Best of Friends

Knowing that Jess would take the shortcut home through the shopping centre and up the pedestrian-only backstreets, Abby drove off. Jess would be home before her and that meant Abby had lost the chance for a chat. In the car, Jess was a captive audience. At home, her after-school routine was to shut her bedroom door loudly and switch on her CD player. Abby wasn’t sure if teenage hormones were to blame or if it was her own fault for somehow failing to bond with this new Jess, the argumentative girl who seemed determined to push her parents to the limit. But in some way she felt she was losing her.

Fortunately, driving down Briar Lane never ceased to lift Abby’s spirits. As she bounced the Jeep over the speed ramps, she felt that faint thrill of pride that her hard work had brought them all here.

The previous house had been lovely, thanks to her skill at interior decoration. But Gartland Avenue had been a very ordinary road in a housing estate and with the unruly Milligans next door, screaming at each other at sixty decibels day and night, it hadn’t been exactly anyone’s dream location.

Briar Lane was a different matter. A winding road lined with stately sycamores and overgrown laurel bushes, it was a house-fancier’s heaven – full of all sorts of different properties, from new Regency-inspired homes to low, sprawling old farmhouses, with some quirky cottages in between.

Abby had fallen in love with Lyonnais the first time she’d seen it. It had started life as the gate house to a big, now long-gone mansion and, after years of careful alteration, was now a large white-gabled family home with mullioned windows and rambling roses clinging to the stonework.

Even Tom, who wasn’t at all given to sentimentality, had said there was a lovely atmosphere about the house as they’d wandered through it all those months ago with the estate agent at their heels.

Abby had squeezed Tom’s hand in excitement. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ she kept saying, despite his earlier warning that they weren’t to appear too enthusiastic about the house, no matter how much they liked it. This was the sort of house a television celebrity should own – not a twenty-year-old semi that looked like every other house on the road, but this, this gorgeously unusual pile, with its large airy rooms and its nooks and crannies and the intriguing pantry with the hidden cupboard, and the rambling garden with the armless statue of some Greek goddess hiding shyly behind a gown of ivy tendrils. Abby could already picture what she’d do to the place, where she’d put things and what colours she’d paint the walls.

‘It’s way over our budget,’ Tom had said firmly as they’d toured the attic bedroom, which, if the cobweb content was a reliable barometer, was home to an entire colony of spiders. It was certainly over any budget that his deputy headmaster’s salary could manage and he found it difficult to look at the subject in any other way. It made no difference how often Abby said that his salary had kept them all for years, so what did it matter if hers was bigger now? It did matter to Tom. ‘We can’t afford this,’ he’d reiterated later, his lips thinning into the disapproving line that made him look just like his crabby old father.

Abby hadn’t cared. For once, she’d ignored Tom’s disapproval and fought for what she wanted. They’d manage. She’d do more private commissions and there were sure to be other lucrative spin-offs from the TV show, like public appearances – even though Abby hated that type of thing. She was determined to do whatever it took to buy Lyonnais. They couldn’t lose this house. They’d be so happy there, she knew it. All Tom needed to do was get over his strop about who earned the most money.

She sighed now as she swung the Jeep into the drive, admiring, as she always did, the magnolia tree to one side of the gate, now gorgeously in bloom. She did love this place but things hadn’t been easy since they’d moved here. Her relationship with Tom had deteriorated, while she and Jess seemed to be living on different planets. Just when life should be perfect for the Bartons, it seemed curiously off balance.

CHAPTER TWO

Earlier that afternoon, Jess Barton had glanced quickly at the classroom clock. Ten to three. Another forty minutes of science. Boring. Being a teenager was crammed with boredom, Jess felt, what with train-track braces, horrible exams and people constantly bossing you around, but double science was surely the most boring thing of all. Noticing Miss Nevin’s gaze roaming over the class, Jess stared down dutifully at her science textbook, trying to appear as if her mind was firmly fixed on the knotty issue of what sort of chemical formula you came up with if you mixed sulphur, oxygen and hydrogen. Nobody acted dutiful interest better than Jess Barton. She was award-winning material, Oscar-nomination stuff.

