risk their school getting into the newspapers for the wrong reasons. Who can blame them?’
‘Ophelia.’ Acne’s voice was as quiet as a kitten’s. ‘Let’s just—’
‘“Ophelia”!’ Mum was enjoying this. ‘You don’t get many Ophelias to the pound.’
Pixie-Ophelia’s options were closing in.
‘Or,’ Mum jangled her keys, ‘turn out your bags and pockets and return my stock. Tell me your names, your schools, your addresses and your telephone numbers. Yes, you will be in trouble. Yes, I will contact your schools. But no, I won’t press charges or involve the police.’
The three girls stared at the floor.
‘But you have to choose now.’
Nobody moved.
‘As you wish. Agnes, telephone PC Morton, please. Tell him to make space in his cells for three shoplifters.’
Acne put a Tibetan amulet on the counter and tears streamed down her pitted, powdery cheeks. ‘I’ve never done this before…’
‘Choose better friends.’ Mum looked at Codgirl.
Codgirl’s hand trembled as she produced a Danish paperweight.
‘Didn’t Shakespeare’s Ophelia,’ Mum turned to the real one, ‘come to a mad, bad end?’
‘Wow,’ me and Mum hurried along Regent’s Arcade so we’d get to the cinema before Chariots of Fire began, ‘you handled those girls amazingly.’
‘Fancy.’ Mum’s shoes smacked the shiny marble. Take that! Take That! Take that! ‘An old dear like me being able to handle three spoilt Pollyannas “amazingly”.’ (Mum was dead chuffed, really.) ‘You spotted them in the first place, Jason. Old Eagle-eyes. If I was a sheriff, I’d pay you a reward.’
‘Popcorn and 7-Up please.’
‘Oh, I think we can manage that.’
People’re a nestful of needs. Dull needs, sharp needs, bottomless-pit needs, flash-in-the-pan needs, needs for things you can’t hold, needs for things you can. Adverts know this. Shops know this. Specially in arcades, shops’re deafening. I’ve got what you want! I’ve got what you want! I’ve got what you want! But walking down Regent’s Arcade, I noticed a new need that’s normally so close up you never know it’s there. You and your mum need to like each other. Not love, but like.
‘This,’ Mum sighed and fished out her sunglasses, ‘is wonderful.’
The queue for Chariots of Fire snaked down the cinema steps and along the street for eight or ten shops. The film started in thirteen minutes. Ninety or a hundred people were ahead of us. Kids, mostly, in twos, threes and fours. A few old-age pensioners too. A few couples. The only boy queuing with his mother was me. Wished it wasn’t so obvious I was with her.
‘Jason, don’t tell me you need the loo after all?’
A fat prat with floppy eyelids turned round and smirked.
I half-snapped at Mum, ‘No!’
(Thank God nobody knows me in Cheltenham. Two years ago Ross Wilcox and Gray Drake saw Floyd Chaceley queuing outside Malvern pictures for Gregory’s Girl with his mum. They’re still ripping the piss out of him.)
‘Don’t adopt that tone of voice with me! I told you to go at the shop!’
Good moods’re as fragile as eggs. ‘But I don’t.’
A sick bus growled past and made the air taste of pencils.
‘If you’re ashamed to be seen with me, just say so.’ (Mum and Julia often hit bull’s-eyes even I hadn’t spotted.) ‘We can save ourselves a lot of bother.’
‘No!’ It’s not ‘ashamed’. Well, it is sort of. But not ’cause Mum’s Mum, only ’cause Mum’s a mum. Now I’m ashamed that I’m ashamed. ‘No.’
Bad moods’re as fragile as bricks.
That floppy-eyelidded fat prat in front was loving this.
Miserably, I took off my jumper and knotted its arms round my waist. The queue shuffled us forward to outside a travel agent’s. A girl Julia’s age sat behind a desk. Lack of sunshine’d made her spotty and pale. So this is what O-levels earn you. A poster Blu-Tack’d on the window roared, WIN THE HOLIDAY OF A LIFETIME WITH E-ZEE TRAVEL! Mum the Delighted, Dad the Smiley Provider, Glamourpuss Big Sister and Tufty Brother. In front of Ayers Rock, the Taj Mahal, Disneyland Florida. ‘Next summer,’ I asked Mum, ‘will we all go on holiday again?’
‘Let’s just,’ Mum’s sunglasses hid her eyes, ‘wait and see.’
Unborn Twin goaded me on. ‘Wait and see what?’
‘A year’s a long way off. Julia’s talking about doing a Euro Rail, or whatever they’re called.’
‘Interrail.’
‘How about your school skiing trip? With your friends?’ (Mum hasn’t noticed I’m not popular any more.) ‘Julia had a lovely time in West Germany on that exchange a few years ago.’
‘Ülrike the Shrieker and Hans the Hands didn’t sound lovely to me.’
‘Your sister was exaggerating, Jason, I’m sure.’
‘Why don’t just you, Dad and me go somewhere? Lyme