tongue-tied than me, in spite of not speaking the language too well.
“You live in road?”
“Up there.” I pointed.
He said, “Nice houses.”
“They’re just ordinary,” I said. “I’d rather live in one like this.”
He pulled a face. “This one old.”
“I like old! I like to think of all the people who have lived there before.”
“Ah! You—” He stopped and waved a hand, frustrated. “I not think of word!”
“It’s history,” I said. “I like history.”
“History. Yes!” He nodded at the house. “Much history.”
“Ours is new. It’s quite boring.”
“Not boring! Very nice.”
We chatted on about houses for a bit; and then, just as I thought I should be heading home he said, “You like maybe go out with me some time?”
My heart immediately went into some kind of mad squirming overdrive. My cheeks lit up like beacons.
“I tell you my name! My name Alex. What your name?”
I swallowed. “T-Tamsin.”
“Tamsin…OK, Tamsin! You like we go drink coffee?”
My head started nodding, up-down, up-down. It wouldn’t stop!
“We go Sunday, maybe?”
Before I knew it, we’d arranged to meet up the road in Starbucks on Sunday afternoon. I went on my way feeling like I was drifting on a cloud. I had a date. A real date with a real boy! My first ever…
Me and Katie weren’t doing a sleepover that weekend. We hadn’t even officially arranged to meet, but I couldn’t resist ringing her.
“Is it OK if I come round? I’ve got something to tell you!”
Katie said, “What? Tell me, tell me!”
“I can’t on the phone. I’ll come round!”
Needless to say, I looked for Alex as I went up the road. I was all ready to smile at him, and wave. I’d even got specially dressed up in my best pair of jeans and a new top. But he wasn’t there. Only the older man and the other boy, who had the cheek to wink at me again in a decidedly knowing fashion, like “Ho ho, who’s going out with my mate?” I ignored him. And I wasn’t worried, now, about Alex not being there, because tomorrow I would be in Starbucks with him…yay! Most unlike me. I am not at all a showy-off kind of person; I leave all that sort of thing to Ellie. But yay again! I was going on a date!
Katie flung open the door the minute I arrived. She’d obviously been hovering there, eager to know what my news was. I must have sounded even more excited than I’d realised.
“OK!” She dragged me inside and hauled me up the stairs. “Talk!”
I said, “Right. Well! You’ll never guess…” I hooked my hair back over my ears. “I’m going on a date with Jimmy Doohan!”
“What?”
“Jimmy Doohan.” I giggled, in slightly hysterical fashion. “The boy from the flats on my road?”
Katie said, “You’ve gotta be joking!”
“I’m not joking. He asked me! Tomorrow afternoon…I’m meeting him, we’re going to Starbucks.”
“You’re going out with a boy from a building site?”
“Why not?” I bristled. “He’s nice, he’s polite. He’s foreign. Polish, I think. Maybe Russian? I don’t know! Anyway, his name’s Alex and he’s definitely not Irish.”
Katie said, “Oh, well, that’s all right then.”
I had this feeling she was being sarcastic. I said, “Jimmy Doohan’s Irish. You’d go out with Jimmy Doohan fast enough!”
“Jimmy Doohan doesn’t work on a building site.”
“He might do! In his holidays. How do you know?”
“Holidays are different,” said Katie.
Of course, I suddenly realised: she was probably a bit put out. Even, maybe, a bit jealous? Still, I didn’t like the thought of her feelings being hurt. She was my best friend, after all.
“It’s so weird,” I said, “the way things turn out. I mean, me living in the same road…if it had been you living there, it’d probably have been you he asked.”
“I wouldn’t go,” said Katie.
Well! How ungracious was that? And there I’d been, thinking we could chat about what I should wear, the way other girls do.
“No point getting the hump,” said Katie.
Pardon me? I wasn’t the one getting any hump!
“I just think it’s a bit dodgy, going out with someone you haven’t even properly met. I mean, who is he? You don’t know the first thing about him!”
“So I’ll find out,” I said. “We’ll talk.”
“He could be anything.”
“So could Jimmy Doohan,” I said. “Who knows what he gets up to in his spare time? He could be a drug dealer, for all we know. Could go round bashing old ladies over the head. I reckon you have to have a bit of trust or you’d end up never going out with anyone.”
She grew a bit hot and pink at that. I immediately wished I hadn’t said it. But quite honestly you can’t afford to leave these things too late or you’ll run the danger of never getting going at all. Ellie might be only ten, but already she knew far more about boys than either me or Katie. The situation was growing desperate!
“Have you told your mum?” said Katie.
It was my turn to grow pink. She’d asked a good question, cos the answer was no: I hadn’t told my mum.
“Are you going to?”
Slowly, I shook my head.
“Dunno why not,” said Katie. “If there isn’t anything wrong with him.”
“There isn’t anything wrong with him! He’s really sweet. It’s just…you know what mums are like.”
“I know what mine’s like; shouldn’t have thought yours would mind.”
Katie always says that my mum, being an actor, isn’t as strict as other people’s. Like she doesn’t care what me and Ellie get up to. It’s true she doesn’t fuss and flap, but I wasn’t sure she’d be too pleased at me going off on a date with a boy I’d only just met. She’d want to know who he was, and where he lived, and how old he was, and all stuff I couldn’t tell her. All I really knew was his name, and that he worked down the road. It was probably guaranteed to get even my mum in a flap.
“So if you’re not telling her…” said Katie.
“I thought I’d say I was coming round to you!”
There was a pause. “Is that all right?” I said.
For a moment I thought she was going to say an outright no, or even suggest she came with us. We were so used to doing everything together I could understand if she took it as her right. In the end, somewhat grudgingly, she said she would think about it. “I’ll let you know.”
I said, “Please Katie, pretty Katie, please!”
She didn’t even smile; just repeated that she would let me know. I definitely sensed a coolness between us.
The