‘It’s the angle of the head,’ she often explained to her best friend and partner in crime, Steph Anderson, who was always the first person to be hauled out of her seat and left in disgrace outside the classroom door for not paying attention. ‘And the pencil sucking. There’s something about pencil sucking – it just makes you look riveted. You’ve got to lean over the book and look like you care, Steph.’

In Jess’s opinion, all that any teacher required was a room full of students bent at forty-five-degree angles to their desks and sucking pencils thoughtfully. She knew this from her dad. He said that not everyone paid attention all the time but the kids he liked were the ones who actually behaved in class.

Jess behaved. She reasoned that your mind could be a million miles away, or even four miles away at St Michael’s School for Hot Guys down the road, but as long as you kept your head down, you gave the impression of being a good student. So far, this system had worked. Jess Barton had never been made to stand outside the door, a punishment that also merited ten black marks.

Naturally, chemical formulae were the things furthest from her mind. Ian Green was the focus of her concentration. Gorgeous Ian, with those piercing blue eyes and a hint of dark stubble on his perfect face. Steph said that stubble was so yesterday and the best guys were fuzz-free, but Jess had a secret yearning for the sensation of kissing a guy and feeling manly, grown-up stubble against her cheek, like in a passionate scene from a movie. Jess had enjoyed many happy hours daydreaming about herself and Ian, replaying such a scene. Ian was tall too. Tall enough to have to really lean down to kiss her, which was nice, because Jess was tall herself. There was only one problem. Well, two actually. The first was that he went to St Michael’s School for Hot Guys instead of Bradley College, where Jess went. The guys in Bradley were mostly beyond boring. And the second: he had a girlfriend, Saffron Walsh, who was nearly sixteen, in the same class as Jess, and who was Ms Most Likely to Succeed.

‘Most likely to succeed in becoming an airhead TV weather girl, more like,’ Steph snorted resentfully. Some people might have thought that Steph was a rival of Saffron’s, as they were both of the blonde hair, perfect figure variety. But Jess, who had been Steph’s absolute best friend since kindergarten, knew that Steph’s dislike came from the fact that Saffron was clearly not good enough for Ian. If Ian realised what a bimbo Saffron was, he might dump her and miraculously take up with Jess. Miraculous, thought Jess, being the operative word.

Jess was not blonde with a perfect figure. She was, she felt, more a ‘reliable girl picked for netball’ sort of person. Lanky like her dad, she had no curves, no need of a bra and she could never get jeans long enough for her skinny legs. Her eyes were nice – a thick-lashed, smoky bluey green like her mum’s – but they were hidden behind boring glasses because she’d inherited bad eyesight from her dad. Her hair was boringly straight and the dull colour of wet sand, while the rest of her face was ordinary with a big O: ordinary nose, ordinary mouth, ordinary, slightly pointy chin. It all added up to the sort of person nobody noticed. Having a celebrity mum didn’t help. People expected the daughter of the glamorous Abby Barton to be just as glamorous. ‘And then they meet me,’ Jess would say, grumpiness hiding the hurt.

Steph insisted that this wasn’t true, and was always going on about how she envied Jess for being tall and slim, and for having great cheekbones and beautiful eyes that lit up when she was passionate about something.

‘Now I have slitty eyes,’ Steph would say, piling on another layer of Mac shadow to counteract this perceived failing. ‘But yours are huge and your lashes are so long. Wait till you get contacts and get your train tracks off. Then the guys will be all over you like a rash.’

But Steph was only being nice, Jess felt. She knew that guys liked girls who looked like girls, meaning ones with actual boobs. Tall and lanky and not able to fill an A cup made her a non-runner, no matter how nice her cheekbones were.

Which led on to a third problem, actually. She’d never spoken to Ian. He went around with people from her school, of course, because he was going out with Saffron, but these weren’t the sort of people who were interested in the likes of Jess. They were the glittering people who wore the right jeans, the right trainers and had money to go into the city centre at the weekends and hang round having fun, going for coffee and buying CDs. Jess didn’t know how to hang around in that languid, I’m-so-cool manner that girls like Saffron had down to an art form.

Even worse, now that the Bartons had moved to Dullsville, a.k.a. Dunmore, there was even less of a chance of her bumping into Ian.

‘Ian & Jess,’ she wrote on her notepad. Shading the writing with her hand, she drew a tiny heart around the words. Then she scribbled over the writing in case Gary, who sat beside her, saw it. Gary was good at science but bad at life, and was quite likely to announce Jess’s doodle to all and sundry. Jess would just die if anyone but Steph knew how she felt about Ian.

