Читать книгу Boys Beware - Jean Ure, Stephen Lee, Jean Ure - Страница 6

“I wouldn’t want you having boys up there,” said Mum.

“Boys?” I shot a sideways glance at Tash, out of the corner of my eye. Tash shot one back at me. We managed – just – to stifle our giggles. “Mum!” I said. “As if we would!”

“As if you would,” said Mum.

“I wouldn’t,” said Ali.

“I’m not worried about you,” said Mum. “I’m worried about those two.”

This time we couldn’t help it. I clapped a hand to my mouth to stifle the squeaks. Tash buried her face in one of the sofa cushions. The fact is, me and Tash are into boys in a BIG WAY. It is just something that seems to come naturally to us. We look at a boy and we go all gooey, like oo-er, mushy peas and soft ice cream, and help, help! I’m going into meltdown! Only if the boy is worth it, of course; we are not indiscriminate! Even at twelve years old, when we were just getting started, we knew better than to go for geeks or cavemen. Mum’s problem was that she didn’t think we were old enough to get started at all.

“We sent you to the Gables expressly to avoid all that!”

Poor Mum. Poor Dad. Did they really think that shutting us up in a nunnery – well, an all-girls’ school, which amounts to the same thing – would keep us safely playing with our dolls till the age of sixteen? Eighteen, if Dad had his way. Even older. He’s worse than Mum! He once told us that he wished we could remain his little girls for ever. Pur-lease! Yuck yuck double yuck.

It is amazing how naïve parents can be. It never seems to occur to them that even at an all-girls’ school there are sometimes men teachers. Some of them quite young and fanciable! Or that girls have brothers. Likewise cousins, of the male persuasion. Not to mention a life outside of school.

“It’s all very well you smirking,” said Mum, “but we all know what would happen … The minute my back was turned you’d start having orgies.”

“Orgies!” A series of ecstatic squeaks came bursting out of me. Strange glugging sounds shook the sofa cushion.

“Don’t deny it,” said Mum. “I’ve heard of teenage parties getting out of control. You’d start by inviting a handful of friends and end up with hundreds of total strangers, wrecking the place.”

The sofa cushion erupted. I got as far as, “Mu-u-u-m—” and then collapsed.

“No, I’m sorry,” said Mum. “It really is quite out of the question.”

“But, Mu-u-u-m—”

“I’d never have a moment’s peace, and nor would Auntie Jay. It’s not fair to ask it of her.”

“We didn’t ask it,” I said. “She offered.”

“Yes, but she didn’t realise what she’d be taking on. She doesn’t know what it’s like,” said Mum, “having you lot in the house.”

“But we wouldn’t be in the house! Not her bit of the house. We’d be upstairs, all hidden away … we’d be quiet as mice! She wouldn’t even know we were there.”

“Yes, and I shudder to think what you’d get up to,” said Mum. “You’re too young, I’d have nightmares. It’s no good, you’re not going to talk me round. I shall have to say no.”

“Mum, you can’t!” Tash suddenly sprang into action, clutching her cushion. “This is your big chance!”

Well! If Tash had decided to enter the fray, I obviously had to support her. Earnestly, I said, “Tash’s right, you can’t let motherhood ruin your career.”

Mum pretended to be amused by this – “It’s not going to ruin my career!” – but I could sense that she was wavering. Yippee! We had struck the right note!

“You’d be mad to miss an opportunity like this,” I said.

“Yes, and we’d be the ones that paid for it,” said Tash. “You’d go round telling people it was our fault.”

“Like, all because of us you had to let your big chance slip away from you.”

“Which is why you’d ended up as an unfulfilled woman – all mean and bitter and twisted.”

Mum said that she would be even more mean and bitter and twisted if she came back home to find we’d given Auntie Jay a nervous breakdown.

I stared at her, reproachfully. “It doesn’t say much for the way you’ve brought us up if that’s how you think we’d behave.”

“Good try,” said Mum. “But the answer is still no!”

She was doing her best to sound like she really meant it. Like that was definitely the last word. End of subject. Finish. But I’d heard Mum on the phone to Auntie Jay and I knew how much this job meant to her. Dad is always the one in our family that gets to go away on interesting assignments. Partly this is because he’s a man, and men tend to take it for granted that it’s OK for them to go whizzing off across the globe at a moment’s notice but not OK for women, at any rate that’s how it seems to me. But mainly, I have to say, it’s because of his work. Dad is not at all a caveman type; he doesn’t expect Mum to stay home washing his socks and ironing his shirts while he’s off gallivanting. He does, however, happen to be an archaeologist (hooray! I’ve remembered how to spell it) and he is very much dedicated to digging things up. Sometimes he digs in this country, but on the whole there is more stuff waiting to be dug up in other parts of the world. Like right now, for instance, he was out in Peru digging up graves. And Mum had been offered a commission to go and join him, to take pictures for a book. Really exciting! Mum is a brilliant photographer, she is wasted just doing pictures of bouncing babies and giant cucumbers for the local paper. We all thought that she deserved a break. We also thought that it would be pretty cool to spend eight whole weeks living on our own …

