I Conquer Britain (12 page)

“Away?” Caroline sounded like “away” wasn’t a word she knew.

“It’s just that I haven’t seen any crumbs all over the counter or anything like that for a few mornings now.”

“Oh, it’s there,” lied Caroline. “But I clean it up before you come down.”

I let it go. I mean, it wasn’t really my business. But I noticed that she jumped every time the phone rang or Robert came in the front door. And every now and then I’d find her just standing in the kitchen, staring at nothing. Once I even caught her in the Czar’s room with a mug of old tea and bacteria in her hand.

“I just thought I’d get rid of any alien life forms,” said Caroline. “While he’s out.”

It looked like he was going to be out long enough for her to get rid of
everything
in the room, paint it and rent it out, but I said that sounded like a good idea.

But there was some good news – especially for those of us who were starting to feel a little mildewed. It finally stopped raining on a permanent basis. There might be a shower in the morning or the evening or in the middle of the night, but they’d be separated by hours of solid sun instead of seconds of grey skies. All of a sudden everybody was outside and taking off their clothes. Every patch of green was filled with people trying to get sunstroke and skin cancer. And the streets were haunted by ice-cream trucks playing music that sounded like the theme song for some horror movie where an evil clown doll comes to life and starts murdering everyone.

It wasn’t really hot – not by Brooklyn standards (in Brooklyn if you can see the air or if you sweat when you’re standing still, then it’s really hot) – but by day two everybody was complaining about the temperature and the weathermen started saying we were having a heatwave and worrying that we were going to have a drought.

“You see?” said Caroline. “It’s not as if we
never
have any good weather.”

She ran around like she was in some kind of housewives’ marathon, trying to do all the things she had to do and still have time to work in her garden, but for me it was pretty much business as usual (except that now, besides e-mailing Bachman, I helped do things like wrench weeds from the earth and worry about greenfly). Caroline had been so turmoiled by my trip to Waterloo and the possibility that I could have gone up in smoke like a Kleenex thrown on a campfire that I was sticking pretty close to the hacienda. I figured she had enough to worry about.

We were sitting in the kitchen one morning after breakfast. Caroline was making a list of all the things she had to do before she could get into her garden and I was finishing my tea and contemplating an afternoon of wrenching weeds – otherwise known as plants in the wrong place – from the earth when the doorbell rang.

Caroline looked up all curious and puzzled, and then she shuffled off to answer it.

“Why Jocelyn!” she cried. “What a lovely surprise!”

I knew who Jocelyn was. Jocelyn was Sophie’s best friend. I leaned over so I could see into the hallway, but the only thing I could see was Caroline’s back.

“Come in, come in.” Caroline couldn’t have sounded happier if one of her gardening gurus had shown up to help her. “Cherry’s heard all about you, of course. She’s really looking forward to meeting you.”

None of this was exactly true. All I’d heard about Jocelyn was that she and Sophie had been inseparable since they started high school, and as far as looking forward to meeting her went it was a generic kind of looking forward to. I’d have been pretty happy to meet the Pitt-Turnbulls’ dentist by then.

Caroline stepped aside to let Jocelyn in. She was petite and fair and all dressed up like she was expecting to be photographed (though, to my relief, she wasn’t all in pink!). There wasn’t a hair out of place or a crease or wrinkle in sight. She was so immaculate it was scary. You know, like she was really an android pretending to be a human.

“Cherry! Look who’s here!”

“I’m really sorry I didn’t come sooner,” Jocelyn was saying as she followed Caroline into the kitchen, “but I’m afraid I’ve been away.”

Theoretically, you should never judge a person by the way they look. I mean, just because a man’s wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit doesn’t mean he’s not a nice guy. And just because a girl is really well dressed in a this-season-you-have-to-wear-pastels-floaty-skirts-and-wedges-or-you-might-as-well-be-dead kind of way, doesn’t mean she isn’t a deep, intelligent and sensitive person. But when Jocelyn said, “I’m really sorry I didn’t come sooner, but I’ve been away,” my first thought was: thank God I wasn’t counting the days or I’d really have been wasting my time.

Jocelyn had stopped by to see if I wanted to go shopping with her.

“I’m going up the West End,” Jocelyn informed us. “I thought Cherry might want to come along.” She gave a little shrug of apology, more or less in my direction. “I know it’s not Fifth Avenue, but it’s still pretty cool.”

