by Sue Limb
‘You’re right, though,’ said Chloe, carefully putting her phone in the specially designed phone pocket inside her bag. ‘I think we should put your mobile number.’
We both knew her phone wasn’t going to stay in that pocket for long. All too soon it would be off on its adventures: the top of the loo cistern, the fruit bowl, the pyjama case …
‘And another thing.’ I was really thinking fast now. I was cooking on gas. ‘Maybe we should give false names just in case …’
‘In case what?’ asked Chloe.
‘Well, you know, it’s all a bit iffy.’ I was trying to create exit strategies. ‘If somebody rings up and sounds like a complete moron, or it’s someone we know, and we know they’re a moron … we can just tell them the position’s taken and if we use false names, they’ll never even know it was us.’
‘Brilliant!’ yelled Chloe, clapping her hands. ‘I’ve always wanted a different name. I’m going to be Africa Zanzibar.’
‘Don’t be an idiot,’ I sighed. ‘That’s so obviously an alias.’
‘OK, then,’ said Chloe. ‘Africa Stevens.’
‘Does it have to be Africa?’
‘Well, there are two girls in school called India,’ argued Chloe. ‘And I met a girl called China on holiday. And, you know, Paris and stuff. What’s wrong with Africa anyway? I think it’s a cool name.’
‘OK, OK.’ I knew I had to give in. But to show Chloe how to operate with tact and skill, I decided to call myself something really subtle, like a Jane Austen heroine.
‘I’m going to be Emma Collins,’ I said.
‘That’s so lame!’ objected Chloe. ‘Anyway, there’s a girl in the sixth form called Emma Collins.’
‘I’m just trying to be subtle,’ I explained. ‘Unmemorable. Not interesting. So if we want to dump them before we’ve even interviewed them, they won’t care. I’ll be Jane Elliott, then. I mean, nobody would care if they weren’t going to meet a Jane Elliott. But if they’d psyched themselves up to meet somebody called Zebra Zanzibar, well – they’d be crushed.’
‘Zebra?’ cried Chloe. ‘Zoe, you’re brilliant! Zebra’s even better than Africa! Z. Z.! What cool initials! Or maybe I could have three Zs? Zebra Zara Zanzibar? That would be mega!’
Chloe easily gets over-excited. She’s just completely at the mercy of her emotions. I think they call it ‘mercurial’. I was going to have to raise my voice to her. Just a tad.
‘For God’s sake, Chloe!’ I almost-snapped. ‘You’re going to be Africa Stevens and I’m going to be … uhhhh, Jane Elliott.’ My name was so dull and ordinary I’d forgotten it already. I added our aliases to the draft of the ad. Chloe accepted the Africa identity and we moved on to the next argument.
We disagreed about how the ad should be designed: Chloe wanted it festooned with stars and moons and God knows what. I just wanted it to be plain print, because I thought that was a lot more mysterious. I talked her round in the end.
Chloe stayed the night, as it was Friday. She sleeps on a blow-up mattress on my floor. ‘A bit like a pet dog,’ as she always says. Chloe’s dog Geraint actually sleeps on the bottom of her bed. I’m so jealous. I’ve got no hope whatever of having a dog. Not until I’m twenty-one, anyway. And I have to earn it … but that’s another story.
We decided to put the ad up on the noticeboard in the supermarket the next day.
‘The ad might not work,’ I said, after we’d switched out the light. ‘But it doesn’t matter. I mean, we shouldn’t just rely on the ad. Nobody at all might answer it.’
‘Oh, absolutely!’ said Chloe. ‘I mean, I think we should try everything. All sorts of different ways. Stop guys in the street, the lot. We’ve got the whole weekend. Toilethead are playing at Plunkett tomorrow night.’
‘Right!’ I was beginning to believe we could really sort this out. ‘Let’s swoop down and snatch our unsuspecting victims there.’
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5
SATURDAY 10.44 a.m.
Hunting for boys – the new blood sport …
On Saturday morning we put our postcard up on the supermarket noticeboard. Then we trawled round the charity shops, hoping for some divine designer cast-offs. There weren’t any. We had jacket potatoes with cheese and beans for lunch. Then we went back to Chloe’s and watched some DVDs. Finally, after a quick tea of beans on toast, it was time to get ready for the Toilethead concert. Obviously, this took hours.