I might as well admit it, we weren’t just thinking of Mum! Well, me and Tash weren’t. I don’t know what Ali was thinking. Nobody ever knows what Ali is thinking. Stuff goes on inside her head that has absolutely no relationship whatsoever to the things that are going on around her. Like now. She’d been perched on the arm of a chair, chewing her fingernails (a disgusting habit which she ought to have grown out of years ago) when suddenly she stopped chewing and said, “I’m nearly at the end of The Next Generation.”

It sort of made sense, if you happened to know that she is a massive fan of Star Trek. It didn’t actually seem to have anything to do with what we’d been discussing, but that’s Ali for you.

“I’ll be moving on to Deep Space Nine in a few days.”

“Ali, you’re not helping,” said Tash. She turned, to renew the attack on Mum. “Mum, you can’t do this to us!”

“Do what?” said Mum.

“Make us the excuse for not getting on with your life! It isn’t fair,” said Tash. “How do you think it makes us feel?”

“It makes us feel terrible,” I said.

“It makes us feel guilty.”

“All those times you’ve come home grumbling cos of having to do another baby—”

“And now you could be out there doing graves!”

“Tombs,” I said, “actually.”

“All right, then, tombs.”

“Old tombs.”

“Ancient tombs.”

“It’s got to be better than babies!”

“And just think, you’d get to see your name in print—”

“Photographs by Catherine Love.”

“It’s what you’ve always dreamed of!”

Mum bit her lip. We were really starting to get to her!

“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said. “You’re only making it more difficult for me.”

“We want to make it difficult!”

“We want to be able to boast about you!”

“Our mum, the famous photographer …”

“Taking photographs out in Peru!”

“But you’re too young,” wailed Mum. “You’re only twelve years old!”

“Mum we’re nearly thirteen!”

“Ali’s nearly fourteen.”

The sound of her name brought Ali back to life.

“If we go,” she said, solemnly, “I’d have to take them with me.”

We all stopped and looked at her. Take what? Take who? Me? Tash?

“My Deep Space Nines.”

The penny dropped. For once, I’d actually managed to follow her thought process. Of course! She couldn’t possibly be expected to go to Auntie Jay’s without her supply of Star Treks.

“Oh, Ali, for goodness’ sake,” said Mum. “You have a one-track mind!”

“One trek,” said Tash.

Rather clever, I thought.

“There’d be enough to keep me going,” said Ali, “so long as it was only a couple of months – though I suppose I could always come back and get more. If I ran out, I mean. If you decided to stay in Peru for longer than a couple of months.”

“Ali, I am not going to Peru,” said Mum. But she really didn’t say it with that much conviction. I think I knew, then, that we had won!

Two days later, it was all arranged. Mum was going to Peru, and we were going to Auntie Jay’s. Hurrah! We were so excited. Mum still had her doubts, but Dad, fortunately, was so busy with his digging, and so eager for Mum to go and take photographs, that he forgot we were his little helpless girls and told Mum that of course we’d be all right.

“Jay will keep an eye on them.” He even added that a bit of independence might be good for us. “Teach them a bit of responsibility.”

Wonders will never cease!!!

That weekend, me and Mum and Tash went to “view the apartment”, as they say. Ali was off somewhere with Louise Wagstaffe, her best friend from school. They are thick as thieves! Mum said, “Why not bring Louise with you?” but Ali said they had things to do. I don’t know how she could bear to miss out on all the fun. I mean, a place of our own! There was so much to talk about, so much to decide, like for instance who was going to sleep where, but Ali is the sort of person who really doesn’t care about her surroundings. I sometimes think she doesn’t even notice them, just so long as she has her beloved Star Treks.

Auntie Jay only lives on the other side of town, so the great advantage, from Mum and Dad’s point of view, was that we’d be OK for school. We’d only just started back for the summer term, and they are incredibly strict about not letting us miss any.

“Just remember –” it is their constant cry “ – we’re paying for you to go to that school!”

Yeah yeah yeah. They have to get their money’s worth, I do see that. Me and Tash wouldn’t have minded going off to Peru with them. Stuff school! Ali would probably have got fussed, though. She is quite a boffin, in her own peculiar way.

If Ali is a boffin, then Auntie Jay (who is Mum’s little sister) is your actual auntie from heaven. She is bliss! What other auntie would have offered the whole top floor of her house to three girls?

