wouldn’t be able to stop myself! I would do all kinds of unspeakable things. I would snog, I would French kiss, I would probably even have under-age sex… Gulp! It is probably just as well that he is merely a figment of my imagination.
“So! You really don’t feel like joining us?” said Mum.
“Truly,” I said. “I have things to do.”
“Well, all right. We shan’t be late,” said Mum. “We’ll probably all come back here.”
“Yes, and this time,” said Harry, “the nasty old folk will behave themselves. No noise! That’s a promise!”
They’re back here, now. I’m in my room and they’re downstairs, and they are making a noise. It seems they can’t help it. They’re playing music VERY LOUD. But I don’t want to be laughed at again so I’ve just stuffed cotton wool in my ears and am doing my best to ignore it.
It is not easy.
Met Pilch in the shopping centre. Bumped into Tasha, on her own, i.e. without Cindy. But with a boy. The boy was Brad Sullivan. So much for Mum’s plan for him and me to get together. Ha! I didn’t want to, anyway. But it intensely annoyed me when Pilch said, “Wow! Where did she get that from?”
I said, “It’s only Brad Sullivan. He lives in my road.”
“Oh! He’s the one your mum wanted you to meet,” said Pilch.
“I don’t need to meet him,” I said. “I’ve already met him. I know him.” Well, I do, sort of. We always say hello.
“He’s kind of cute,” said Pilch.
Cute??? Brad Sullivan??? No way!
“He reminds me of Carlito,” said Pilch.
Indignantly I said, “He isn’t anything like Carlito!”
Pilch said, “I think he is.”
“Well, you can think what you like,” I said, “but he’s not your character, so how would you know?”
She said, “I’m just going by the way you describe him.”
“Well! Ho!” I said. “If I were going by the way you describe Alastair I would think he was a total nerd.”
Pilch’s face suddenly transmuted into this big overripe tomato.
“What do you mean?” she said, all tight and quivering.
“Tall and willowy, lissom of limb and lithe of body, with hair like spun sunshine.” That is, actually, what she wrote. It was so naff that I memorised it. “Anyway,” I said, “if he’s Scotch he’s a Celt, and Celts don’t look like that.”
“Oh?” said Pilch. “So what do they look like, according to you?”
I said, “I know what they look like… short and dark and squat.”
That shut her up! I know it was mean, destroying someone’s fantasy, but it served her right for saying that that stupid Brad Sullivan looked like Carlito. She didn’t talk to me again for another five minutes, until this woman came over to us wanting us to give money for cancer research and we wouldn’t because we once read somewhere that they torture animals, and the woman said, “Suppose you got cancer?” to which Pilch replied, “A principle is still a principle,” which I thought was rather good, and that got us talking again. Me and Pilch never stop talking for very long. We have too much to say to each other!
Mum complains about it, because of the telephone bill. She says, “How you can be at school together all day and then gabble on for hours in the evening, I really do not know.”
It is because we have things to discuss. Important things. School things, work things, book things. Things about Alastair and Carlito! Pilch and I have always talked. Back in Year 7 Ms Martin used to say, “Cresta McMorris and Charlotte Peake. I want you at opposite sides of the room.” But even then we used to pass notes!
And then we had our secret language that no one but us could understand. IBBY language. We used to put an Ib after the first letter of every word - unless it began with a vowel, in which case we put an N in front of it. Verree complicated! But we got so’s we could rattle it off.
That was when we were in Juniors. I can’t do it now. Unfortunately. If I could, I would go up to Cindy and Tasha and yell, “Sibtupid miborons!” And I’d do a rude gesture to go with it.
Came back here with Pilch to read our latest episodes and found the whole place pulsating.
“Oh, God,” I said, “they’re at it again!”
“At what?” said Pilch.
I said, “Playing their music!”
As soon as me and Pilch appeared, Harry very ostentatiously turned the volume down.
“Sorry,” he said. He put a finger to his lips. “Old folk being noisy again!”
“What is it?” said Pilch.
Mum, foolishly beaming, said, “They were my favourite group when I was young.” She held out a record sleeve. She has become a real vinyl nut since meeting Harry. It seems CDs aren’t loud enough, or something. “Look!”
Pilch took the sleeve with this air of naive wonderment.
“It’s a record,” she said.
“I know! Isn’t it brilliant?” said Mum. “This album came out on my sixteenth birthday!”
“And it’s still playable,” said Harry. “Who said records don’t last?”
Pilch was staring, like, transfixed, at the sleeve. It was green and purple, with swirly bits.
She said, “Dawn of Humanity… is that the name of the group or of the album?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” said Harry.
“It’s the name of the group,” said Mum. She snatched back her precious sleeve. “Please don’t tell me you’ve never heard of them!”
“Mum,” I said, “things have moved on.”
Mum sniffed. A bit huffy. “Fat lot you’d know about it,” she said. “Spend your life with your head buried in a book.”
I grumbled to Pilch as we came upstairs.
“It’s horrible,” I said. “They play it all the time.”
“I think it’s fun,” said Pilch.
“You wouldn’t,” I told her, “if you were trying to read War and Peace”
Pilch said she didn’t expect, if she were trying to read War and Peace, she would find anything much fun.
“They’re really hard going, aren’t they?” she said. “These Russian things?”
“They’re classics,” I said.
“Yes, I know,” said Pilch; and she heaved this big sigh.
Pilch worries me sometimes. She doesn’t seem as committed as she used to be. I know it was my idea that we should read the classics, but she agreed with me. I didn’t force her. I just felt we ought to tackle something a bit - well! Worthy. Of course I have already done Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice; Pilch has only seen them on the telly. Anna Karenina is the first classic she has ever tackled.
Maybe she just needs a bit of a breathing space. I am not going to nag as I feel that would be counterproductive. I will just wait and see what happens.