hidden boner was about to explode, killing everyone in Wildest Dreams Amusements. She let the wrapper drop to the floor and handed me back my Zoom. ‘Is that Smash Hits?’ She meant the 2000 AD summer special, still rolled up in my pocket.
Wished to hell it was.
‘Our Sally!’ The black-haired chinless girl came up and I hated her till the end of time. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve started your fishing trip already?’ (The straw girl giggled from her stool in the booth and I hated her too.) ‘You’re only one hour off the coach. What’s this one called then?’
I had to answer. ‘Jason.’
‘“Jason”!’ She did this toffee-nosed accent. ‘I say! Sebastian’s playing polo with Jason on the croquet lawn! Rath-er! I say! Jason’s sucking a Zoom too, just like Sally! How Mr and Mrs! So have you got your rubber johnnies, Jason, ’cause at the rate Our Sally’s going you’ll need ’em in the next thirty minutes.’
I floundered for a killer put-down line without any stammer words in it. And floundered, and floundered.
‘Or don’t they teach you biology at schools like yours?’
‘Stick your fat gob into everything,’ Sally snapped, ‘don’t you?’
‘Untwist your knickers, Our Sal! Only asking your new boyfriend if he knows the facts of life, like. Or is his thing bending over in the showers for prefects after a jolly good game of rugger?’
All the girls watched me to see how the boy’d defend himself.
My Zoom was dribbling down my wrist.
‘Why Tim put up with your fat nasty dirty trap,’ Sally folded her arms and jutted her hips out, ‘for so long before dumping you I’ll never know.’
I was turning invisible and there was nothing I could do.
‘I dumped him, for your information. And at least my boyfriend didn’t go munching up Wendy Lench the day after splitting up with me!’
‘That’s a lie, Melanie Pickett, and you know it!’
‘Under the coats,’ Melanie Pickett almost sang, ‘at Shirley Poolbrook’s party! Ask anyone who was there!’
The photo machine buzzed.
The straw one giggled. ‘I think the photos are done…’
A battalion of old ladies marched by from the bingo enclosure. I jumped into their ranks before the three girls noticed, and hurried back to the Hotel Excalibur. Boys are bastards, but they’re predictable bastards. You never know what girls’re thinking. Girls’re from another planet.
The beehive receptionist gave me the message than Dad’s seminar was overrunning so he’d be a bit late. Greenland trainees were in the lobby, joking and comparing notes. I felt like a teacher’s kid in a staffroom, so I went up to our room. It smells of net curtains, toast and toilet cleaner. The wallpaper’s got eggy daffodils and the carpet’s all melted flowers. The only things on TV were cricket where nobody scored and a Western where nobody shot anyone.
I read 2000 AD on my bed.
But I kept thinking about the three girls. Girls and girlfriends’re worrying. Sex education’s only about how to make babies and how not to make babies. What I need to know is what you do to turn ordinary girls like Sally from Blackburn into girlfriends you can snog and be seen snogging. I’m not sure if I really want to have sexual intercourse and I definitely don’t want babies. Babies just poo and bawl. But not having a girlfriend means you’re a homo or a total loser or both.
Melanie Pickett was half right. I don’t know whether or not I know the facts of life. You can’t ask adults ’cause you can’t ask adults. You can’t ask kids ’cause it’d be all round school by first break. So either everybody knows everything but nobody’s saying anything, or else nobody knows anything and girlfriends just sort of…happen.
There was a knock at the door.
‘Jason,’ this young guy had a metallicky suit and a Paisley tie, ‘right?’
‘Right.’
He did a comedy finger-point at his GREENLAND SUPERMARKETS badge and a James Bond voice. ‘The name’s Lawlor…Danny Lawlor. Mike – your da…my boss, did I forget to mention? – sent me up to say he’s really sorry but he’s still being detained. The Emperor’s dropped by, unannounced.’
‘The Emperor?’
‘Emperor Craig Salt of Greenland. Best not say I called him that. Your da’s boss is Craig Salt. So all the managers are having to look after him in the manner to which he has become accustomed. So, Mike’s suggesting how’s about you and me go in search of the ultimate fish and chip shop?’
‘Now?’
‘Unless you’ve got a hot dinner date?’
‘No…’
‘Grand altogether. We’ll get you back in time for Chariots of Fire.