Once upon a time, Auntie Jay was “into property”. She used to buy it and sell it and make simply oodles of dosh, until after a bit she decided that just making money was rather ignoble, and also not terribly interesting, so she gave it all up and started to work for herself, instead. She runs this perfume company called Scents & Flowers, which advertises on the Internet but is actually located in her basement at home. Scents & Flowers doesn’t make very much money, but is very rewarding in all kinds of other ways. It does mean, however, that she has to let out most of her house as flats, keeping only the bottom bit for herself. It is lucky that it’s quite a large house, bought in the days when she was into property. It is also very old, being built in the year 1905. Which makes it, I think, Edwardian.

So we were going to inhabit the top floor. All by ourselves! Mum said we were extremely lucky that the flat was available. The last tenants had just moved out; we could see where they’d spilled stuff on the carpet and hung things on the wall.

“It really needs redecorating,” said Auntie Jay.

But Mum gave one of her hollow laughs, like ha ha you have to be joking, and said, “Wait till this lot have been in here a couple of weeks!”

“Mum, we’ll treat it like Buckingham Palace,” I said. “I promise!”

“Just don’t set fire to anything,” begged Auntie Jay, “that’s all I ask. Now, let’s take you on a guided tour.”

The main room, which was like a bedroom and sitting room all in one, was huge. It had a tiny little kitchen opening off it at one end, and an even tinier little bathroom at the other, plus a sort of broom cupboard with just enough space for a bed.

“I thought Ali could have that,” said Auntie Jay, “seeing as she’s the oldest. I’m afraid you two will have to share. Is that all right?”

There was just the one bed in the sitting room. It was a biggish sort of bed, but we’d never actually had to sleep together before.

“Blimey,” said Tash.

“You’d better not kick,” I said.

“You’d better not snore!”

Auntie Jay was beginning to look a bit flustered. “Maybe I ought to see if I can find another one somewhere.”

“Oh, don’t worry about those two,” said Mum. “They can make do. They’re practically joined at the hip, anyway.”

It’s true, me and Tash are the hugest of best friends. Mum says we are more like twins than sisters. Sometimes we pretend that we are twins, and then people just get so confused! You can see them looking from me to Tash and back again to me, not knowing what to believe. We happen to have been born on exactly the same day – yet we don’t look in the least bit alike. Tash is small and dark and elfin, with this dear little face, all beaming and full of innocence. (Totally misleading! Mum says she is a holy terror.) I am on the skinny side, with blonde hair, a bit straggly except when it has just been washed, and blue eyes. In my last school photo, although I say it myself, I looked positively angelic! This is also misleading, according to Mum. She says that when it comes to the holy terror stakes, “I couldn’t put a pin between you.” But physically we are completely and utterly different, and this is because we are actually not even sisters! We love to string people along and get them all wound up. And then, when we have teased them long enough, we put them out of their misery. We have this party piece that we do.

“Her mum – “ Tash says.

“Married her dad,” I say.

“Which means – “(both together)” – we’re not even related!”

Ha ha! Well, we think it’s funny. Sometimes we tell people the story of how Mum and Dad met up while me and Tash were still in Infants. We tell how they got talking while they waited for us outside the school gates. How Mum was on her own with me and Ali, Dad was on his own with Tash, and so in the end they decided to get married. How us three were bridesmaids, in little pink frocks. Just so-o-o sweet!

Yes, and it would have been even sweeter if Ali hadn’t gone and brought up her breakfast in the middle of the ceremony, though at least she managed to catch most of it in her bouquet, which Auntie Jay said showed great presence of mind. Personally I thought it was rather disgusting, but it is the sort of thing you expect from Ali. She is just so accident prone!

After we’d settled the question of beds, and had mastered the art of switching the cooker on and off and closing the fridge door properly – Mum seemed to think we needed lessons! She has such a poor opinion of us – we all went downstairs for a cup of tea. One of Auntie Jay’s friends was there, a woman called Jo Dainty, who used to be at uni with her. She said, “Well, I just hope you’re more capable than I was at your age … I couldn’t even boil an egg!”

“I can boil eggs,” I said. I didn’t mean to sound boastful but there are times when grown-ups really do seem to think we are quite useless. I mean, closing fridge doors, for goodness’ sake!

“Just don’t get too cocky,” said Mum. “This is going to be a steep learning curve.”

She added that she intended to make out a list of Do’s and Don’ts, and she advised Auntie Jay to do the same.

“I may even make a Book of Rules.”

She thought better of that idea, thank goodness! But the day she moved us into the flat she presented me and Tash with a couple of jotter pads and said she wanted us to keep a daily Food Diary and a weekly Activities Diary, so that when she got back she would be able to check a) what we had been eating and b) what we had been up to.

