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Okay, so I should probably have mentioned the sister. Step-sister. I already had one, you see, which meant that I did not actually need or want another one. Especially one who was perfectly lovely and would probably want to be all buddy-buddy with me and then just bugger off when Dean and Mum split up.

They went back to Germany, Dad and Gemma. He wasn’t actually my dad, but he’d been there from when I was little. And Gemma wasn’t actually Mum’s daughter, but she brought her u
p with Dad from the age of seven. So that was our family unit, and when Mum and Dad split up Gemma was really, really angry (mostly with me) and got very stroppy and decided to go with Dad and refused to come and see us again even when Dad occasionally came over to see me. She left her cardigan behind, and that was it. All traces of Gemma completely obliterated, like she never existed.

Little though I was (as in young – still freakishly tall), I decided that if that was how she wanted it, that’s how it would be. Gemma never existed. I didn’t talk about her from that day on, and nobody but nobody apart from Mum – and now, I guessed, Dean and possibly Aggie – knew about it.

Oh. And weirdly, the lead singer of Double Vision.

I didn’t want to think about it any more – any of it: Gemma being horrible and disappearing; Mum and me both missing her and not being able to do anything about it; Jason Jazzy Divine Devaney suddenly being aware of stuff that even Dolores didn’t know … So I decided to concentrate on my date. My
first date. A real, live date that I, Catherine Melissa Andrews the Cat-Astrophe, was going on with a real live boy and his Nerdy Mate. In my dreams, of course, it was just me, the real live boy, and his top lip.

Double dates are weird things, aren’t they? Well, dates of any kind are pretty weird for me, seeing as I haven’t been on any, but the whole notion of a double date seems wrong to me. More about the double and less about the date. I mean, are you meant to only talk to the person you are meant to be on the date with, or can you talk to the friend you have gone with, and are you ever allowed to talk to the other guy, the one who thinks they’re on a date with the friend you have gone with?

All this and so much more was a complete mystery to me as Dolores dragged out the same clothes she’d tried to persuade me to wear to the Double Vision concert, and I tried to not mention that I’d just spent the whole day and some of the previous night with her beloved. For some reason I had got the image of him in a sleeping bag stuck in my mind, and it wouldn’t leave my brain no matter how hard I tried to concentrate on Dolores and The Double Date.

Dolores held up a skirt that would have touched her ankles and came to approximately mid-way to my knees. ‘How about this?’

‘That’s my first Trevellyan school skirt. I’m not wearing that.’

‘I thought it looked familiar. Okay, how about this?’

Now she was holding out a dress that Mother Dearest had made me buy for some family wedding, when I had to keep pointing out to her that I was not the one getting married and did not want something white, frilly and down to the floor. I ended up with something white, frilly and down to the floor, and spent the whole day feeling like a single bed on its end.

No.
‘I can’t tell you the amount of therapy I’d need if I ever put that back on.’

‘It’s nice.’

‘It’s vile.’

Dolores inspected it. ‘Maybe if we cut off the bottom half?’

‘That’s tempting. Then I’ll be your height.’

‘Not your bottom half,
doofus,’ said Dolores. ‘The bottom half of the dress.’

I flung myself onto the beanbag, trying not to give away in my facial expressions that I was very much remembering Jason Devaney flopping onto that very same beanbag, as Dolores would never, ever forgive me for hiding him from her again.

‘I don’t know, Double D. Can’t I just wear my jeans? Apparently I’ve just got to be myself.’

To her great, great credit, Dolores did not throw back her pink hair and laugh like a kookaburra, going, ‘What fool told you that? Yourself? You should NEVER, EVER be yourself.’

Instead she sighed and turned back to my wardrobe. ‘Okay. But let’s just make you a bit more of yourself.’

‘You want me to be taller? I could wear a ladder.’ Oop. Stop thinking about the ladder. Jason climbed the ladder. It’s probably still leaning against my window sill. Do not think about the … ‘Ladder.’

‘Why did you say ladder twice?’