‘Homework,’ announced Miss Nevin happily from the front of the class. ‘I’ve prepared a list of thirty questions for the next lesson. They’re not too hard – just to test you on what we’ve been learning this week. Hand these sheets round, would you?’

As the questions were passed down the lines of desks, there were a lot of sighs, mainly from the people who’d just suffered history and been given a huge essay on eighteenth-century wars to write for Monday. Honestly, all those eighteenth-century people did was have wars. What were they like? Had they never heard of the UN?

Jess opened her homework notebook and stared dismally at today, Friday. The class were doing exams in June, their first public exams, and the teachers were piling on the work like anything. Along with the history essay was an English assignment on Paradise Lost (from Mr Redmond, who obviously thought that fifteen-year-olds had nothing better to do at the weekend than analyse every single word Milton had ever written) and a note of the four chapters of geography to be revised for a test on Monday afternoon from Mr Metcalfe, more proof that he was criminally insane because they were the four biggest chapters in the book. There was also a huge tranche of maths homework, not to mention a page of French comprehension (not too bad) and some art history to read over (easy peasy).

Jess wrote down ‘Science – 30 questions for Tuesday’, and sighed at Steph as the bell rang.

‘What are we? Baby Einsteins?’ grumbled Steph as the two friends shoved their science books into their rucksacks. ‘Why did we do science?’ Steph asked this question at least once a week. ‘We could have done home economics and be making our name as fashion designers right now.’

‘You don’t get to make things in home ec,’ Jess pointed out. ‘You learn about the eight billion vitamins and minerals that keep you healthy, which is just biology, which is science, which…’

‘…is why we did science,’ finished Steph. ‘I hate sewing, anyway. Look what happened when I tried to customise my jeans. Sequins should be glued, not sewed on.’

Jess nodded.

‘What are you going to do tonight?’ Steph asked.

‘Telly, I s’pose,’ Jess said miserably. She must be the only girl in the class to have a boring Friday night ahead of her. No, not the class, the planet.

‘I’d love to be watching telly tonight,’ Steph protested. ‘Gran’s party is going to be a pain – all the rellies telling me I’ve got so big and saying how they remember when I was a baby and they used to change my nappy. Like, how sick and twisted is that?’

Despite herself, Jess laughed. Steph had an enormous extended family and was very funny when she talked about them. Tonight was her grandmother’s birthday and the entire Anderson clan were going out to the Hungry Hunter restaurant and bar to celebrate. Steph’s mother was anxious that Steph wear this hideous royal-blue blouse and a sensible skirt to the gathering to please her grandmother, while Steph had personally earmarked a funky chiffon blouse with just a hint of bra peeking out underneath, and her skin-tight bootleg jeans. Her uncle’s stepson would be there and he was ‘in-cred-ible’, as Steph drooled. She planned to look nonchalantly amazing, as if she always dressed like someone from MTV.

‘At least you’ll be out,’ Jess said.

‘Yeah, sorry.’ Steph was apologetic. ‘But at least we’re going to Michelle’s party tomorrow. You could work out tonight what you’re going to wear. I’ll lend you my Wonder-bra, if you want.’

Jess was touched. Steph’s Wonderbra was her most treasured item of clothing. It would be wasted on Jess, though.

‘I better rush,’ Steph added. ‘I’ve got to do my hair.’

They parted, Steph turning left outside the school gates, Jess turning right.

She walked to the bus stop to wait for the station bus, fiddling with her Discman earpieces to fix the left one in her ear. She and Steph used to walk home together, when they still both lived in Gartland Avenue, before Mum had become famous and made them move. So what if Dunmore was chocolate-box cute? Jess didn’t know anyone there and she had to take the train out of Cork to get home. She never saw any teenagers around Briar Lane. There were loads of kids, who all went to this cutesy school in the centre of town and played on roller skates all day long at the weekends or raced around on pink Barbie bikes. But there wasn’t one single person her own age. She couldn’t even hang around after school and talk to Steph, because if she missed the train there wasn’t another one for an hour and a half. Moving to horrible Dunmore had ruined her life.