“Mum!” I said. “That’s spying!”

“It’s not spying,” said Mum. “It’s a way of keeping you focused.”

“So who gets to do what?” said Tash.

I said that I would do Activities, and she could do Food. Writing a diary was no problem for me, I already kept one anyway. Not that I would ever let Mum see my own personal diary! My personal diary is strictly private. I thought that for Mum it would be easy enough just to do extracts. Suitable ones, of course!

“What about Ali? What’s she going to do?”

Mum said that Ali was to be responsible for Fat Man. Fat Man is our cat. He is not really fat, it’s just that he has masses of fur, all puffed out like a big pompom, plus the most disagreeable expression, which in fact is every bit as misleading as Tash looking innocent and me looking angelic. In reality he is the sweetest cat and we all love him to bits! But it is Ali who specially dotes on him, so we didn’t mind her being put in charge. In any case, she would never have managed to keep a diary, she is far too disorganised. Unless, perhaps, she could have put it on the computer. Ali loves her computer! Needless to say, it was going to come with us. The computer and Star Trek are the two biggest things in her life – well, plus Fat Man.

Some people think that Ali is a bit odd, but really she’s just eccentric. We all feel very protective towards her. Dad once said that she is your actual “innocent abroad”, by which I think he meant that she is not at all streetwise. Unlike me and Tash! I wasn’t altogether surprised when Mum took me to one side, as we loaded the car for the second trip to Auntie Jay’s, and said, “Emily, I want you and Tash to do something for me … I want you to watch out for Ali. Make sure she’s all right. I know she’s older than you, but she is such a dreamer! So can I rely on you?”

I solemnly gave her my promise. Of course we would watch out for Ali! It made me feel good that Mum trusted me.

Or did she??? The last words she said, as we kissed her goodbye, were: “Just remember … no boys. I mean that, you two! I’m serious.”

PERSONAL PRIVATE DIARY (not to be confused with Mum’s!)

Week 1, Saturday

Our first day of independent living! Not that it has been all that independent so far as it was half-past two when Mum left and at seven o’clock Auntie Jay invited us down to have dinner with her and her friend Jo, so we only had just a few hours on our own. But that was enough to convince us that it is going to be the hugest fun!

Me and Tash started off by moving all the furniture about. It was Tash’s idea. She said the way you arrange your living space is an expression of your personality, and it was the other people, the people who had been there before us, who had put the bed in the corner and pushed the table against the wall. She insisted that the bed had to go under the windows, and the table had to go in the middle.

“That way, it’ll cover up the stain on the carpet.”

I do hope she isn’t going to become house-proud! She was actually talking of finding a rug to stand the table on. I had to remind her that we are only here for eight weeks. Tash said, “Yes, but we want the place to look nice.”

So long as she is not going to nag. I mean, there are more important things to worry about than stains on the carpet. Ali, of course, hasn’t even noticed the stain, she spent the entire afternoon sorting out her Star Treks. She has stacked them up all round her bed. She is hemmed in by them! She has brought 104 videos with her. More than enough for eight weeks, but she says it is best to be on the safe side. What she means by this, I have no idea. I’m sure Mum won’t be away longer than eight weeks; she was dithering even as we packed her into the car. But there is absolutely no need, we are perfectly capable of looking after ourselves. We have tins in the cupboard and food in the fridge, and Auntie Jay has said that every weekend we are to go downstairs and eat with her. Whatever happens, we will not starve!

This evening was a real dinner party. Very grown up! Auntie Jay said, “I’m giving it in your honour, I’ve invited everyone in the house.” We weren’t quite sure who else was in the house, but thought we had better get dressed up, just in case.

“It’s probably only old people,” said Tash.

“Yeah,” I said, “like married couples.”

“On the other hand, you never can tell.”

She didn’t have to explain what that meant! It meant, you never can tell when there might be a boy … Me and Tash practically live inside each other’s heads, we can always tune in to what the other is thinking – though perhaps upon reflection that’s not so difficult, since it usually concerns boys! We are on the lookout for boys wherever we go. On the way in to school, on the way back from school, in the shopping centre, even on the building site in Gliddon Road, where we once saw Justin Timberlake pushing a wheelbarrow. Big day! It wasn’t really Justin Timberlake, of course, but it sure did look like him. You just never know when someone gorgeous is going to pop up, and that being the case it seems only sensible to be prepared. Tash and I wouldn’t be seen dead wearing last year’s washed-out fashion statements! We dressed with as much care for Auntie Jay’s dinner party as we would for a rave.

