Pumpkin Pie (5 page)

“Well, you’re not very likely to meet any mature men at drama classes,” I said. “Not when they’re advertised for 12 to 16 year olds!”

“That’s all right,” said Saffy, still in these lofty tones. “If I can’t have Brad—”

“Which you can’t,” I said.

“I know I can’t!” snapped Saffy. “I just said that, didn’t I? He’s married!”

“On the other hand,” I said, trying to be helpful, “he’s bound to get divorced. Movie stars always do. If you wait around long enough—”

“Oh!” She clasped her hands. “Do you think so?” Heavens! She was taking me seriously. Her cheeks had now turned bright pink.

“Well, no,” I said. “I don’t, actually. By the time you’re old enough, he’ll be practically decrepit.”

Her face fell, and I immediately felt that I had been mean, turning her daydreams into a joke. It’s not kind to trample on people’s daydreams. Specially not when it’s your best friend. But Saffy is actually quite realistic and never stays crushed for long. She is a whole lot tougher than she looks!

“Well, anyway,” she said, “as I was saying, if I can’t have Brad I’ll make do with someone else. Just in the mean time. To practise on.”

“While you’re waiting,” I said.

“Yes.” She giggled. “As long as they’re not geeky!”

“Or swamp creatures.”

“Or aliens.”

But they wouldn’t be. She promised me! They would be creative and sensitive and hunky. She said we must enrol straight away.

“We’ve already missed the first two weeks of term. They’ll all be taken!”

I said, “Who will?”

“All the gorgeous guys!”

“Oh. Right!” An idea suddenly struck me. If all the guys were going to be gorgeous, wouldn’t all the girls be gorgeous, too? I had visions of finding myself among a dozen different versions of Petal. What a nightmare!

I put this to Saffy, but she reassured me. She said that loads of quite ordinary-looking girls (such as for instance her and me) fancied themselves as actresses, but the only boys who went to drama classes were the creative, sensitive, and divinely beautiful ones.

“If they’re not creative and sensitive they go and play with their computers. And if they are creative and sensitive, but not very beautiful—”

I waited.

“They go and do something else,” said Saffy.

“Like what?” I said.

“Oh! I don’t know.” She waved a hand. Saffy can never be bothered with mere detail. She is quite an impatient sort of person. “Probably go and write poetry, or something.”

I thought about the boys in our class. Writing poetry was not an activity I associated with any of them. Ethan Cole had once written a limerick that started “There was a young girl called Jan”, but none of it had scanned and it hadn’t made any sort of sense and what was more it had been downright rude. That was the only sort of poetry that the boys in our class understood. How could you have a class with
fourteen boys
and every single one an alien?

I said to Saffy that if I could meet a boy that wrote poetry I wouldn’t mind if he wasn’t beautiful, just the fact that he wrote poetry would be enough, but Saffy told me that that made me sound desperate.

“Why settle for a creative geek when you could have a creative hunk? Ask your mum and dad as soon as you get home. Tell them your entire future is at stake! You don’t have to mention boys. Just say that having drama classes will give you poise and – and confidence and – and will be good for your self-esteem.”

“All right,” I said.

I asked Dad the minute he got back from picking up Pip from school. I followed him round the kitchen as he chopped and sliced and tossed things into pans.

“Dad,” I said.

“Yes? Out of the way, there’s a good girl!”

I hastily skipped round the other side of the table. Dad hates to be crowded when he’s in the kitchen. Mum says he’s a bit of a prima donna.

“Do you think I could go to acting classes?” I said.

Dad said, “What sort of acting classes? Hand me the salt, would you?”

“Acting
classes,” I said.
“Drama.
At a
drama
school.”

“Pepper!”

“It would give me poise,” I said.

“Poise, eh? Taste this!” Dad thrust a spoon in my face. “How is it? Not too hot?”

“It’s scrummy,” I said. “The thing is, if I went to acting classes—”

“Bit more salt, I reckon.”

“It would give me confidence, Dad!”

“Didn’t know you lacked it,” said Dad.

“I do,” I said. “That’s why I want to go. So could I, Dad?
Please?”

“It’s not up to me,” said Dad. “Ask your mum.”

I should have known! It’s what he always says. Dad and me are really great mates, and he is wonderful for having cuddles with, but whenever it’s anything serious he always,
always
says ask your mum. It’s like Mum is the career woman, she is the big breadwinner, so she has to make all the decisions.

Well, of course, Mum didn’t get in till late, and as usual she was worn to a frazzle and just wanted to go and soak in the bath.

“Darling, I’m exhausted!” she said. “It’s been the most ghastly day. Let’s talk at the weekend. We’ll sit down and have a long chat, I promise.”

“But, Mum,” I said, “I need to talk
now.”
Saffy would be cross if I didn’t have an answer for her. She wanted us to be enrolled by the weekend. “All it is,” I said, “I just want to know if I could go to drama classes.”