I wore a fab black dress which minimises my tum, and some huge hoop earrings. I blitzed my hair into submission with heavy-duty wax (I’ve inherited Dad’s spirally curls, which is a total pain.) I applied a lorryload of eye make-up in order to smoulder sexily at boys we didn’t yet know. And I plastered an inch-thick layer of heavy-duty cover-up foundation over Nigel, who, with perfect timing, had re-emerged on my chin that afternoon. Nigel was throbbing, almost flashing. Life is so unfair.
Chloe has all the physical advantages. Slim hips, slender legs, a tiny waist, skin as white as milk, etc. Luckily she has atrocious dress sense and on this occasion was wearing khaki cropped combat trousers and a hideous lime-green T-shirt saying ‘A Present from Weymouth’ on it. Her strange little triangular boobs were certainly not enhanced by this outfit: in fact, they were virtually invisible.
She was wearing wedges, and I have a horrible suspicion they were her mum’s wedges left over from the last century. To complete the style disaster, she had scrunched her hair back into a horrid plait-thing stapled to her head. I wouldn’t dream of telling her, but she looked like a Victorian child pickpocket called Dick Dickens.
We were, however, determined to pull. We hit the Community Centre at 8.45 p.m. precisely. Toilethead were already in full swing – even as far away as the bus station, the pavements were vibrating. Once inside, we went straight to the girls’ loos, where a thousand sweaty females were feverishly applying lipstick. We applied some too. Standing next to us were a couple of girls from our year group: Flora Barclay (aka the Goddess Venus) and Jess Jordan (Comedy Legend).
We said hi and I thought how tough it must be for Jess, having a friend as drop-dead gorgeous as Flora.
‘The trouble is,’ Flora was saying, ‘I’m not sure if he knows that I know, because last time I saw him he looked at me as if he doesn’t know I know, but it all might be just a big act.’
Jess caught my eye in the mirror and winked. It seemed that Flora had communication issues. Well! Who would have thought it?
‘The solution,’ said Jess, ‘is a head transplant.’
‘Oh God, yes!’ sighed Flora. ‘I’d do anything to get rid of these spots!’
Spots? The Goddess had spots? Jess and I exchanged another look – the sort of look Cleopatra’s handmaidens must have shared when Cleo moaned about being the frumpy type.
‘Oh, you’d still have spots,’ said Jess. ‘I just meant that if you and he swapped heads, then you’d know what he was thinking.’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ said Flora ploddingly, ‘because I’d still have my head and he’d still have his.’ She is good at maths, apparently.
Jess rolled her eyes to heaven, and prepared to leave the mirror. She gave me a goodbye grin.
‘Enjoy!’ she said. ‘It’s a zoo out there.’
They left, and I started to check out the lipstick situation. Chloe’s was the wrong shade of pink – a horrible coral colour – and she’d got some of it on her teeth. Although she does have most of the physical advantages, this doesn’t include her teeth. It’s the overbite.
‘Oh God!’ she said. ‘I’ve got lipstick all over my brace!’
For some reason I didn’t need a brace. I have inherited my dad’s big white teeth. But when I laugh too much I do look a bit like sunrise over a whitewashed town in southern Italy. I try to cultivate a girlish simper and keep my goddam teeth inside my mouth.
Chloe scrubbed away at her teeth with a tissue, but the tissue got kind of torn and snagged and bits of it appeared to be caught on her brace like sh
eep’s wool on barbed wire.
‘Ugh!’ she gasped. ‘I’m in serious trouble here! My mouth is full of paper! We have to go home again! Now!’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ I said, enjoying a rare moment of superiority. ‘Just keep your mouth shut for once in your life. Swill some spit around. The paper will get soggy and come away, and then you just swallow it.’
‘Yuck!’ said Chloe. ‘Gross beyond words! My mouth will become a kind of toilet!’
Eventually we went out into the huge dark cavern that is the Sir George Plunkett Memorial Concert Bowl. The band were rampaging up and down the stage. Lights were flashing. Lasers were crawling up the walls. We pushed our way into the crowd.
‘I bet Oliver will be here,’ screamed Chloe into my ear. ‘You can fascinate him!’
‘Oliver won’t be here!’ I roared back. ‘He’ll be at home grooming his string of racehorses!’ I may be fantasising slightly about Oliver’s background. He may live in a smelly little house in an alley behind the Dog and Duck, for all I know.