“It’s only polite,” I said. “Exactly,” said Tash. And then we both looked at Ali and went, “Ali!” We screamed it at her. “You’re not going like that!” Ali said, “Like what?” Well! Like a derelict, if she really wanted to know. A horrible old saggy T-shirt and striped cotton trousers that ballooned round the bum.

“Haven’t you got anything better?” I wailed.

Ali seemed bewildered. She said, “It’s only Auntie Jay.”

And all the other people in the house … who knew what kind of gorgeous male might be there? I didn’t say this to Ali, however; there wouldn’t have been any point. She is so immature! It’s like, for her, boys are still an alien species. And to think she is almost fourteen!!!

Anyway, as it happened there wasn’t a gorgeous male in sight. Mostly it was what we had predicted: Auntie Jay’s friend, Jo Dainty; a married couple that live on the ground floor called Anne and Robert (quite nice but very boring), and a man from the second floor, directly beneath us, who is called Andrew and wears cardigans. Well, that’s what he was wearing tonight, all shapeless and woolly. I thought to myself that what he needed was a girlfriend to advise him on such matters and make him a bit more trendy. Auntie Jay, perhaps? She is unattached, and she obviously shares my views on cardigans cos at one point I heard her whisper, “Andrew, really! I thought you were going to donate that thing to charity?” He was quite shamefaced and clutched at his grungy old cardy with both hands in a defensive kind of way, as if she might be going to snatch it off him right there and then. I felt quite sorry for him. Auntie Jay can be really bossy!

Now I have come to the part which I have been dying to write. We have a piece of Extremely Interesting Information. In fact it is the BIG NEWS of the day: the cardigan man has a son who lives with him.

A boy! A real boy! Under the same roof! He was out with his friends this evening and so didn’t come to our little dinner party, boo hoo! And to think we got all dressed up … Of course we have no idea what he is like, he may be a total geek, but you can see that the cardigan man must have been quite fanciable when he was young, so we have high hopes. The annoying thing is that Ali – of all people – has actually met him. What a waste! She came back upstairs literally five minutes ahead of us, which means we only just missed him. She wouldn’t even have thought to tell us if she hadn’t heard me and Tash eagerly speculating what he might be like. All casually she goes, “I just bumped into him on the stairs.”

Breathlessly, Tash said, “What’s he like?”

Ali shrugged. “Just a boy.”

“How old is he?”

“Dunno,” said Ali. “Didn’t ask.”

“How old does he look?”

“Dunno. ’Bout my age?”

Yessss!!! Needless to say, we pumped like crazy, trying to find out whether he was gorgeous or geeky, but Ali is just so unsatisfactory. All she could say was, “He’s got brown hair.” The only thing she noticed … brown hair!

“Well, that’s cool,” said Tash.

“Yeah, like really unusual,” I said.

We were being sarcastic, but sarcasm rolls right off Ali.

She said, “I only saw him for about two seconds.”

Well. Two seconds is all that me and Tash would need!

“Do you think you would recognise him if you saw him again?” I said. Still being sarcastic.

“I’m not sure,” said Ali. “I might do.” She was being serious!

Tomorrow is Sunday, so with any luck we shall manage to catch a glimpse for ourselves. We plan on going up and down the stairs quite a lot, and generally hanging about on the landing.

On the whole, it has been a good day. Promising, I think I would call it. It’s now eleven o’clock and I am going to lie down. Ali is tucked away in her broom cupboard, with her Star Treks and Fat Man, and I am here in the big bed with Tash. Tash is giggling and twitching her toes. She had better not twitch in the night!

Sunday

She did! She twitched! In the middle of the night I woke up to find the bottom of the duvet dancing a jig. I had to kick her before she would stop. When I taxed her with it, she said that I’d made whiffling noises with my mouth.

“Like this!” And she began blowing air bubbles through her lips, like a goldfish.

I don’t believe that I whiffled. She is just saying it to get back at me! She definitely twitched because why else would the duvet have been going up and down? We are not going to fall out over it, however; me and Tash never fall out. In any case, as Tash so wisely said, it’s good practice for when we get married.

Talking of marriage … we still haven’t seen The Boy. I went up and down the stairs seventeen times, and hung about like mad on the landing, but he never appeared. But we have discovered his name! It is Gus. Gus O’Shaugnessy. We got O’Shaugnessy off the downstairs doorbell, otherwise I most probably wouldn’t have known how to spell it. Auntie Jay told us that he was called Gus. A good name! We think it’s really neat. Far more promising than, say, Kevin or Shane. I’m thinking of Kevin Trodd who lives in our road and is the sort of boy that would cut worms in half, just to see if they wriggled and Shane Mackie who is Avril Mackie’s brother and a bit of a nerd. Gus sounds like … well! We shall see. He has to emerge at some stage. When he does, we shall be watching!