Not Fifth Avenue? I was pretty sure she meant Fifth Avenue in Manhattan (a place I only go to on the way to somewhere else), not Fifth Avenue in my neighbourhood (which specializes in dollar stores instead of designers). Why would she say that? To me? Why would
I
care about Fifth Avenue? I mean, look at me. Even when I dressed up I hadn’t worn anything with a name or a logo on it since kindergarten, but today, because I’d been planning to spend the morning digging around in the garden, I was wearing my old black jeans, a ratty old CONFORM OBEY CONSUME T-shirt Sky gave me one Christmas and my
No Sweat
hightops. She was either nuts or legally blind.

I said I’d love to go. I figured that if you swap lives with someone, you don’t just get her pink room, her teddy bears and her crazed family – you get her best friend too.

“I’ve never known anyone who was into Goth before,” Jocelyn said as we walked to the subway. “I can hardly believe it. You really do look like Morticia Addams, don’t you?” Her eyes moved from my feet up to my head. “Well, except for the clothes. She always wears a dress, doesn’t she?”

This was when I realized that Jocelyn hadn’t just turned up unbidden. Caroline must have been so worried that I had nothing to do that she called in the cavalry.

I smiled back. “More like her daughter.”

Jocelyn laughed pretty heartily for someone on whom dust clearly never settled. “Oh my God, you Americans are so funny… I feel like I’m in an episode of
Friends
.”

Which was more than I could say. (Unless it was The One Where Cherokee Wishes She’d Stayed Home and Helped Caroline in the Garden.) We hadn’t even gotten into the station yet and already I had a feeling that the afternoon wasn’t going to make me really glad I wasn’t in Brooklyn. If Jocelyn was the cavalry I’d really rather take my chances with the Indians.

She turned right off the bridge. “I can’t tell you how shocked I was when Sophie said she was going off to New York all on her own without Mummy and Daddy this summer.” Jocelyn’s voice went squeaky when she said “mummy and daddy”, like she was about three. We walked down some stairs. “And I’m not the only one. Everyone was shocked. I mean, that isn’t like Sophie at all.”

“It isn’t?”

“You should probably get a travel card.” Jocelyn sailed into the station. “Do you know how to use the machine?”

What was she, my mother? (Well, not
my
mother, but somebody’s.)
Select Ticket Type
, said the instructions.
Insert Coins
. I thought I could probably figure it out, but I decided not to change the amount into dollars so I didn’t actually scream out loud.

“Anyway, Sophie’s just not the sort of person to go off on her own like that…” she went on. “Sophie’s … well … I mean, she’s my best friend and all and I love her dearly, of course, but she isn’t exactly the adventurous sort, if you know what I mean.”

I looked over at Jocelyn, a girl who definitely gave the impression that her idea of adventurous was going out with a run in her tights. How on Earth would
she
know?

“She isn’t?”

“Oh, puhlease…” Jocelyn sniggered. “You really don’t have any idea what she’s like, do you?”

I gave her my best Brooklyn, eat-cold-pizza smile. “It’d be a little difficult, seeing how I never met her.”

Her smile twisted in sympathy. “And who’d tell you, right?” Only Sophie’s best friend, apparently. “Let me put it like this: if life was a funfair Sophie’d spend most of her time wondering what rides to go on, and in the end she wouldn’t get past the carousel. Plus, she wouldn’t even get on a horse – she’d sit in a chair.”

What a great friend. I was surprised Sophie could bear to be parted from her for even a day.

“Really? Not even a stationary horse? Not even a llama?”

“Absolutely.” (I swear, not one hair moved out of place when she shook her head.) “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Sophie’s a terrific person and an absolutely brilliant friend and all, but she is truly hopelessly—”

Betrayed? Deluded? Unlucky in her choice of friends?

“Dull.” Jocelyn’s laugh ricocheted around the empty platform. “There. I said it. She’s dull. She’s a very sweet person, but she’s about as exciting as porridge.” She treated me to a view of sixteen years of really good dental work. I’d have to remember to tell Mr Scutari he was wrong about English teeth. “Personally, I blame her mother.”

I could tell that all the hours Caroline and I had spent collecting snails and taking them to the nearest park and stuff like that had made us bond because this statement really irritated me.

“You do?”