One other person from school got the train to Dunmore but he was in the year above, the longed-for, exam-free fifth year, and he was clearly far too cool to talk to her. Jess had sat near him the first few days she was commuting because he was the only familiar piece of this new landscape, but he never acknowledged her presence, just kept his dark head down as he played on his stupid Game Boy. So now she ignored him back and would stomp past his seat to sit in another carriage, deliberately tossing her ponytail nonchalantly as she passed to show him that she didn’t care. He wasn’t even waiting at the bus stop today.

On the bus, she turned up the volume on her Discman, pulled her school scarf over her mouth and nose, and felt miserable. Steph thought it was cool to have a mum who was on TV. It wasn’t.

Her mum wasn’t waiting at Dunmore station when the train pulled in, and there was nobody there when Jess arrived home. Nothing new, she sighed, conveniently forgetting that only last week she’d had a row with her mother over being treated like a child. Her mother never stopped worrying about where Jess was all the time, and Jess was fed up telling her that other people in her class were allowed miles more freedom, as long as they phoned to say where they were going. But Mum was like Interpol, and wanted details of every moment of Jess’s day.

‘Jess, I like picking you up from the station,’ Mum had said in the you-are-my-baby-after-all voice that drove Jess insane. ‘I’d worry about you if I didn’t come and get you. There are a lot of scary people out there.’

This was a familiar argument. As if Jess wasn’t clever enough to recognise weirdos when she saw them. Honestly.

‘I’m nearly sixteen,’ Jess had insisted. ‘I’m not a kid.’

Dad had stood up for her, which had caused Mum to glare at him with what Jess called her ‘laser eyes’. There was a lot of laser-eye action going on these days. So Jess had won and could come home from school herself. But still, it would have been nice not to have had to walk home today…

Now Jess looked at her mother’s diary, forgotten on the counter beside the fridge, and flipped to today. ‘Hairdresser 12 noon.’ Lucky Mum, Jess thought. Imagine being able to swan off on a school day and get your hair done.

There was no sign of Wilbur either. Wilbur was Jess’s cat, a ten-year-old tabby with unusual grey markings and a huge fluffy tail that shot up into the air if he was upset. His cosy bed on the kitchen radiator was empty and there was no point calling him. He was probably asleep somewhere he shouldn’t be: snuggled up amid the towels in the airing cupboard, his favourite and forbidden spot.

Jess positioned herself at the bleached pine table in the kitchen, spread her schoolbooks out in front of her and then switched on the portable telly. A repeat of Sabrina the Teenage Witch was on. Jess picked up a pen, opened the book where she’d made notes for the Milton essay and began to watch the TV.

Ten minutes later, weighed down with groceries, Abby arrived home. As soon as she’d shut the front door behind her, she unzipped her high boots gratefully. The problem with being short was that she always felt the need to wear heels, but they killed her.

‘Jess!’ she called, shrugging off her jacket. ‘Are you home?’ There was no answer and Abby’s heart skipped a beat. Dunmore was hardly crime central but you never knew. Anything could have happened to her…

Abby rushed into the kitchen in her socks to find Jess studiously working at the kitchen table, the television switched off.

‘Hi, love, you’re hard at it,’ she said, smiling in relief at her daughter’s bent head. Once, she’d have hugged Jess instantly, but recently Jess ducked away from hugs as though she couldn’t bear to be touched.

‘She’s a teenager, what do you expect?’ Tom had said sharply when Abby told him the first time it had happened. ‘I see it all the time in school.’

‘I know,’ Abby had replied shortly, angry at the implication that just because Tom was a teacher, he knew more about teenagers in general, and Jess in particular, than Jess’s own mother did. Abby knew the teenage years were going to be tough, she just hadn’t expected her darling Jess to change from best friend to worst enemy in a matter of months.

Now she restrained herself from reaching out to stroke Jess’s hair.

‘Yeah, we’ve lots of homework to do for the weekend,’ Jess said gloomily without looking up. ‘And I’ve got to revise.’ The more Jess thought about the exams, the more she felt like taking it out on someone else.

‘I dropped by the station just in case you were tired,’ Abby said hesitantly, not wanting a row. ‘I thought you might like a lift. But I missed you.’

Jess raised her head from her books and focused on her mother at last. ‘New hairstyle,’ she remarked flatly.