We went down to Auntie Jay’s again for dinner. Her friend Jo was still there. She is quite funny and sharp and ever so left-wing. Dad would most probably have had a seizure! But me and Tash like her as she makes us laugh, and also she is not at all patronising. Like Anne and Robert last night kept asking us these really dumb questions about which year we were in, and when did we get to take our GCSEs, and what subjects we were best at, and what did we want to do when we left school, yawn yawn. I know they were only trying to be polite but you could tell they really weren’t in the least bit interested. Jo doesn’t bother with questions, she engages you in conversation and actually listens to what you say. We like that!

Me and Tash, of course, were desperate to learn more about The Boy (which is how we referred to him before we found out his name). However, we didn’t want to ask Auntie Jay ourselves in case she got it into her head that we were interested and flew into a Mum-like panic, so we got Ali to do it for us. We gave her strict instructions.

“Don’t just go jumping in. Be discreet.”

“Like how?” said Ali.

“Like sort of … building up slowly,” said Tash. “You could ask about his dad, and what he does, and how long he’s lived here, and then you could just, like … slip it in.”

“I happened to bump into his son on the stairs last night. That sort of thing. ”

“Then what?” said Ali.

“Oh, well, then you could sort of very casually ask what his name was, and how old he is, and where he goes to school, and—” Tash waved a hand. “Stuff like that.”

We should have known better than to trust Ali. She has no idea how to be discreet! First off we had to kick her, quite hard, under the table before we could get her going; and then when she did get going she went at it like a mad creature. There wasn’t any stopping her!

“What does that man do that lives here? The one that lives underneath us? The one with the son? Has he lived here long?”

“Andrew?” said Auntie Jay. “He moved in last year, after he broke up with his wife. He’s a writer, he writes educational books. A very interesting man! He—”

“What about his son?” said Ali.

Oh, God! I nearly died. I saw that Tash had gone bright red.

“What about him?” said Auntie Jay.

“Well, like, what is he called and how old is he, and all that sort of thing.”

“Ali!” Tash was mouthing at her across the table. I was kicking at her.

“He’s fourteen,” said Auntie Jay. “His name is Gus. What else would you like to know?”

Ali shot an inquiring glance at Tash. Tash, deliberately, kept her eyes on her plate.

Auntie Jay seemed amused. She said, “How about where he goes to school? Whether he’s got a girlfriend?”

“Yes!” Ali beamed, triumphantly, at me. I squirmed. Tash concentrated very hard on shovelling food into her mouth.

“He goes to Simon Standish,” said Auntie Jay. “As to whether he’s got a girlfriend –” She was laughing at us! “ – I’m afraid I really couldn’t say. But I’m sure you’ll make it your priority to find out!”

At least she didn’t fly into a panic and remind us of the No Boys rule. Just to reassure her, however, we have stuck a big sign on the outside of our door:

Ali wanted to know what it meant. She said, “What peril? What would happen if they came in?”

“We’d jump on them!” yelled Tash.

Ali plainly thinks we are mad. But we think she is a total whacko, so that’s OK!

Monday

Everyone at school is just so envious of us! Meg Hennessy couldn’t believe that we are truly independent.

“All on your own?” she kept saying. “Completely on your own?”

Daisy Markham was the only one that wasn’t envious. She said she thought that she would be a bit scared if she were left on her own, but as Meg pointed out, “There are three of them. It must be such fun!”

Daisy still seemed doubtful. She really is a complete wimp. She said, “I can’t imagine my parents leaving me to look after myself.”

Like this was some kind of criticism of Mum and Dad. I resented that! I said, “Mum knows she can trust us.”

“Yes, and it’s good training,” said Tash.

“But you could get up to anything,” said Daisy.

“Like we might have orgies,” I said; and me and Tash went off into a fit of the screaming giggles.

Tuesday

Kim Rogers asked us today if we were going to take the opportunity to have a party. Tash said, “You bet!” It is in fact no. 1 on our list of things to do. We’ll have to check it out with Auntie Jay, of course, but I’m sure she’ll say that we can. She might even let us invite boys, if it’s a party! After all, you can’t really have one without them. I have to say that Auntie Jay is pretty relaxed about most things. She has made up one or two rules that we have to follow, but they are mostly just common sense, such as always being sure to tell her if we are going out and where we are going. She has put a book on the hall table – the In-and-Out Book. We sign out, and sign in! We’re cool with this. Just because we are teenagers – almost – does not make us unreasonable. It’s only when grown-ups are unreasonable that we take umbrage. That is such a good word! Umbrage, umbrage. I have just said it to Tash, who says that she has never heard of it.

“What’s it mean?”

I said, “It means when you get the hump.”

