Mum still looks worried. “I wish I could remember what it was I was going to say.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll think of something. Goodbye, Rosie.”
“Goodbye, Dad. Have a nice time.”
I open the front door and everyone gets in each other’s way. Eventually we finish saying goodbye and Natalie whistles through her teeth and leans back against the door. “Do you really think that—” She stops as I press my finger against my lips. Instead of dying away the sound of footsteps is getting louder. There is a moment’s silence and then the door bell rings. Hardly has the first note sounded than I fling open the door. “Here’s your handbag, Mum.”
“Oh yes. How silly of me. What I really came back for was to remind you about the rhubarb. I couldn’t get it all in the fridge so I put it on top of the cupboard. You won’t forget it, will you?”
“No, Mum.”
Mum shakes her head. “I know there’s something else. I’ll probably think of it on the train.”
“There isn’t going to be a bleeding train,” yodels Dad.
“I’ll drop you a postcard.” Mum waves hurriedly and follows Dad down the street. I hear him shout “There you are, we just missed one”, before they disappear from sight.
“I don’t dare say anything,” says Natalie as we close the door. “What time is the train supposed to go?”
“Half past four.”
“So we won’t know whether they got it until about half past five. I won’t be able to live through the tension. Can I borrow one of your ciggies?”
She does not wait for me to reply but dives into my handbag.
“What do you mean ‘borrow’? You never give anything back. Anyway, you know Mum doesn’t like you smoking.”
“What she doesn’t know isn’t going to worry her. Lots of girls at school smoke much more than I do.”
“Well, borrow their fags, then. They can obviously afford it.”
Natalie lights up and blows a big cloud of smoke at the flies on the ceiling. “Free! Isn’t that fantastic? Six whole days of bachelor girl living. When are we going to have the orgy?” Some girls might be joking. With Natalie you never know. She is three years younger than me but I wonder about her sometimes. There can’t be many fifteen-year-old girls who have grown out of three bras.
“You know what Mum said,” I warn. “No parties.”
“I wasn’t talking about a party, was I? Come on, Rosie. Don’t say you’re going to turn into a recording of Mum’s voice the minute the door is closed.”
“Do use an ashtray,” I tell her.
“What did I tell you? I do wish you could listen to yourself sometimes. You want to get a job as a school teacher. You’re wasting your time down at the tech.”
“You worry about me when you’ve got your ‘O’ levels, Lolita.” It is fast occurring to me that a week with Raquel Welchlet could well result in a few frayed nerve ends.
“Brains aren’t everything,” says my gay, fun-loving little sister. “I want to be a model, anyway.”
I watch her experimenting with the buttons on her stretch cotton blouse to see how many she can undo before her navel appears and understand why Mum and Dad worry about us so much. “Models aren’t idiots,” I say.
“I’m not an idiot,” says Natalie. “I’m a fire sign, that’s all. Outward going and uninhibited.”
“I don’t believe in horoscopes,” I tell her. “Scorpios never do.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” A sense of humour is not one of Natalie’s strong points. “Seriously though.” She buttons up the reasons why she was voted the most popular girl in her class—there were more boys than girls. “We ought to have a party to repay all the hospitality we’ve received. You could invite all your friends from the tennis club.” The way she says “tennis club” she makes it sound like “geriatrics anonymous”.
“I wish you wouldn’t go on about the tennis club. I just like watching tennis, that’s all.”
“And your lover, Geoffrey.” Natalie wags a finger at me. “Oh yes. I know all about the two of you looking for lost balls in the long grass.”
“What do you expect us to do, leave them there?”
“This was after the club dance.”
“Oh ‘Natalie’ I wish you could get it into your thick head that Geoffrey Wilkes and I are not lovers.” I hope I sound convincing because I would like to be persuaded myself. Somebody must have put something in the fruit cup that night, because when we went behind the privet I began to feel quite weak at the knees. Maybe it was the night air. There had been a terrible fug in the clubhouse. Geoffrey started kissing me and trying to put his hand up my skirt and I remember wishing that he was that aggressive on the tennis court. Perhaps that is why I gave him the teeniest bit of encouragement. Silly, really, but I just wanted to know what it felt like. It was not until I saw my panties hanging out of his jacket pocket that I realised what was happening. We were lying behind the roller and he was making the most incredible grunting noises. I was kissing him more to keep him quiet than for any other reason. He was behaving terribly badly because he was taking advantage of me. The fruit cup was quite harmless on the previous occasions I had been to the club. His fingers were running riot in my reception area and I was in such a state that I did not know where they ended and his pork banana began. I should have been paying more attention but I was so frightened that someone might come—I mean approach, of course. I was just getting rather worried when he suddenly rolled off me and was sick behind the roller. It was terribly embarrassing and I felt quite ill myself as I hurried back to the club house. I don’t think anything had happened—I mean to me, of course—but it was a very nasty experience. When Geoffrey came in five minutes later, the colour of a dead cabbage leaf, with my panties still hanging out of his pocket I could have died. Everybody was so rude and I am not surprised that Natalie heard about it. It just shows how careful you have got to be.
“That’s not what I heard. You gave him your knicks to blow his nose on, did you?”
I ignore this tasteless remark and become engrossed in the TV Times. It is unhealthy the way Natalie harps on about sex the whole time.
“Ooh! look. They’ve got a repeat of Casualty Ward.”
“What? Now? Smashing,” Natalie drops her fag into her tea cup and follows me into the front room. I wish I had kept my mouth shut because I would much rather curl up with Edward Chancellor by myself. He is the sexy star of the show Doctor Eradlik.
“Haven’t you got any homework to do?” I snap.
“They don’t give us homework.”
“Well, they should. When I was your age I was—” I start to think about more important things as dreamboat’s face looms up on the screen. Some people think he is too pretty, but when he looks straight at the camera like that I feel my tongue creeping out of my mouth and running nervously along my upper lip—at least, I think it is nerves.
“Her skin may be black but her kidney is the same colour as a white girl’s.”
“Doctor Eradlik! You don’t mean—!”
“Yes, Sandy. There’s no time for prejudice when a man is dying.”
“Would you like to have a spade’s kidney?” says Natalie thoughtfully.
“Ssssh!”
“I don’t think I would myself. I’ve nothing against them but—”
“Shut