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      Mum straightened up and took an assessing look at herself in her full-length wardrobe mirror.

      ‘How do I look?’

      I’ve never liked the dress. It’s a really ghastly oxblood red and that terrible middle aged length that makes you look as if you end at mid-calf.

      ‘It’s not exactly power dressing, is it?’

      ‘What do you think I should wear?’

      ‘Your black suit.’

      ‘The skirt’s too short.’

      ‘Rubbish. You’ve got good legs Mum, flaunt them. And you need mascara too.’

      It took about half an hour to get Mum looking halfway decent, and I had to lend her my lip-gloss. She took another long assessing look at herself in the mirror.

      ‘I look like Joan Collins.’

      ‘Well look how successful she is.’

      ‘True. And — oh my God! Look at the time! I’ve got to dash. They’ve both had tea. Now make sure Jamie holds your hand anywhere near a road. And …’

      ‘Mum … Do you think I’m stupid or what?’

      ‘Or what,’ she said, giving me a hasty kiss.

      ‘Thanks. Knock ‘em dead.’

      ‘Do you really think I look OK?’

      ‘Of course!’

      ‘Not mutton dressed as lamb?’

      ‘You looked like lamb dressed as mutton in that red thing. Raw mutton.’

      ‘OK … Here goes.’

      We could walk to the MGM from our house. Jamie and Gemma kept running on ahead so I was forced to run with them. Going with me instead of Mum made it an extra-special treat, and I knew that it was going to be a struggle to stop them getting out of hand.

      We arrived at the cinema hot and out of breath to find there was a queue and it had started to drizzle too. We’d hardly joined the tail-end before Jamie started to put the pressure on for me to go inside and stock up with supplies of popcorn.

      ‘It’s raining,’ I pointed out. ‘It’ll only get soggy. Wait till we’re inside.’

      The queue was moving really slowly and there were at least forty people ahead of us. My hair had started sticking to my head in a most unflattering fashion. That’s when Gemma nudged me hard.

      ‘Look,’ she said.

      It was him. He was walking down the road with this incredible girl. She had really high-heeled boots on and a minimal skirt topped by a black leather jacket. And she was walking with him as if she owned him.

      They joined the queue opposite ours — the one for White Knuckle, a really tough suspense movie just released. The one I’d been planning to see with Rosie until tonight’s alternative entertainment cropped up.

      Gemma looked at me balefully. I ignored her. The last thing I needed was her sympathy. ‘She could be his sister,’ she whispered.

      Out of the corner of my eye I could see that the girl had started practically rubbing her body against his. Some sister. Get any closer and she’d be inside his jacket. She kept pulling at his sleeve to get eye contact.

      ‘Huh,’ I said. All I was interested in at that point was getting into the cinema without being noticed.

      But as luck would have it, their queue and our queue coincided at the MGM doors at precisely the same moment.

      ‘Hi …’ I heard him say.

      ‘Hello …’ said Gemma.

      I vaguely murmured a cross between the two that came out like a painful hybrid ‘Hi-lo”. Hoping that if I didn’t look at him, he wouldn’t look at me, I gazed at the pavement which was dotted with blobs of discarded chewing-gum — riveting.

      ‘Are you going to see Babe?’ I heard Jamie ask. (Thanks Jamie.)

      ‘No, as a matter of fact, but I’ve heard it’s good …’ he was saying.

      There’s a pig in it that can talk and everything.’

      ‘Really? How do they do that?’

      ‘Come on Matt. We’re losing our place,’ the girl’s voice whined.

      ‘Dunno,’ said Jamie. ‘I suppose they must’ve taught it to.’ He was doing everything in his power to prolong this agonising encounter.

      ‘Must’ve been some bright pig,’ said ‘Matt’. I knew his name now — Matt. He was being really nice to Jamie for some reason.

      There was more hassle coming from the girl, who was through the doors by now.

      ‘OK, I’m coming …’ I heard him say, and then they went ahead of us and bought their tickets and disappeared arm-in-arm into Screen 2.

      Gemma gazed after him. ‘He is gorgeous,’ she sighed.

      ‘But he’s got a girlfriend,’ I pointed out. ‘So forget it.’

      Gemma then proceeded to give me the benefit of worldly-wise advice gleaned from her obsessive romance reading — like how ‘true love’ always had to overcome all sorts of totally impossible obstacles which made it all so much more worthwhile in the end.

      ‘Thanks a lot Gem, that’s a big comfort.’

      I didn’t have the heart to point out that, in real life, guys like him went out with girls like the one he was with — and girls like me went to see Babe with their kid brother and sister.

       Chapter Seven

      Saturday morning. Mum likes to use Saturdays to catch up on chores. So it had become a sort of ritual that Dad and I should make the routine shopping expedition to the supermarket. I had an ulterior motive, of course, like making sure decent shampoo and conditioner found its way into the trolley, not just family stuff — and slipping in things like Fruit Comers and Coco Pops when he wasn’t looking. If Dad had his own way he’d come out with an entire trolley of unwashed, unwrapped, organically-grown fruit and veg. He has this real thing about packaging, keeps ranting on about what a waste of the worlds resources it is. In Dad’s ideal world, we’d all have to juggle our groceries home with our pockets filled with detergent. So for Dad, Saturday mornings at Sainsbury’s isn’t just shopping — its a crusade.

      We’d stocked up on fruit and veg and Dad had given a lady who was helping herself to a stash of special mushroom bags a lecture on criminal waste — when I spotted Matt.

      He was with that alkie guy — the one who looked as if he’d been guzzling vodka on number twenty-fives front wall. The alkie guy actually had an open can of lager in his hand, and between bouts of slopping it everywhere, he was drinking out of it. Their trolley was packed sky-high with booze. A third guy, who was huge and ferocious-looking with matted dreadlocks, was tagging along behind. I knew Dad would throw a wobbly if he saw them. I steered our trolley into safer territory between the cereal aisles and started up a distracting argument about the virtues of Kelloggs versus Own Brand Cereals. I knew this would get him going.

      ‘They’re all made by the same people, Natasha.’

      ‘No they’re not. Says so on the packet.’

      ‘It’s basically the same stuff inside, though.’

      ‘It can’t be.’

      Dad was well into a tirade against branded goods when we moved on to Jams and Preserves. Since it was Saturday morning the place was pretty crowded. At this rate I just might get Dad out of the supermarket without him spotting

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