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and they loom over you and breathe over you as you go through the records. And when they find one they think they might want, they take it out of its sleeve and hold it up to the light and peer at it this way and that way, sometimes through a magnifying glass. If they discover even the tiniest mark, totally invisible to the naked eye, they point it out, with great earnestness, to the person that’s selling it.

      “Look at this,” they go, in their nerdy flutey voices. “There’s a mark about half a centimetre in. Can you see it? Just there, where my finger is… is it fly doings, or is it a scratch?”

      I didn’t know that flies did things on records but apparently they do. And then it sticks and causes the needle to go thunk or to fly into the air.

      I looked in vain, amongst all the anorakys, for anyone resembling Carlito. I look for boys who look like Carlito everywhere I go! They are very rare in this part of the world, though I did see a pizza delivery boy the other day who looked like him from a distance, only when I got close he turned out to be all nerdy and spotty. A big disappointment! But I live in hope.

      Mum, meanwhile, lives in hope of finding this one particular album called Driftwood.

      “If you come across it,” she told me, “buy it! No matter what the price.”

      She gave me some money and sent me off, but I didn’t find it, and nor did she or Harry. I looked ever so hard! I mean, I do like to make her happy if I can. I waded through stacks and stacks of grungy old fly-spattered records, but it wasn’t there.

      “What’s so special about it, anyway?” I said.

      “It’s part of my youth,” said Mum. “Just imagine, Cresta! You’re missing out on so much! You won’t have anything to look back and remember when you’re my age.”

      Oh, yes, I shall! I shall remember reading War and Peace.

      I am now on page one hundred and forty-three.

      Phew!

       Monday

      (3rd week)

      Mum said to me over tea, “Harry and I have been invited to a party on Saturday.”

      I said, “That’s nice.”

      I know that Mum likes parties. She is a very sociable sort of person, which is one of the reasons I am such a huge disappointment to her. Mum really loves to be with a crowd! I just sort of shrivel. I am one of those people, if ever I go to a party (which mostly I don’t, because no one invites me) who end up standing in the corner with no one to talk to. It makes me feel very self-conscious. Like everyone’s looking at me thinking “Look at that boring girl standing in the corner.” I know that is what Cindy Williams and Tasha Lansmann would be thinking.

      I don’t know why it is that I can’t behave the same as other people. Sometimes I really wish I could! I am sure it would make my life a whole lot easier, plus it would make Mum happy and stop her worrying over me. I hate it when she worries!

      She started worrying this evening, about the party.

      “I really don’t like leaving you on your own! Couldn’t you ask Charlie to come round? Ask her to stay the night!”

      I will ask Pilch, as I think it would be quite fun; but as I said to Mum, “I’m fourteen. You don’t have to think you can’t go places, just because of me.”

      “I sometimes feel so guilty,” said Mum. “I always seem to be out on the razzle!”

      I told her that that was all right, she was obviously a razzling kind of person. I said, “It’s like having a teenager for a mother.”

      Mum liked that. She laughed and said, “I still feel like a teenager!” And then she went all sort of regretful and said, “But it ought to be you going out, not me!”

      I immediately thought, Oh, please! Don’t start!

      She didn’t. Not exactly. She just launched into this speech about being a single mum and how difficult it sometimes was, knowing what to do for the best.

      “What I desperately don’t want,” she said, “is to stop you going out and having fun.”

      “I do have fun,” I said.

      “Yes, but you know what I mean,” said Mum. “I feel you’re missing out on so much! And it bothers me that it might be my fault.”

      I said, “It’s not your fault, and I’m not missing out, and in any case we are quite different people.”

      Mum said, “Yes! I’m just a fun lover. You’re far more sensible!”

      Even if I hadn’t been, she said, there was one thing she had always sworn, right from the beginning, and that was that she would never be an overprotective mother. She looked at me very solemnly as she said this.

      “You don’t think I’m overprotective, do you? Tell me, Cresta! Tell me if you think I’m overprotective!”

      I said, “No, Mum, I don’t think you’re overprotective.”

      All the same, it is just as well, I can’t help feeling, that I keep my thoughts about Carlito under lock and key… Mum would probably have heart attacks if she knew what my imagination got up to!

       Tuesday

      Asked Pilch about Saturday. She said she’ll have to check with her Mum but she’s pretty sure it will be OK. Cindy Williams overheard us and shrieked, “Hey! Wow! What are you two up to?” And then she cackled and said, “Whatever it is, don’t do anything I wouldn’t!”

      I didn’t deign to reply, but Pilch can never resist it.

      “We’re having a sleepover,” she said.

      “Ooh!” Cindy made her eyes go big. “Just the two of you? Or can anyone join in?”

      “I’m afraid we shan’t have room for you lot,” said Pilch. “We’ve invited the local football team round.”

      “Oh, wow!” cried Cindy.

      I asked Pilch afterwards why she’d gone and said that about the football team, but she didn’t seem to know. It is the silly sort of remark one makes to people such as Cindy. You can’t talk sensibly to them.

      This evening I was sitting at the dining-room table doing my homework when I suddenly became aware that the room was filled with vapour. I immediately rushed to the door screeching, “Steam! Steam everywhere!”

      Mum was on the phone. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and hissed, “Well, turn the kettle off, then!”

      I didn’t even know the kettle was on. I mean, I was doing my homework! I was writing an essay! I can’t be expected to concentrate on two things at once. It was quite uncalled for, what Mum said, about me being wilfully stupid and going round with my head in the clouds thinking I am so superior to everyone else.

      I said, “I don’t think I’m superior.”

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