, right?’

  ‘My eyes may in some vague way register your presence,’ sneered Jess, ‘but I shall be far too busy trying to sort out this mess to spend any time with invertebrates.’

  Softly, she slammed his door; gently, she stomped down the stairs and grabbed her coat; discreetly and with velvety care, she closed the front door behind her; cautiously, she stepped out on to the icy, iron pavement. And then she burst into tears.

  Chapter 28

  Home now – and as fast as possible. Thank goodness it was dark so nobody could see her crying. After about five minutes, though, Jess seemed to get through her pain and arrive at an angry place in her head, which felt much better. Instead of being devastated that Fred had let her down so badly and didn’t seem to care, she started to plan the best possible revenge.

  She would rustle up the most fantastic hosting routine ever seen. Fred had shown himself to be completely spineless, so she’d do the whole thing entirely on her own. The hosting routine would be brilliant, pure comedy gold. But she didn’t have much time, because, of course, she also had to organise every other aspect of the dinner dance, at lightning speed and single-handedly. Jess was determined, and in a peculiar way it was almost a relief to know that it was entirely up to her now that Fred was out of the frame.

  When she arrived home, the grown-ups were all sitting around the kitchen table: Mum, Dad, Martin and Granny. Mum looked relaxed, thank goodness, and even Granny seemed to radiate benevolence – maybe she had given up on the hopeless task of trying to organise a reconciliation between Mum and Dad.

  ‘No,’ Dad was insisting, ‘it must have been 1992, because that was the year I strained my shoulder looking at the moon.’

  Mum was laughing, and Martin was refilling her wine glass in an attentive kind of way. Mum locked eyes with Jess, and suddenly looked concerned.

  ‘What’s the matter, love?’ she cried. Oh no! Jess’s mascara must have run, making her look like a panda.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Jess, heading out right away. She didn’t want Martin to see her looking like this.

  ‘Wait!’ Mum jumped up. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’

  ‘Fred,’ Jess blurted out. Then a huge wave of despair hit her, almost like a wave of the sea buckling her knees, and she dropped into the nearest chair and gave a huge, shuddering sigh. ‘He’s basically just copped out of the dinner dance thing and left me to deal with the whole mess.’

  ‘Why is it a mess?’ asked Mum alertly. Jess sighed again.

  ‘I feel so stupid … We haven’t organised it properly. We didn’t get things done in time. Basically we haven’t got any catering sorted yet or any bands lined up. Fred said he’d got a band, then he admitted he hadn’t, then he – oh, anyway, because it’s Valentine’s they’re all booked already.’

  ‘But this is next Saturday, Jess!’ gasped Mum, clutching her face in a semi-hysterical way.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jess. An enormous fatigue seemed to creep over her. ‘Fred said we ought to cancel it.’

  Mum looked thoughtful. ‘That’s an option, I suppose,’ she pondered. ‘But, Jess, why on earth didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t want you to know what an idiot I am. I wanted to do it on my own and make you proud of me. I didn’t want to come running back to you for support, like some needy little kid. This is the worst evening of my life!’ Jess sank down into her sweater, pulling the chunky collar up around her face.

  ‘Uh, Jess,’ said Martin, his head cocked on one side and his eyebrows raised, ‘did you say you hadn’t got any music?’

  ‘Well, we’ve got a DJ, but he’s not brilliant, and we really wanted to have a proper band so the DJ could just take over in their breaks. I mean, you’ve got to have a band at a dinner dance, right? And it’s not just music for teenagers – it’s a family event. Fred said he’d organise a band and he hasn’t. I don’t even know what he did, or which bands he asked, and he’s just completely given up and left everything to me.’

  ‘Well … it’s probably not your sort of thing, but I play in a band,’ Martin confessed shyly, rubbing his head and looking embarrassed. ‘It’s probably too old fogeyish for what you have in mind, but we play jazz … and other things, too.’

  ‘Really?’ Jess’s heart gave a feeble little skip of hope. ‘Jazz! That’s what we wanted! Could you … would you … are you free on the fourteenth?’

