Is Anybody There?: Seeing is believing - Jean Ure

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relied upon. She wouldn’t normally let me go anywhere near a minicab, but Albert is like a mother hen. When I was little he quite often used to pick me up after school, and always got most tremendously fussed if I wasn’t waiting exactly where I had been told to wait.

      “A lot of bad people around! You can’t be too careful.”

      I couldn’t help feeling that a cab all the way from the High Street out to Tanfield was a bit of an extravagance when there was a perfectly good bus that would take me practically door to door, but I didn’t say anything as I knew Mum would freak if I even so much as hinted at jumping on a bus. Instead, I concentrated all my energies on what I was going to wear.

      It is so important, deciding what you are going to wear! There are different clothes for different occasions, and if you don’t get it right you can find that you have turned up in jeans and trainers while everyone else is dressed to kill. Or even worse, you are dressed to kill and everyone else is in jeans and trainers. That is truly squirm-making!

      Actually, however, since the contents of my wardrobe would probably fit quite comfortably into a couple of carrier bags, I didn’t really have much choice. I only seem to have clothes for two occasions, one of them being school and the other being – everything else! Which is OK as I am not really a dressing-up sort of person, being tallish and skinnyish without actually having any figure; not to speak of. No bum, no boobs. Just straight up and down. What can you do?

      I used to envy the others so much! They might not be drop dead gorgeous, but even Dee, who is so slim and bendy, has some shape. She also has silvery blonde hair, cut very smooth and shiny, and always looks just so so neat. Chloe is just the opposite.

      She is very small and chunky and has no dress sense whatsoever, but because of being vivacious manages to look really bright and perky, like a little animated pixie. I probably look more like sort of … stick arrangement. Mum says that I will “grow into myself”. Meaning, I think, that I will be OK when I finally manage to achieve something resembling a figure.

      Meanwhile, as I await that glorious day, I tend to wear … you’ve got it! Jeans and trainers. Which is what I put on for the celebration. Dee once told me that I looked good in jeans as I have these very long legs, like I’m walking on stilts. They are, however, not particularly inspiring – the jeans, that is. So to go with them I found a sparkly top, pale pink, that I’d hardly ever worn. I did my hair into a plait, one of those that’s tight into your head rather than a pigtail. I think pigtails are a bit childish, all thumping about, but Dee said that having my hair pulled back made me look sophisticated. To top it off, I wore this very chic hat that I found in a charity shop. It’s like a man’s hat, I think it’s called a fedora. It’s got a high crown and a small brim, and is made from soft felt. It looks really great with jeans!

      I was quite pleased when I studied myself in the mirror. The only thing wrong was the trainers. What I would really like to have had, what I had been positively lusting after ever since I’d seen them in a shoe shop in town, was a pair of glitter boots. You could get them in either silver with red tassels, or gold with green. It was the silver ones I was lusting after!

      I’d shown them to Mum, who predictably had said they were totally impractical and wouldn’t last five minutes. But five minutes was all I needed! I was busy saving up, and was praying they would still be there when I’d reached my goal. Saving money, though, is so difficult. I kept finding other things that I just desperately had to have! Entire continents could come and go by the time I managed to get fifty pounds in my account.

      So I wore my tatty old trainers and my tatty old denim jacket, and Mum got the car out and drove me into town. As she dropped me off outside the Pizza Palace she said, “Shall I ring Albert and book a cab for you?” I was horrified. I said, “Mum, no! I can do it.” The last thing I wanted was Albert turning up, all mother hennish, and dragging me off before we’d properly finished. It’s horrid if you’re the first one to leave. You imagine all the others staying on to have fun after you’ve gone.

      Mum said, “Well, all right, have it your way – but I want you back no later than nine o’clock. You’d better ring for a cab at 8.30, just to be on the safe side. And don’t you pull that face at me, my girl! You may think you’re some kind of big shot, being in Year 8, but you’re still only th—”

      “Yeah, yeah!” I hopped out of the car and slammed the door shut behind me. I’d just seen Mel Sanders go mincing into the restaurant, all got up like a Christmas tree.

      What was more, she was wearing my boots. I could see the little tassels swinging as she walked. Fortunately she’d gone for the gold ones, not the silver; all the same, it was a bad moment.

      “Joanne?” Mum was banging on the window at me, pointing at her watch. I flapped a hand.

      “It’s all right, I heard you. Don’t fuss!”

      Of the fifteen of us, only ten actually turned up, but ten was probably about right, given the amount of noise we made! To be honest, I didn’t actually realise we were making any until a woman at a table nearby came over and asked if we could “be a little bit quieter … I can hardly hear myself think!”

      So then I stopped to listen, and I had to admit, she had a point. I have noticed that adults are very sensitive to decibel levels, and ours was certainly well up. Chloe, sitting next to me, was screeching at the top of her voice, which is quite loud enough even when she isn’t screeching. Louise Patterson, at the far end of the table, was doing her best to stuff half her pizza into someone’s mouth, Carrie Newman was having hysterics (well, that’s what it sounded like), Lee Williams seemed to have got drunk on Coca Cola and Marsha Tate was tipping backwards on her chair, and honking like a car horn.

      Our mums would not have been pleased. Nor would our class teacher, Mrs Monahan. She was always on about “gracious behaviour in public”. We weren’t behaving very graciously! But most of us hadn’t ever been out for a meal on our own before, i.e. without grown-ups to keep us in their vice-like grip. I know I hadn’t. I suppose it rather went to our heads, but it was the best fun.

      I have to say, however, that it would have been even huger fun if Mel Sanders hadn’t been there. That girl is so … obnoxious! She is so obvious. Where members of the opposite sex are concerned, I mean. She is one of those people, she only has to catch the merest glimpse of a boy in the far dim distance and she goes completely hyper. If there is one actually sharing her breathing space, well, wow! That is it. Fizz, bang, wallop, firing on all cylinders. Eyes flashing, teeth gleaming, boobs thrust out as far as they will go. (Which isn’t very far, as a matter of fact, but she makes it look as if it is.) I guess it’s something to do with her hormones, she probably has too many of them, and she just can’t help herself. For all I know, it could even be some kind of disease. All I can say is that the effect is extremely irritating since boys, poor things, seem incapable of taking their eyes off her. It’s like she has some kind of mesmeric power.

      In this case it was specially irritating as clever Chloe had

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