We pushed forward – about halfway to the front where we got kind of trapped in a big clump of giants. Maybe they were a rugby club or something. Bloated faces leered at us as we fought our way past, and hideous guys shouted a series of unappetising invitations. We ignored them in a dignified way. I was beginning to wish I hadn’t put on so much sexy smouldering eyeshadow. I scowled, so they’d know I wasn’t some kind of trashy airhead; just a lofty intellectual wearing ironic post-modern make-up.
‘There’s room up front,’ said Chloe, turning round and yelling at me over her shoulder. Then her face changed to shock and horror. She gestured wildly, staggered sideways and fell horribly to her right. The inevitable moment had come. She’d fallen off her espadrilles.
I wasn’t expecting her to be badly hurt, but Chloe is a little bit of a drama queen. She grabbed her ankle, writhed on the ground and literally howled in agony. People around started to look. I tried to bend down and offer her some help, but my dress was so goddam tight, I couldn’t quite make it.
The guy in front turned round. Oh no! It was Beast Hawkins!
‘Whassup?’ he said, giving me a quizzical look.
‘Twisted her ankle or something,’ I said.
Beast crouched down beside Chloe. Oh no! Perhaps he was going to mug, rape, murder or pillage her right now! He was mad, bad and dangerous to know – and my helpless friend was at his mercy.
‘She’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘It happens sometimes. She’s got these very thin ankles and sometimes they give way.’
Beast wasn’t listening. My voice was totally inaudible anyway, as Toilethead were in full spate. He had taken Chloe’s espadrille off! He looked up and handed it to me. Now he was feeling her ankle, the cad! Chloe was sitting up now, still wincing and swearing, but also staring in amazement at Beast.
I wasn’t sure whether he was performing first aid or beginning a seduction. I felt totally helpless. So I just stood and watched. Beast stood up and reached down for Chloe’s hands. He hauled her to her feet. Then he put his arm round her waist, and she threw her arm round his shoulders, and he helped her hop back through the crowds.
I followed, carrying the espadrille. And, slightly to my dismay, Beast’s companion followed me. It was, of course, Donut, Beast’s lardy sidekick. He hadn’t said a word to me yet, and I intended to keep it that way.
‘Tough,’ he said, sort of over my shoulder. ‘Still, the band is crap.’ I pretended I hadn’t heard. I could see what their game was. They were exploiting Chloe’s tragic injury in order to pull us. Well, they weren’t going to get away with it.
When we got out to the lobby, we could see that Chloe’s face had gone green. This was worrying. And it clashed abominably with her T-shirt. Beast sat her on a low wall by the popcorn booth, and placed the sole of her injured foot on his thigh.
Ugh! He was performing some kind of loathsome sex act with her foot and his leg! I could tell by his face that he was enjoying it. The really annoying thing was that Chloe was ignoring me. And as usual when injured, she was panicking.
‘My ankle!’ she groaned. ‘Look at it! It might be broken! It’s swelling up! Look! Call an ambulance!’
We looked. Her ankle, previously trim and cute enough to fascinate a whole army of Victorian gentlemen, now resembled a sausage and was steadily expanding.
‘Call the ambulance!’ sobbed Chloe, still clinging, rather recklessly I thought, to Beast’s hand.
‘No need for an ambulance, babe,’ he said soothingly. ‘We’ll take you to casualty in Donut’s car. Bring it round, Doh.’
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6
SATURDAY 9.45 p.m.
I break my solemn promise …
Donut slouched off to ‘bring the car round’. It made him sound like a manservant – but then, that’s the sort of relationship he has with Beast, or so the gossip runs. Chloe was sitting on the wall sort of snivelling and shuddering. Beast was stroking her leg and whispering things to her. I felt decidedly spare. It’s usually my job to look after Chloe and reassure her, but that job appeared to be taken.
Chloe specialises in injuries and ailments. This was the third time in our relationship that she had demanded to be taken to hospital. But I was beginning to suspect she had double motives this time. She wasn’t staring into Beast’s eyes or anything gross, but she was kind of looking down in fascination at his hands, and listening.
She knew it was her duty to struggle bravely to her feet, grab my arm, and say firmly, ‘Come on, Zoe! We’ll get a taxi home. It’s all right, Mr Beast, or whatever your name is – thanks for your help,’ exactly as laid out in the Anxious Parents’ Charter.
