Girl, 15: Charming but Insane Read Online Free PDF Page A

helped. Jess limped off up the road. At the far end of the street was a main road with shops and some public toilets. She’d go and change into her jeans and stuff there. Maybe she could even live there. Where was she going to spend the rest of the night? Should she go to Flora’s and wait for her to come home from the party? If only Flora’s mum and dad would adopt her. If only a kindly and amazingly wealthy old gentleman could find her and take her home, like in a Victorian novel.
    No, wait, that sounded a bit sinister. Maybe a kind and amazingly wealthy old lady instead. A kind old lady film director. A kind old lady film director from Hollywood. Who would say, ‘ I can make you big in movies. We can get you a new set of boobs, no problem. Choose a pair from this catalogue. I have a house by the ocean and you’ll have your own suite there, with a balcony where you can breakfast on freshly-squeezed Californian orange juice and toasted muffins, while turquoise birds sing sweetly in the lemon groves nearby. And as I have no children, Jess, I am going to make you my heir .’
    Jess reached the Ladies loo. It was locked.

Chapter 6
    What now? She couldn’t ring Flora. She didn’t want to be reminded of the worst party ever. She didn’t want to hear all the jokes about her boobs and her new role as a soup kitchen. Perhaps this was the moment to emigrate to Australia or begin a distinguished career as a street urchin and pickpocket. On the other hand, it was horribly cold and she was hungry – and she needed the loo. Not for the first time, Jess wished she were a dog. Preferably Ben Jones’s.
    Suddenly she realised where to go: Fred’s. He only lived round the corner and he had said he planned to spend the evening lying on the sofa watching something horribly violent on TV. As yet he would not have heard of her humiliation. And he had a bathroom. Jess ran to Fred’s house and rang the bell. Fred appeared, tousled and crumpled from hours of violent films. He did seem pleased to see her, however.
    ‘My parents are out drinking themselves into an early grave,’ he explained. He invited her in and told her to help herself to coffee.
    ‘In a minute,’ said Jess. ‘Just let me get changed in your bathroom, first. And please – can I have a shower?’
    ‘Sure,’ said Fred. ‘Of course, I never perform hygienic acts myself, being a lovable scamp of repulsive personal habits. But I have observed a shower in the bathroom and I believe it works.’
    Never had a house seemed so warm, pleasant, modern and clean. The bathroom was immaculate. Jess had a wonderful, long, streamy hot shower. Every last scrap of minestrone was sluiced off her shining bod and went swirling away into oblivion. The soupy smell was replaced by the zing of Fred’s mum’s mint and tea tree shower gel. Then Jess washed her hair with some marigold and nettle shampoo and conditioned it with honeysuckle and wild rose. It was the nearest she was ever going to get to gardening.
    After drying herself, Jess tried all Fred’s mum’s moisturisers and body lotions. There was something secretly delicious about snooping in somebody else’s bathroom cabinets. Jess found some pills called ‘Pariet’ which had been prescribed for Fred’s dad. His name was written on the box: Mr Peter Parsons. She wondered what the pills were for, but unfortunately the label didn’t reveal any indiscreet details.
    It must be a bit odd having a man living in the house. She hadn’t actually gone to stay with her dad since he had moved to St Ives several years ago. He often came up to town to see friends, and that was when she saw him. Jess felt sad for a moment at the thought of her dad’s lonely pills in his lonely bathroom cabinet. ‘Mr Tim Jordan, three tablets, once a day in the morning.’ What if he dropped dead in his studio? Would he ever be found? A tear trickled down Jess’s nose. Curse this premenstrual tension! By tomorrow it would be worse. By tomorrow she