Tash said that she had the hump right now, with Ali. “She’s doing baked beans again. She did baked beans last night. We’ll get bean-bound!”

We are taking it in turns to do the cooking, and this week it’s Ali’s turn. I’m all for cutting down on the workload, but I do think that baked beans two nights in a row is a bit much. I have just said this to Ali. I said, “Can’t you do something different?”

“Like what?” said Ali.

I said, “I dunno! Omelettes, or fish fingers, or something.”

Ali said that that would mean cooking. She said, “I told you before, I don’t cook. I just open tins.”

I said, “Well, couldn’t you at least have opened some other kind of tin?”

Honestly! It’s like she never even thought of it. Primly, she said that now she had opened the beans, we would have to eat them.

“You can’t waste food.”

I suggested she fed them to Fat Cat, but they are in tomato sauce and tomato sauce, it seems, is bad for cats.

“This is going to look really great in my Food Diary,” said Tash. “Monday: beans. Tuesday: beans. Wednesday—”

“Beans are good for you,” said Ali.

Tash said, “Beans give you wind.” And she pursed her lips and made a long, loud growly noise. I immediately did the same.

“That is so rude,” said Ali.

Tash said, “Beanz meanz fartz!” and we both collapsed.

Wednesday

Email from Mum. She says she is not going to email us every day, just once a week, and she would like us to email her back once a week. We have delegated this task to Ali. We feel it is the least she can do (to make up for the beans) and have told her that it will be good for her. She was quite meek about it and promised that tonight she will open a different kind of tin.

Me and Tash have just been down to see Auntie Jay and ask her about the party. She has said yes. Hooray! She has also said that we can invite whoever we want, including boys, but that a) it will have to finish by nine o’clock and b) she will have to look in on us every now and again, just to check.

“I won’t cramp your style, don’t worry! But I did promise your mum I’d keep an eye on you.”

The party is to be on Saturday week. We are quite excited! We have already made out a list of the people we intend to invite. They are: Meg Hennessy, Kim Rogers, Zoella Barling, Ishara Khan, Avril Mackie and Shauna Bates. Meg, Kim and Zoella because we are particular friends with them, the other three because they have brothers! Ishara’s is rather plain and has spots, and Avril’s is a bit of a nerd, but Shauna’s is quite nice, and in any case we reckon that any boys are better than no boys at all. We are not inviting Daisy Markham because we don’t think she deserves it, and anyway she doesn’t have any brothers.

“What about him downstairs?” said Tash.

A knotty problem! We still haven’t set eyes on him. It’s really annoying as we are for ever racing up and down the stairs or out on to the landing. We have found a secret way of referring to him, for when Ali is around. We refer to him as “Gosh”. From his name: Gus O’SHaugnessy. Pretty neat, we think! The way it works is like this. One of us, Tash for instance, will come into the room, and I will go, “Gosh?” meaning, “Did you see him?” and she will shake her head, meaning “No I didn’t.” Then a few minutes later it will be my turn. I will stand up, and stretch, and say, “Gosh,” meaning, “Now I am going to go and have a look.” And Ali will be completely mystified! I suppose it is a bit mean, keeping her in the dark, but really she is not in the least bit interested. Tash and I are just waiting for the day when one of us bursts in and cries, “Gosh!!!” meaning that at long last there has been a sighting.

We could, of course, just go downstairs and knock on the door and give him an invitation. We have discussed this, but Tash is worried in case he turns out to be hideous. I said, “How hideous could he be?” and we speculated for a while, and frightened ourselves with visions of a Kevin Trodd type creature, so now we have decided that we will give him until the weekend to show himself. If by then we still haven’t managed to check him out we shall have to ask Auntie Jay. We would really rather not as we know she’ll only laugh, but we certainly don’t want any Kevin Trodds turning up!

Thursday

Meg has promised that she will try to get her cousin Tom to come to the party and Zoella says that she knows a boy she can bring, so things are definitely starting to look up! We asked Ali this evening who she’s going to invite. She said she hadn’t thought of inviting anyone. She thought it was our party, not hers.

It made us feel guilty, when she said that. We do have this tendency to leave her out of things.

“You must at least ask Louise, “I said.

Tash said yes, and anyone else she could think of. “Like any boys you might know, for example.”

We live in hope!

I have just been reading through Mum’s list of Do’s and Don’ts, which she stuck on the back of the door before she left. This is the first time I’ve really looked at them. These are some of the things that we must DO:

. Check cooker is turned off before leaving home

. Check taps are turned off in sink and bath . Check TV is turned off

. Check windows are closed

. Check door of food cupboard is closed

. Check door of fridge is shut properly.