I felt a bit uneasy as the last time I’d been driven by a schoolboy, the car had mounted the pavement and destroyed the frontage of Flowers to Go. We had been unhurt, luckily, but the chrysanthemums were utterly mashed. I had assured my parents I would never go in a boy’s car again.
‘If you faithfully keep this promise, Zoe,’ Mum had said, with her Serious Face on, ‘we’ll buy you a puppy when you’re twenty-one.’
Typical of my family. You have to walk everywhere for six years, until your feet are covered with massive blisters the size of the moon, before you can get your hands on a puppy. Chloe’s parents got her a puppy while she was still at primary school. Although Chloe’s puppy has turned into the huge and rather sordid dog called Geraint. Much as I envy the puppy idea, I’ve always been a bit wary of Geraint. Sometimes he behaves as if he’s some kind of sleazy boy in dog’s clothing.
‘It’s OK,’ I said, asserting myself at last. ‘There’s no need for you guys to leave the concert. We’ll get a taxi. My family’s got an account with a taxi firm.’
‘Don’t worry – Donut’s a very careful driver,’ said Beast, looking up at me and winking. I wished he wouldn’t do that. It made me feel part of a conspiracy or something.
‘Zoe!’ hissed Chloe unexpectedly. ‘Donut has gone for his car now! It doesn’t matter! It’s only to casualty.’ I was amazed at her foolhardiness. She must know that Beast and Donut were planning to drive out of town at 100 mph, over several roundabouts and through several electronics stores without stopping, and eventually mug us and abandon us in a wild wood, stranded without our mobile phones or handbags, in the rain.
‘Anyway,’ said Beast, grinning, ‘the band is crap.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Chloe. ‘They suck. Ow! My stinkin’ ankle!’
Beast caressed her foot some more.
I was astonished. Chloe adored Toilethead. They were her favourite band. She had pictures of them stuck on her bedroom wall. She had once collected their autographs on her thigh and hadn’t washed for a week. And now apparently they were crap, just because Beast Hawkins said so. Mad, Bad, Dangerous Beast. I was amazed and, needless to say, horrified.
Shortly afterwards, Donut strolled in, carrying his car keys in a raffish, joyriding, hooligan kind of way.
‘I’m illegally park
ed,’ he said as if it was the coolest thing in the world. ‘So move, guys!’ I wondered if it was too late to send a goodbye text to my parents. A deep sense of doom settled over me.
Somehow Beast got into the back of the car with Chloe, and I was sure he was going to be holding on to and stroking several other bits of Chloe as well as her ankle. This meant I had to sit in the front with Donut. I glanced sideways at him. His warts were worse than ever. He grinned at me, and his teeth flashed greenly in the streetlights.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Please don’t drive fast, because I get carsick.’
‘Don’t worry, babe,’ he said. ‘I used to be a speed freak but since I wrote off the last car I’m a reformed character.’
He started the car. I shrank back in my seat and prepared to meet my Maker. But what was this? Donut edged the beat-up old banger ever so gently out into the city traffic, and drove like a sweet old lady down towards the hospital.
‘So,’ he said, ‘what you doin’ later?’ I was torn between the desire to keep him in a good mood because he was driving, and the desire to tell him to take a running jump.
‘I have to go home,’ I said, ‘and babysit for my two little brothers. Because my parents are going to a nightclub later.’ It was easy, inventing both younger brothers (I was thinking of the dreaded Norman twins) and a parental lifestyle. A nightclub! My parents’ idea of fun after 10 p.m. is a cup of cocoa and a DVD of Miss Marple.
‘I’m a five-star babysitter,’ grinned Donut, looking as if he habitually ate five babies for breakfast.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘No Followers. It’s a strict rule of the house.’ I was a bit pissed off that Chloe wasn’t backing me up. It was so quiet in the back, I wondered if she and Beast were actually snogging or something. I was so tempted to turn round and have a look.
‘Followers?’ said Donut. ‘Whatdjer mean?’ Though a sixth former, he was clearly intellectually challenged.
‘It’s just one of my parents’ stupid jokes,’ I explained. ‘Back in the Victorian era, there was, like, a No Followers rule for servants. Like, they weren’t allowed to – uh, entertain men friends.’