Tuesday 26th May
Scary’s dark curls, Geri’s big boobs, Baby’s blue eyes. My three favourite Spice Girls rolled into one, stood at the top of the road with her thumb out.
‘It’s called hitch-hiking,’ Dad said, starting the car. ‘There’s no buses or tubes around here, poppet, so you have to drive or hitch a lift if you want to go anywhere.’
‘Hitch-hiking,’ I repeated, swilling the word around. ‘Can we give her a lift?’
‘Ah, I don’t know,’ Dad said, like he didn’t really mean it. ‘Mum wouldn’t like it.’
‘But Mum’s not here.’
‘That’s my girl.’
He grinned at me in the rear-view mirror and I grinned back but I instantly got the bad feeling. The one I always got when we lied to Mum – nervy, like I had bats in my tummy. Normally Dad would buy me treats and the bad feeling would pass. Cheese and onion crisps always did the trick.
We turned left at Gran’s gate, towards town. ‘I suppose Jesus taught that we should always help strangers?’ Dad said.
Dead right. Matthew 25: 35-40. I’d learned it in Holy Communion class.
Not that she was a complete stranger. I even knew her name: Maryanne. She worked in the Diner where Jacqui hung out and once when we’d picked Jacqui up, she’d served me a banana split and told a table full of boys that her favourite ice-cream was ‘cock-flavoured’.
Jacqui’d found this hilarious. Dad pretended not to but I’d clocked a smile as he’d counted out the two pounds fifty. He’d smiled at her again when we left.
Back in the car, Dad peered up at the sky, reading the clouds. ‘Mmmm, you know it looks like it could rain. Maybe we should pick her up.’ He turned his head. ‘But not a word to Mum, sweetheart, you know what she’s like.’
I didn’t actually. All I knew was that if I wanted to share a car with the next best thing to a Spice Girl, I’d have to promise to keep the secret.
*
If I’d known she’d completely ignore me, I wouldn’t have bothered. She didn’t cast one single glance back. Didn’t even say hello. Stuck-up like Posh Spice, I decided.
She wasn’t stuck-up with Dad though, firing question after question at him for five solid minutes. Who? Where? Why? What?
Was he here with his wife? Did he mind if she smoked?
Dad said she’d better not. ‘The wife wouldn’t like it.’
‘Do you always do what your wife wants?’ I could see her smirking in the wing mirror.
When we dropped her off just outside the town, she asked Dad one final question.
‘So will you be out this evening, Mike?’
It was Padraigh Foy’s sixtieth, she said, and there’d be free beer and fierce craic in Grogan’s if he fancied it. I shouted from the back that he didn’t fancy it because he’d promised to watch Spice World with me, but I don’t think she heard because she just walked away. Not even a thank you or a quick wave. It made her less pretty being that rude.
*
We didn’t watch Spice World that night, or any night after. Every time I asked, Dad said he had to meet a man about Something Important and that Jacqui would watch it with me instead, but she never did. Jacqui only ever wanted to watch Friends or The X Files (or ‘her own reflection,’ Gran would say when she’d think we couldn’t hear her).
Dad must have been meeting a man about Something Very Important as he didn’t come home until gone two, not once. I’d hear the bing-bongs ring out on Gran’s grandfather clock.
He did bring me back a pack of cheese and onion Taytos though, to make me feel better.
Nothing says sorry like a pack of cheese and onion crisps.