‘Is it OK?’ Abby ran an anxious hand through her hair.

‘Yes,’ relented Jess. ‘It’s great. Mum, I wish I could colour mine again.’ Jess’s first home-bleaching experiment with Steph had gone terribly wrong. It had cost ten times as much to have the straw-like tinge toned down.

‘They’d kill you in school,’ her mother pointed out happily, thrilled that Jess seemed to be in a good mood with her. After a rash of pink-toned hair, the principal had banned all hair dyeing except for the fifth and sixth years.

‘Subtle streaks,’ begged Jess. ‘I’d go to the hairdresser this time. Nobody would know. Mr Davies only notices punk black and bright pink. A few blonde highlights would get past him. Lots of people have blonde hair.’

‘We’ll talk about it,’ said Abby, who’d have promised anything to keep the peace.

‘That’s what you always say,’ Jess pointed out.

‘Yeah, I’m your horrible mother, I know.’ Abby began shoving the shopping into cupboards and Jess quickly reached back and put the remote control onto the worktop behind her. Her mother was pretty good about TV watching. Lots of her friends’ parents nagged like hell now they were in fourth year and studying for their Junior Cert. But Mum did disapprove of working while the TV was on, and the price for tomorrow night’s party at Michelle’s was to finish her homework by Saturday afternoon.

‘I got fresh pasta and I can make you garlic mushroom tagliatelle for dinner,’ Abby said, deep in the fridge.

Jess’s face brightened. ‘Great,’ she said. She’d been a vegetarian for over two years now and was always trying to convince her mother to become one as well. Didn’t people realise that animals had rights too?

‘Your father and I have to go out, I’m afraid,’ continued Abby. She didn’t see her daughter’s face fall. ‘It’s a work thing. Beech’s tenth anniversary. Probably cheese and bad wine,’ Abby laughed. Beech, the production company who made her television show, were notorious for not spending money on luxuries. ‘We have to go, but if I cook the mushrooms now –’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Jess said in a monotone.

Her mother emerged from the fridge anxiously. ‘You must have something.’

‘I’ll phone for pizza if I’m hungry.’

‘If you’re lonely, I’m sure Jennifer wouldn’t mind staying until we get home,’ Abby ventured. Jennifer was the twenty-two-year-old college student who lived four houses down and who was keen to babysit to earn extra cash.

‘I don’t want Jennifer! I’m not a kid, Mum. I thought we agreed. If Sally Richardson thinks I’m old enough and reliable enough to babysit for her, why don’t you think I’m old enough to be on my own?’ Jess was furious.

It was Abby’s turn to look unhappy. She didn’t like Jess phoning for pizza delivery when she was alone in the house. You read such dreadful things in the papers. Just because they had an alarm and Jess had been warned not to open the door to strangers, didn’t mean bad things couldn’t happen. What if the pizza delivery person was a rapist or murderer? Abby’s mind raced over the frightening possibilities. Jess had refused to be babysat once she’d hit fourteen, and agreeing to that extra independence had seemed such a huge step to Abby. Now, she’d started babysitting for Sally’s little boys. No late nights or long hours, just the odd hour here or there, but it still struck Abby as scary that her baby was now the babysitter.

‘You know I don’t like you ordering stuff when we’re not here.’

Jess sat sullenly and Abby knew she was in a no-win situation. ‘Could Steph’s dad bring her round tonight?’ she asked, knowing even as she said it that Steph couldn’t come, otherwise Jess would have suggested it herself. It had been easier to organise Jess’s social life when the family lived a few houses away from her best friend.

‘She’s busy,’ Jess snapped. ‘Her grandmother’s birthday is tonight. I don’t know anyone else around this dump of a town.’

Abby shut the fridge wearily. She didn’t need reminding. The guilt was enough to give her sleepless nights.

She sighed. Although she adored their new home, the fact that it made Jess feel isolated was definitely threatening their relationship. Or maybe it was just the teenager thing.

Abby left money on the worktop for a pizza and went upstairs to get ready. It was half-past six, they were due out at seven and there was no sign of her husband. Not that Abby was surprised by this. After nearly seventeen years of marriage, she knew that Tom had all the sense of urgency of an inhabitant of a desert island. Which probably made them a good match, she knew. She was fiery and wound up like a spring, while Tom was possessed of endless, monastic calm.