‘Nothing.’ Lummy, I was making no sense at all. ‘What do you mean, a bit more of myself?’

Dolores turned and inspected me as if I was one of her bras-for-the-bigger-boobed customers. ‘We’ll just enhance your best bits and de-focus your not so best bits.’

‘Hey, you’re good. You didn’t mention my worst bits.’

‘I keep telling you, I do know what I’m doing,’ said Dolores, emptying her bag out onto the bed. Cosmetics, hair brushes and a push-up bra cascaded across Leonard, Sheldon and Raj’s faces. ‘I know you think I’m thick, but I’m not.’

‘I know you’re not thick; I said so!’ Oh no, that was someone else. ‘The other day, I said so, didn’t I?’

‘Yes, now be quiet so I can do your make up.’ Seeing as she was all in chargey, I did as I was told. ‘I’m not doing anything much,’ she said, talking me through it like a TV make-up artist. ‘Just mascara for your eyelashes …’ – doing big eyes at me which I took to mean open your eyes or get black blobs in them – ‘ … which are pretty long but we can’t see them because they’re fair, and …’ – raising her eyebrows so I raised mine then discovered she was just peering at my skin, so I dropped them again – ‘ … a bit of foundation to cover any blotchiness, and …’ – snapping her mouth open and closed like a ventriloquist’s dummy – ‘a touch of lip gloss.’ It came out like “uh uchh o leep nogs’ but she was waving it at me so I knew what she meant.

Actually, she did a good job. When I saw myself in the mirror, I looked like me but a bit better, like I’d just had the best night’s sleep ever. Then she waved the bra at me. ‘I got this especially for you from work. If you
’ll wear this, I’ll let you wear your jeans and choir tee-shirt.’

I sighed, but tried it on, and suddenly there were my boobs, right under a
Celtic harp that I’d never noticed before on my madrigal tee-shirt. They weren’t in Dolores’ category, but at least my front now looked different to my back.

‘And now for the hair.’

Even as she said it, it was clear that Dolores knew this was going to be her biggest challenge.

It was. No matter what she did, she couldn’t tame the hair wings, fold them flat against my head, tie them up on the top, tuck them around my ears, or anything.

‘You’ve just got too much hair,’ she complained. ‘It’s not natural. You should shave it off or something. In fact …’

‘You are not shaving my hair off. I might hate my hair, but at least it’s there.’
Jason didn’t shave his off and he had good reason to want to look completely different, I wanted to add, but didn’t.

Dolores let the wings flap back down against my ears. ‘I give up on the hair. Maybe you should change the colour, or something. But not now – we don’t have time.’

Suddenly a newly busty me and a usually busty Dolores were hurrying out of the door. We were meeting Freddie and Nerdy Mate at the bowling alley, and then maybe getting a burger afterwards.

‘I left it really open in case you don’t like him,’ said Dolores. ‘If you hate him after bowling, we can just leave.’

For a moment I was confused. But I know I like him - I Chemical Reaction him, in fact, was what I thought immediately. Only then did it dawn on me that she meant Nerdy M, not Freddie, and that Freddie was there for completely different reasons.

Still, if ever I was going to get him to notice me, it was in a push-up bra with newly discovered eyelashes.

‘Good plan,’ I said.

Now that we were getting close to the bowling alley, my stomach was starting to churn.
Dolores, naturlich, looked cool as a cucumber in a pair of silvery jeggings and a flowery top that was only slightly see-through. I was already sweating into the back of my tee-shirt and feeling very weird around the eyes, as I wasn’t used to wearing mascara and it seemed as though my eyelashes were sticking together. I devised a way of flicking my eyelids apart to counteract the stickiness and wondered how Jason was getting on. And what Freddie would be wearing. And whether Jason had found Jazzy. And what Freddie would want to talk about. And whether Jason would have to go back to the Vortexicon to de-activate Jazzy, or whatever, in which case I’d have to meet him there and help out. It was my step-dad-to-be’s lab, after all.

