girls,” he says, as Geraldine pulls out. “Good night last night?”
“Yes, thanks,” says Geraldine, while I stay quiet.
“What did you do?”
Geraldine tells him, and I start playing this little game I play a lot of the time. I do it when I’m in a car and we pull up to traffic lights. If the light stays green until we pass, then I will find true love. Sometimes I add within the next six months. I don’t know why I carry on playing it, as it never comes true, but I do it again now. I think, if you ask me what I did last night, then it means that we will end up together. Please ask me, Ben. Please. But then if he does ask me, what will I say? That I stayed at home and ate chocolate cookies? Oh God, how can I make myself sound interesting.
“What about you, Jemima?” Oh Christ. The question’s out there before I’ve formulated an answer.
“Oh, I went to a party.”
“Did you?” Ben and Geraldine ask the question simultaneously.
p. 23 “You didn’t mention that,” says Geraldine. “Whose party?”
Quick, quick. Think, Jemima.
“Just an old friend.”
“Wild night, eh Jemima?” says Ben with a wink.
“Yup,” I say finally, deciding to throw caution to the wind. “I got very drunk, slightly stoned, and ended up shagging some guy in the toilet.”
A silence descends on the car, neither Ben nor Geraldine knows quite what to say, and I feel sick. I know I’ve said the wrong thing. It doesn’t come out as funny as I had intended, it comes out as peculiar, so I take a deep breath and tell the truth. Well. Sort of. “Actually, I’m lying. I stayed in and watched 60 Minutes .”
Ben and Geraldine get the joke and they laugh. Except unfortunately, at least if you’re sitting where Jemima Jones is sitting right now, it really isn’t very funny. It’s actually rather sad.
Chapter 3
p. 24 I’d heard about the Internet, read about the Internet, talked about the Internet, but I never really understood what it was all about. Of course, this being the Kilburn bloody Herald we’re about four years behind the times technologically and are getting online access for the first time so even Ben’s presence doesn’t distract me from the computer screen where we’re being shown how to use it.
And it’s fascinating. Rob, the man who’s teaching all of us, is explaining so clearly, so concisely, that I’m beginning to understand exactly what the big deal’s all about, and wish I’d had the money to buy a computer so I could have learned about this sooner.
I can see that Geraldine’s bored, and to amuse herself she’s flirting with Rob, who seems delighted that someone like Geraldine would even look at him, but Ben’s my ally in this, Ben’s as enthralled as me, and together we’re visiting newsgroups, sites, forums.
p. 25 Rob shows us how to create a page, and explains that this is the Web: that all over the world people are designing pages filled with whatever information and pictures they choose, and from those pages there are links to hundreds, often thousands, of other pages.
He shows us how to search for a topic, and then how to follow those links until we find what we’re looking for, and it’s like a completely new world opening up for me.
And as the day carries on, the more we learn, the more I start to relax with Ben, the less he seems to intimidate me, maybe because we’ve got something in common now, I don’t have to struggle for something to say.
At 5 P.M. Rob says we’re done, and I catch Geraldine’s eye as she rolls it to the ceiling. The three of us walk out together, and as soon as we’re out the door Geraldine digs into her Prada bag and pulls out her cigarettes.
“God, I needed that,” she says, inhaling deeply as we stand on the corner. “That was the most boring thing in the world. I knew most of it, for God’s sake. Talk about Internet for idiots.”
“I thought it was really interesting, actually,” says Ben. “What did you think?” He