  ‘Yes, we are, as a matter of fact,’ said Martin. ‘We didn’t fix up any gigs on Valentine’s this year because our singer’s daughter is getting married, so the singer wouldn’t be available. But we could probably do enough instrumental numbers to get you through the evening – slow smoochy ones and some uptempo stuff – we’re quite versatile really. But I’d have to call the other guys and see if they’re available.’

  ‘Use the landline!’ cried Mum in rapture, gazing adoringly at Martin – he was clearly the nearest thing to Superman available locally. ‘In fact, why don’t you go upstairs and use my study!’ Eagerly she ushered him out of the kitchen.

  Granny came up to Jess and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘Cake?’ she enquired softly.

  ‘Thanks, Granny, but this is too big a crisis to be solved by cake,’ sighed Jess. ‘No, I’ve changed my mind – gimme a massive slice the size of a sofa!’

  Speedily Granny did the honours and placed a huge slice of lemon drizzle cake in front of Jess.

  ‘It’s one of Deborah’s signature cakes,’ said Granny proudly.

  Jess opened her jaws. Intense, magical, sensational lemonyness exploded in her mouth.

  ‘Wow! Wow! Wowzer!’ raved Jess, spraying cake crumbs everywhere. ‘Never mind the dinner dance! I’m going to elope with this cake! Where did Deborah learn to bake like this?’

  ‘Oh, she was a pâtissière, dear,’ said Granny. ‘She was what they call a station chef at the Queen’s Hotel for years. She still turns out for them if there’s a crisis.’

  ‘What about our crisis?’ asked Dad. ‘Could Deborah save Jess’s bacon? What’s the catering situation, Jess?’

  ‘Desperate,’ admitted Jess. ‘I thought I might have to just get a lorryload of ready meals from the supermarket.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Dad, frowning doubtfully. ‘Doesn’t quite sound good enough for a dinner dance, does it? Do you think Deborah could organise something, Granny?’

  ‘I don’t know whether she could take on anything so big,’ frowned Granny, shaking her head doubtfully. ‘How many people are coming, Jess?’

  ‘Ninety-two, at the last count,’ said Jess, pulling an anguished face.

  ‘Hmmm,’ Granny mused, �
�that sounds like an awful lot to me. Deb’s only a pâtissière – she specialises in baked goods and pastries and so on.’

  ‘So let’s have pastry wall-to-wall!’ yelled Jess. ‘Please, please, at least ask her, Granny.’

  ‘Not now,’ said Granny firmly. ‘It’s past Deb’s bedtime. But I will call her first thing in the morning.’

  ‘Excellent!’ cried Jess, crossing her fingers. ‘And if she needs help I’m sure I can find people to give her a hand.’

  ‘Now, sweetheart.’ Dad rubbed his face in a thoughtful way. ‘Have you fixed up the lighting?’

  ‘Lighting?’ Jess’s heart missed a beat. ‘What lighting? Do I need lighting? I mean, uhh, there’s lighting in the hall, surely, isn’t there?’

  Dad smiled indulgently. ‘What, a few light bulbs in the ceiling?’ he asked satirically. ‘Do you want your dinner dance to have all the atmosphere of a groove down the morgue? You want lasers; you want gobos, strobes, mirror balls; you want fibre optics, dance-floor lighting …’ Jess was stunned, and could only gawp at her aged parent’s unexpected mastery of an art she had so far completely overlooked.

  ‘Tim, Tim!’ Granny laughed. ‘Don’t get carried away! What’s your budget for lighting, Jess?’

  ‘Er, pass,’ said Jess, cringing at the familiar revelation that her brilliant organisational skills had not included the novel concept of budgeting.

  ‘Don’t worry about it!’ cried Dad cheerfully. ‘This is on me! I’ve got a friend who runs an events lighting business, and he owes me a favour. As soon as Martin’s off the phone I’ll give Jim a call. And don’t forget I was a lighting designer for dozens of shows when I was at uni.’

  ‘That’s news to me, Dad!’ said Jess teasingly. ‘I thought you just spent your time getting wasted and looking at the stars!’

  At this moment Martin came back into the kitchen from phoning his band members. ‘What do you want – the good news or the bad news?’ he asked, looking mischievous. Jess reckoned that if the bad news was really bad, he wouldn’t have been so perky.