I was just pondering on how attractive Freddie’s upper lip would be
looking tonight when we pulled up at the complex with the bowls and the burgers, and there they were: Freddie the Glorious in a long, knitted jumper over skinny jeans, and Nerdy Mate in an identical outfit although he was kind of short and dumpy.

Freddie beamed as we got off the bus, and held out a hand to help Dolores down from the high step. He didn’t help me, but then I’m tall and didn’t need the assistance. Nerdy Mate just stood back and grinned. At me.

‘Hi, Cat,’ he said, and my heart sank even further than it already had when Freddie and his lip (very attractive tonight, I’m sorry to say) smiled up at Dolores. Nerdy Mate sounded like a ten year old. For some reason I imagined him prancing on a table like Jason had, shouting ‘LAYDEEEZ’ in his high-pitched squeak, and it was all I could do not to laugh.

He was still staring at me, and I realised I hadn’t answered him. ‘Oh, hi …’ Nerdy Mate. Nerdy M. Nerd to his friends? ‘Um. Hi.’

I still didn’t know the ten year old’s name. Surely to Da Vinci someone was going to mention his name soon. I waited for Freddie to introduce us, but he was just gawking at Dolores in her see-through top (actually it was much more see-through than I’d first thought, now that I saw it next to Freddie). Somehow we’d fallen into double-date formation, with Freddie and Dolores leading the way and me and Nerdy trailing behind, staring at their backs.

Nerdy M tried making conversation. ‘So Dolores says you’re not really going out with the divine Jazzy D.’

‘No. Just friends. From Jersey,’ I said.

Quite good friends, actually, I wanted to add. Today I told him something I’ve never told a soul apart from my mum and the odd psychotherapist, and he remembered my full name
. I don’t even know yours, Nerdy.

‘That’s cool. So you’re …’ Nerdy cast around for the right word. ‘… available.’

Not really, Nerdy. Can I call you Nerdy? I’m in desperate Chemical Reaction hell with your best mate over there – the one who’s currently attempting to hold the doll-like manicured hand of my Bestie and has cute little downy bits of hair on the back of his neck that are almost adorable as the fluffy stretch of his upper lip …

‘Cat?’

‘Sorry. No. Yes. Not officially available, but not unofficially either.’

He held open the bowling alley door for me. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Neither do I.’

I could see from the expression on Nerdy’s face that he was beginning to regret this already, and that maybe I wasn’t as cool as he’d thought, and that maybe he should slam
the door in my face and be done with it. Then I discovered he was staring at my tee-shirt.

Now, let me explain: I have had this tee-shirt for months if not years. I have worn it every other day for as long as I can remember. Everyone who has ever clapped eyes on me will have seen me in this tee-shirt. And nobody has ever, EVER stared at it, not even
madrigal group members to see how many of the medieval instruments they can name.

So it had to be the bra he was looking at – or not the bra exactly, but the bumps under the instruments that had grown during the course of the evening.

It freaked me out, I have to say.

‘What are you staring at?’

He pointed to my left boob. ‘That’s an Irish harp.’

Ah.
Phew! Okay, so maybe I’d misjudged him. ‘Yes, it is. You know about medieval instruments?’

‘My family’s Irish
, drink a lot of Guinness. Thought you might have guessed from my name.’

‘No, I didn’t.
’ You have a name? ‘So you’re not into madrigal music or anything?’

And then he said
the most hideous, vile, disgusting thing that I’ve ever heard, and judging from the shocked look on his own actual face, that he’d ever before said.

‘Not yet,’ he squeak
ed from somewhere near my elbow, ‘but I wouldn’t mind playing that harp later.’

It was gross. Rank, VW and utterly and horribly unacceptable. For a moment I considered sticking two fingers up his nostrils and my thumb in his eyeball and using his head as a bowling ball, but that quickly turned into having to gulp back hot tears and pretending to be fascinated by the laces in my bowling shoes.

I sidled up to Dolores, who was doing such a good job of keeping Freddie occupied that she had her foot in his lap as he tied her shoes. They looked like the Prince and Cinderella. ‘I want to go,’ I hissed. ‘Nerdy’s horrible.’