Is Anybody There?

by Jean Ure

  “So long as he does,” said Mum.

  I said, “Mum, he will.”

  Dee lives just a bit further out from Tanfield, 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 the fifteen of us, only ten actually turned up, but ten was probably about right, given the amount of noise we made! To 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 loads older than we were. He must have been at least in his twenties. Mid-twenties, at that. I was only just a teenager, for goodness’ sake! Why should I have to carry the burden? It wasn’t fair, leaving it all to me.

  I looked out of the window in a kind of desperation, wondering where we were, and if we were nearly home, and discovered, to my horror, that we were nowhere near home. Spiders’ legs of fright went whispering down my spine. We were on totally the wrong road! Instead of taking the left fork out of town, through Crossley and Benbridge, he’d gone and swung off to the right, down Gravelpit Hill. I’d been too preoccupied racking my brain for things to say to notice.

  “Why—” my voice came out in a strangulated squawk. I had to swallow, and start again. “Why are we driving down G-Gravelpit Hill?”

  He turned, to look at me. “Didn’t Dee say you lived in Tanfield?”

  “Y-yes.” I swallowed again. “But th-this isn’t the way to get there!”

  “It does get there,” he said. “I promise you! I know where I’m going.” He had this very quiet, husky voice, without much expression. It was more frightening than if he’d shouted. “I realise it adds a bit to the journey, but—”

  It didn’t just add a bit, it took us miles out of our way. It took us through open countryside. Fields, and woods, and isolation. And, in the end, it took us to the gravel pits …

  “I always come by this route,” he said. “I prefer it to the other.”

  “But it’s such a w-waste of p-petrol!” I said.

  “Well – yes.” He smiled. “I suppose it is; I never thought of it like that. But it’s so much nicer than the main road. Don’t you think?”

  I couldn’t answer him; my mouth had gone dry. I suddenly sensed that I was in terrible danger. I had made the most stupid mistake … I should never have got into the car! And oh, it is true, it is absolutely true, what they say, that at moments like that your blood just seems to turn to water, the bottom of your stomach feels like it has dropped out,
and you get cold and shaky and a kind of dread comes over you. The one thing I knew, I had to keep calm. I mustn’t panic! If he sussed that I was frightened, it would give him power over me. So long as I just kept my head, I might be able to find a way out.

  Doing my best to keep my voice from quavering, I told him that if I didn’t get back by nine, Mum would start to worry.

  “She’ll be going frantic!”

  In this soft voice, with just a touch of reproach, he said, “Joanne, I really don’t think you’d have got home by nine if you’d waited for the bus.”

  No, but at least I would have got home.

  “I promised her,” I said, “I gave her my word! She’ll be worried sick! I think I’d better ring her, and—”

  “Yes,” he said, “do that.”

  I scrabbled frantically in my bag, for my mobile. Where was it? Where was my mobile? It wasn’t there! My mobile wasn’t there! I must have left it in the restaurant. In my rush to get away, and catch a bus, and save a few measly pounds, I’d gone and left my mobile in the Pizza Palace. I’d put my entire life in jeopardy for a pair of stupid boots!

  Paul said, “What’s the matter?”

  “My phone,” I said. “I’ve left it behind. I’ve got to ring Mum, I’ll have to go back!”

  “There might be one in the glove compartment,” he said. He leaned across me to open it and, oh God, I thought my last hour had come! There was a screwdriver in there … one of those really long ones.

  I saw his hand close over it, and I immediately lunged sideways in my seat, which threw him off balance so that he jerked at the wheel and the car did this great kangaroo leap. I screamed, and he said, “Sorry! Sorry!” and pulled us back again. “Phew! That was a close shave. Sorry about that. You OK?” He glanced at me as he shut the glove compartment. “It doesn’t look as if I’ve got my phone with me, I’m afraid. But don’t worry!” He smiled. “We’ll be back in no time. At least coming this way the roads are clear.”