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panto for Christmas,” chirrups Mum.

      “Wow,” says I.

      “They’re desperate for female voices!”

      Mum is so transparent.

      “You can sing,” she says. “Why don’t you try joining?”

      I said, “Because I have a voice like a corn-crake.”

      “No, you haven’t!” said Mum. “You’ve got quite a nice voice.”

      “Pilch is the one who can sing,” I said.

      Of course, she jumped on this immediately.

      “So you can both join!”

      “Mum!” I yelled. “I haven’t got time!”

      She’s always doing this to me. I wish she wouldn’t! I know she means well. I know she only has my interests at heart. What she considers to be my interests. But I wish she would just leave me alone!

      “You know what they say,” sighed Mum. “All work and no play…”

      I happen to like work. In any case, you have to study if you’re going to get anywhere. And I am going to get somewhere! I am absolutely determined.

      I said this to Mum and she said, “Oh, Cresta, you’re so focused!”

      I’m still trying to work out what she meant. Like, did she mean “I’m so lucky to have a 14-year-old daughter who thinks of something other than boys and clothes and make-up”? Or did she mean, “I wish I had a 14-year-old daughter that was a bit more like other people’s 14-year-old daughters”?

      I think that is what she meant. I think what she would really like is for me to be all dizzy and dumb. Well, maybe not dumb, exactly; but if we could have these cosy conversations about women’s magazine type stuff. A hundred different ways to do your hair, or how to get your man in six easy lessons. That kind of thing.

      I know I’m a disappointment to her, but I can only be how I am. And how I am is me. I wish Mum could accept that!

       Friday

      Harry the Hunk came round this evening and he and Mum went to the pub. Mum wanted to know what I was going to do. I said, “Oh, I’ll probably get on with my homework.”

      Harry said, “Homework on a Friday? You’re keen!”

      “Oh, she is,” said Mum. She said it kind of… wistfully.

      “I’ve got simply stacks,” I said.

      I haven’t, actually; it’s too early in the term. What it was, I’d had this thought about Carlito and I wanted to write it down to read to Pilch tomorrow. I have thoughts about Carlito almost every night! Sometimes I find it hard to remember that he is only a figment of my imagination and not a real person. I only hope I never have to have an anaesthetic as I dread to think what kind of stuff I might start splurging on about as I come round!!! How embarrassing! Some of the things that go on in my head…

      This latest thought, I am glad to say, is perfectly respectable. It came to me in bed, as thoughts so often do. (Bed is a good place for having thoughts.) It started with the discovery that Carlito cannot read or write, and just went on from there. This whole scene unrolled itself in my head. Pilch is bound to shriek “What?” And then when she has got over her shock she will instantly demand to know “Why?” and I will have no answer for her. I have no idea why! It is just something that happened.

      It is a bit weird, in a way, since I am sure that in real life I would find it extremely difficult to converse with someone that was unable to read or write. Whatever would we talk about??? I think what it is, I think it is the Heathcliff factor. Like last term when we were reading Wuthering Heights, Mrs Adey said that Heathcliff represented a “primitive force”. Carlito is a primitive force!

      Boys like Brad Sullivan simply pale into insignificance. This is something Mum couldn’t even begin to understand. The power of the imagination!

      What I pictured was this sultry scene in a Spanish night club, where Carlito has gone with a party of his friends. One of them, who is secretly jealous of Carlito’s smouldering good looks and the way he can have any girl he wants, tricks him into somehow revealing the fact that he cannot read. (Not yet sure how. I shall have to work this out!) The so-called friend, who is English and not very attractive, sneers in a superior way, thinking the rest of the party will also sneer and that the girls will no longer find him attractive, Carlito I mean, but of course they do.

      Carlito himself is not in the least bit abashed. As Harry would say, in his coarse earthy way, “He doesn’t give a monkey’s!” This is on account of his wild gypsy blood, being very proud and fiery. He simply tosses his head and snarls -

      I am not sure what he snarls! Something rude in Spanish. I wish I knew something rude in Spanish! All I can think of is “Tu madre!” which I read somewhere is swearing, though I don’t quite see how it can be since all it means is “your mother”. But it sounds good. In Spanish!

      At any rate it will have to do for now. Perhaps later I will think of something better.

       Saturday

      Mum and Harry came back from the pub last night with some friends they had met. They sat up for simply hours shrieking and talking and playing music very loudly, so that in the end I had to go downstairs and ask them if they would mind being a bit quiet as I was trying to sleep.

      “It is gone midnight,” I said.

      They seemed for some reason to think this was funny. But they did at least turn the music down.

      Went into town after lunch and met Pilch. We mooched round the shops, ending up in Paperback Parade where we each bought a book. I bought War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, and Pilch bought Anna Karenina, also by Tolstoy. We have made a vow to read them! War and Peace has almost fifteen hundred pages. One thousand four hundred and eighty-five, to be precise. Gulp! But last term Mrs Adey said it was a great book, so I am sure it will be interesting.

      Bumped into Cindy Williams and Tasha Lansmann in the shopping centre. They were with boys. They are a bit like Mum: boys are all they ever think about. Cindy has put white stripes in her hair. She looks like a zebra crossing.

      Told Pilch about Mum trying to get me to join the youth thing, just because of Brad Sullivan, and Pilch said her mum is the same. I don’t see how she can be! Pilch’s mum isn’t man-mad. I said this to Pilch and she said, “No, but my sister is and in some ways that is even worse.”

      She said that Janine spends all her time, practically, in front of the mirror practising make-up and how to look flirty.

      “And she’s only twelve years old! It makes you feel like you’re abnormal, or something.”

      “It’s surely not abnormal,” I said, “to want to get somewhere?”

      I reminded Pilch of our pact that we made last term. Our sacred, solemn pact to foreswear the opposite sex until we have taken our A-levels and got to uni.

      “It’s the only way,” I said.

      Pilch sighed. She said, “Yes, I know.”

      “I mean, if we’re going to be brain surgeons -”

      I said this to cheer her up and bring a smile to her face. Becoming brain surgeons was what we always used to say when people asked us. We didn’t mean it literally. It was just, like, a symbol of our determination to go places. To get somewhere. To be someone. Probably, in my case, a great writer, or maybe a TV journalist. I still haven’t made up my mind. Neither has Pilch. Sometimes she thinks she’ll be an architect, building glass bubbles and upsetting Prince Charles, other times she thinks she’ll be an archaeologist, digging up

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