Читать книгу What Not to Do If You Turn Invisible - Ross Welford, Ross Welford - Страница 19

Guests:

About twenty people. Apart from me and a care assistant called Chastity, everyone else was properly grown up or ancient.

What I wore:

A lilac dress with flowers on it with a matching Alice band. Gram thought I looked lovely. I didn’t. Girls who look like me should just be allowed to wear jeans and T-shirts until the whole gawky-skinny-spotty thing runs itself out. As it is, I looked like a cartoon version of an ugly girl in a pretty dress.

What I said:

‘Hello, thank you for coming … Yes, I’m nearly thirteen now … No, I haven’t decided my GCSEs yet … No, [shy, fake grin] no boyfriend yet …’ (Can I just say at this point: why do old people think they can quiz you about boyfriends and stuff? Is it some right you acquire as soon as you hit seventy?)

What I did:

I handed round food. Gram had asked me what she should serve, but my suggestion of Jelly Bellys and Doritos had been ignored. Instead there were olives, bits of bacon wrapped round prunes (yuk – whose idea was that?), and teeny-tiny cucumber sandwiches. The chances of me sneaking much of this into my own mouth were slim to zero.

What Great-gran did:

She sat in the centre of the room, smiling a bit vacantly and nodding as people came up to her and congratulated her. I was thinking she was not ‘all there’, not aware of what was going on. As it turned out, I was wrong about that.

The photograph:

A photographer from the Whitley News Guardian took a picture of me and Gram and Great-gran next to a large cake. He had a tiny digital camera instead of a big one with a flash that goes whumph! I was a bit disappointed: like, if you’re going to be in the local newspaper, it should feel dramatic, like a special moment, you know? (Irony alert: as it happens, that photograph is going to turn out to have very dramatic consequences.