It is easy to see how Mum has got ahead in business. In spite of being exhausted, she immediately wanted all the details, such as where, and who with, and how much. Fortunately Saffy can be quite efficient when she puts her mind to it. She had told me where to find the advert in the Yellow Pages, plus she had written down all the things that Mum would want to know.

“It’s right near where Saffy lives,” I said. “I could go back with her after school on Fridays, and I thought perhaps you could come and pick me up afterwards. Maybe. I mean, if you weren’t too busy. If you didn’t have to work late. And then on Saturdays—”

“We could manage Saturdays between us,” said Mum. “If you’ve really set your heart on it.”

One of the
best
things about my mum is, when you do get to talk to her she doesn’t keep you on tenterhooks while she hums and hahs and thinks things over. She makes up her mind right there and then. It’s something I really like about her. Especially when she makes up her mind the way I want her to! Though considering Pip has his own computer and about nine million computer games, and Petal has her own TV and her own CD player, and I don’t have any of these things (mainly because I don’t particularly want them) Mum probably thought that a few drama classes weren’t so very much to ask. She is quite fair, on the whole, except for spoiling Pip rotten on account of him being the youngest. And of course a boy. I really do think boys get treated better than girls! Petal doesn’t necessarily agree. She says that if Mum spoils Pip, then Dad spoils me. But he only spoils me with food. He’d spoil Petal with food if she’d let him, but she won’t, so she only has herself to blame.

Anyway, Mum said that on Friday she would leave work early and come with me so that I could get myself enrolled. When she said that, I just nearly burst at the seams! I thought that for Mum to actually come with me was worth far more than if she’d bought me a dozen computers or TV sets. Mum works so hard and such long hours, she almost never gets to do anything with us. I couldn’t resist a bit of boasting, on the phone to Saffy.

“Mum is going to come with me,” I said.

“Yes, well, she’d have to,” said Saffy. “Mine’s coming, too. You have to have your parents’ permission.” I couldn’t really expect Saffy to understand how momentous it was, Mum leaving work early just for me. Saffy’s mum only works part-time, and then all she does is answer someone’s telephone. She’s not high-powered like my mum! She is very nice, though. The sort of mum you read about in books. The sort that cooks and sews and all that stuff. Kind of… old-fashioned. Though I don’t think Saffy sees it that way. She thinks it’s quite normal to have a mum who’s there in the morning when she leaves for school and there again in the afternoon when she gets back. She once told me that she found it a bit peculiar, me having a dad who stayed home to look after us.

“I wouldn’t like that,” she said.

When I asked her why not she couldn’t really explain except to say that it wasn’t natural. I said, “What do you mean, not natural?” Sounding, probably, a bit defensive. I mean, this was my mum and dad we were talking about! So then she wittered on about cavemen. How it was the cavemen who went out and clubbed animals to death and dragged their carcasses back, while the
cavewomen
stayed in their caves doing the dusting and sweeping and making up beds.

She has some very odd ideas! That was back in the Stone Age. Does she think we haven’t progressed?

As well as having odd ideas, I have to admit that Saffy does also have some good ones. Such as her brilliant plan for us to meet boys! As we got nearer to Friday, I found that I was growing quite excited. Partly it was the prospect of the gorgeous guys, but partly it was this feeling that I might be discovered. As a star, I mean! In spite of not being as show-offy as some people I could name, I have always had this secret belief that I could act far better than, for instance, an up-front in-your-face kind of person such as Dani Morris, who you can just bet your life will always be chosen for lead parts. I have simmered for
years
about Saffy being an angel and me not being anything. Even if I did have chicken pox and picked my spots. It wasn’t as bad as all that! And anyway, what about make-up?

In case anyone is thinking ho, ho, you can’t have plump angels, I would just beg to differ. I have seen plump angels! You only have to look at old paintings. There are loads of them. Plump angels, I mean. I would say that in those days you had more plump angels than you had thin ones.
But when did you ever see an angel with red hair?
I think that is a bit more to the point!

Not that I have anything against red hair, and certainly nothing against Saffy. It was just all this simmering that I’d been doing. Now at last I was coming to the boil! I saw myself on stage, acting a scene with one of the gorgeous guys. Holding hands…
kissing.
All the other gorge guys, who up until that point would not have looked twice at me, would suddenly be fancying me like crazy, thinking this girl is magnetic, this girl is just so-o-o sexy! And all the rest of them, all those cool kids that would have sneered when they first saw me –
oh, she is no competition! She is a nobody
– they would be, like, gobsmacked, wondering how come they could have got it so wrong. Even Saffy would be sitting there with her eyes on stalks. That’s my friend Jenny? Jenny that I’ve known since Infants? That wasn’t even cast as an angel?