Oh, and CHECK IN WITH AUNTIE JAY BEFORE GOING TO SCHOOL AND AGAIN ON RETURN. We have had long lectures on that one.

As for the others … all I can say is, well! I can understand about the food cupboard, cos if Fat Man got in there and found anything even remotely consumable he would eat himself silly, but the door of the fridge? Pur-lease! Does she really think we are dumb enough to leave a fridge door open???

Still haven’t seen him downstairs.

Friday

Got back from school to find huge puddle of water on carpet. Thought at first that Fat Man had had an accident, but not even Fat Man could wee that much. In any case, he has his litter tray in the bathroom. It was Tash who traced it to the fridge … the door was open just the tiniest crack, and all the insides had melted. I cried, “Which blithering idiot didn’t shut the door properly?” I knew it couldn’t be me. I mean, I had read Mum’s list of Do’s and Don’ts.

“Who was the last one to go there?” said Tash.

We both looked at Ali.

“Who put the milk away after breakfast?”

“You did,” said Ali.

“Me?” I was outraged. How dare she blame me? “What about the butter? Who put the butter away?”

“The same person that put the milk away?” said Tash.

It’s not true! I’m sure I didn’t put the butter away. I didn’t even touch the blasted butter. I bet it was Tash!

We have come to the conclusion that there is obviously something wrong with the fridge door, since it takes such a superhuman effort to close it. We’d rather not tell Auntie Jay in case she thinks it’s something we’ve done, so Ali has come up with the bright idea – she gets them, occasionally – of leaving a bucket of water jammed in front of it. It is simple, but it does seem to work. In the meantime we have mopped up the floor and just hope that nothing has leaked down through the ceiling into the O’Shaugnessys’ flat, but we don’t think it can have done as Mr O’Shaugnessy would surely have been up here complaining?

Still no sighting of Gosh. Is he some kind of recluse???

Week 2, Saturday

Well, it has finally happened. We have seen him! Tash came bursting into the room going, “GOSH!” in tones of great excitement. It was the moment we have been waiting for, and I am pleased to record that I was ready for it. Tash plunged back out, and I immediately plunged after her. We bundled together, bumping and jostling, down the stairs, and there he was, standing in the hall, sorting through the post on the hall table. I think he was quite surprised when we came cantering up. He spun round, dropping a handful of letters as he did so, and it is definitely a case of oo-er, mushy peas and soft ice cream! How Ali could have described him as “just a boy” is quite beyond us. Surely even she could see that he is totally gorgeous? His hair, for instance, is not just a boring brown, as reported by Ali, it is golden brown, like he’s had highlights put in it, except you can see that it’s quite natural. And he has this little dimple thing in his chin, which is just so cute! I am not good at descriptions, but I think it’s enough to say that both me and Tash have gone into total meltdown. We have turned to liquid!

Before we liquidised, we managed – just about – to get through our double act. Tash said, “Hi!”, beaming fit to bust.

Gus said, “Hi,” still seeming a bit, like, startled. I guess we did rush him, rather.

Tash was the one who got in first, though it doesn’t actually matter which of us starts cos we know the script off by heart.

“This is my sister, Emily –”

“And this is my sister, Tash.”

“You probably don’t think we look much like each other?”

“Even though we were born on exactly the same day.”

“Exactly the same year!”

“Which ought to make us twins.”

Pause.

“But we’re not!”

Surprise, surprise!

“See, her mum –”

“Married her dad.”

“So in point of fact – ”

“We are not actually related at all!”

Ho ho! Sometimes people laugh, and sometimes they look kind of nervous, like they think we’re a bit mad, or something. Gus just blinked and said, “Cool!”

I nodded. “We think so.” And then I nudged at Tash, and she nudged at me, and both together we said, “Would you like to come to a party we’re having?”

It’s funny how often we find ourselves doing this sort of thing … talking like we’re a chorus. We don’t do it on purpose; it just seems to happen.

“So would you like to?” said Tash.

Gus said yeah, great, that’d be cool. He then added that in fact he had already been asked. “Just now, by your sister.”

“Ali?” She’d gone off a few minutes earlier to meet her friend Louise in town. How sneaky of her!

“I suppose she’s your sister?” said Gus.

“Yeah,” I said, “she’s mine.” I said it with some reluctance. I am not always that keen on laying claim to Ali. I was desperately trying to remember what she had been wearing and thinking please, please not let it be her horrible saggy T-shirt and the bum-baggy trousers again. It creates such a bad impression, when me and Tash try so hard to make the best of ourselves.

The really important thing, however, is that Gus is coming. Hip, hip, hooray! A boy all of our own. Not a cousin or a brother, but a real genuine boy invited by us. Well, by Ali, I suppose, but it comes to the same thing.