“Oh, absolutely. She’s very overprotective.” She flashed the teeth again. “Don’t you think so?”

I smiled back as the train pulled in. “I can’t say I’ve noticed.”

“Oh, puhlease… You can be honest with me. You’ve been here a while now – you have to have noticed. She never stops fussing.
What if this? What if that?
And don’t tell me you haven’t seen the blackout blind. Really, it’s enough to drive you bonkers.”

It wasn’t the only thing.

Jocelyn strode ahead of me onto the train. “Personally, I think going to New York was the best thing Sophie could have done.”

“Me too,” I said as I followed her on. “Me too.”

As soon as we sat down Jocelyn said, in this mega casual, could-you-pass-the-salt way, “Did I tell you we’re meeting my boyfriend?”

Despite the fact that she looked programmed, she was obviously a girl of surprises. Hidden depths again. I looked at her smile (about as genuine as a two-dollar bill). OK, maybe it wasn’t hidden depths. Maybe it was just hidden shallows packed with coral reefs.

“Your boyfriend? No. No, I don’t think you did.” You were way too busy dissing your best friend.

“Really? Oh, I thought I had. He’s meeting us at Oxford Circus.”

“We’re going to the circus? I thought we were going shopping.”

Except that she didn’t really look like she actually performed the usual bodily functions, Jocelyn laughed so hard I thought she was going to wet herself.

Not the kind of circus with clowns, obviously.

“Oh, you are so funny. I must remember that one. I really must.” She brushed an invisible speck of dust from her skirt. “Anyway, as I was saying, Daniel’s meeting us at Oxford Circus.” Jocelyn smiled as though she was about to tell me a secret. “I am so certain he’s going to love you. I told him you wouldn’t be anything like Sophie.”

And what did that have to do with the price of dog food?

“Why would he care if I’m like Sophie or not?”

“Well… you know…” Jocelyn shrugged. “He did sort of go out with her for a bit. Not that it could ever have lasted, of course. Talk about chalk and cheese.”

I decided to skip the chalk and cheese and go right to the other part that confused me. “Sophie used to go out with Daniel?” I was about to meet Ken.

“As I said, for a bit. But they were completely wrong for each other. It was like a tiger going out with a hedgehog.”

I was trying really hard to get through the chalk and the cheese and the tiger and the hedgehog and keep up with this conversation. “Oh, so you mean they had a couple of dates…”

“Not precisely.” Jocelyn gave another shrug. “I suppose they went out together for nearly a year. Give or take a month or two.”

“Nearly a year? It took him nearly a year to realize she was boring?”

“He’s a nice bloke,” said Jocelyn. “He didn’t want to hurt her.”

I didn’t think I needed more than one guess as to who it was helped him overcome that feeling. “Oh, he sounds like a really nice bloke.” I smiled. “I can’t wait to meet him.

Daniel was waiting by the ticket booth. He was definitely Ken. He was thin and fair and good-looking in an average, uninteresting kind of way. He was almost as eerily immaculate as Jocelyn. You could tell his mom ironed his clothes. He was the kind of guy you could picture when he was middle-aged – like he’d never really been young.

As soon as Jocelyn went through the turnstile they were all over each other like skin cream.

I stood there, watching the masses of travellers swarm around us, while Jocelyn and Daniel made a big deal of demonstrating how crazy they were about each other. I’d rather have watched fish spawn. Poor Sophie, no wonder she’d been so desperate to get out of London.

It’s not only good things that have to come to an end – bad things do, too (it just seems to take so much longer – in this case about a million years). But eventually, they had to come up for air.

“Daniel…” Jocelyn moved to one side as though she’d been hiding me behind her back. “Daniel,
this
is Cherry.” She kissed his cheek. “Didn’t I tell you she wouldn’t be anything like Sophie?”

Daniel grinned. “I’ll say she isn’t.”

“Cherry, this is Daniel.”

“Actually,” I said, “it’s Cherokee.”

“Cherokee?” Jocelyn repeated. “You mean like the car?”

“No.” I shook my head. I could hear my earrings jingle. “Cherokee like the native people.”

“Oh my God!” shrieked Jocelyn. “That is too much.” She gave Daniel a squeeze. “Did you hear that? She’s called after a tribe of red Indians. How American is that?”

“That’s cool,” said Daniel. “Jocelyn here was called after her grandmother.”