Jean Ure - Jelly Baby

“Right.” We nodded. A faint look of alarm had spread across Dad’s face.

“You mean, you haven’t actually cooked anything yet?”

“It’s only just gone five,” said Cass. “We’re aiming for seven o’clock. Yes? Yes! So off you go.” She gave Dad a little push. “We’ll see you back here at six thirty. Just stop panicking! We’ve got it all planned.”

“If you say so,” said Dad. He still didn’t sound too certain.

“I do say so! Will you please just go ?”

“You’re making us nervous,” said Em.

“Sorry,” said Dad. “Sorry, sorry! I’ll get out of your hair.”

He disappeared and we heard the front door open and close. I giggled. “I think Dad’s the one that’s nervous!”

Cass said, “He is, bless him. Like a boy on his first date! Let’s go and make a start on the food.”

We’d already decided what we were going to do – steak and kidney pie followed by lemon possets. Mock steak and kidney, that is. Thanks to Cass, we had all become vegetarian ages ago. So instead of steak we used Quorn pieces, and instead of kidney we had brown mushrooms. Chestnut mushrooms, I think they are called. With mashed potatoes and gravy, and pastry on top, it is very yummy! Nobody would ever guess it didn’t have meat in it.

“Bags I do the potatoes!” I said.

“That’s not fair,” said Em. “You already got to do the vacuuming. It’s my turn to choose … I’ll do the potatoes, you do the onions.”

Ugh! Yuck. Onions make your eyes water.

“You do the garlic, then,” I said.

“No way! Whoever does the onions does the garlic as well. You can always roll out the pastry,” she added, “if you like.”

“Oh, all right,” I said.

She was being quite generous, cos we both enjoy rolling out pastry.

“Know what?” said Cass, setting down the frying pan. “I’m starting to have second thoughts … I’m wondering if we should have real meat, as it’s a guest.”

We both stared at her, shocked. I could hardly believe what I was hearing!

“You mean cook dead animal ?” said Em.

Cass did look a bit ashamed. “Only because it’s so important to your dad,” she pleaded.

“We don’t do meat when Gran comes,” I said.

“Gran’s not his girlfriend.”

“Ladyfriend, actually ,” said Em.

“Whatever.” Cass waved a hand. “It seems only polite.”

“But it’s a principle ,” said Em. “You don’t break a principle just to be polite!”

“In any case,” I said, “we haven’t got any meat.” I giggled. “Unless we give her cat food!”

“I could always pop up the road and buy a tin of stewing steak.”

“I’m not going to eat stewing steak,” said Em.

“Nor ’m I,” I said, though I really only said it to support Em. I would never have admitted it to her, but every now and again, at school, I was almost tempted to let my friend Lottie feed me a bite of something meaty as a sort of dare, just to see what it tasted like. I mean, I wasn’t scared of it or anything. But it’s really important to Em. She is into animals in a big way.

“Maybe I should do two pies,” said Cass. “One for Caroline and one for the rest of us.”

“If you do that,” said Em, chucking her potato peeler across the draining board, “I refuse to help.”

Cass sighed. It’s rare for Em to throw a tantrum. She is not at all a rebellious sort of person. It’s just that she has these really strong feelings.

“Honestly,” I said, “nobody’s ever going to know it’s not real meat. We could pretend it’s chicken … chicken and mushroom!”

“I don’t think we can actually lie about it,” said Cass. “On the other hand we don’t actually have to say that it’s not meat.” She suddenly cheered up. “We’ll make the gravy nice and strong! That’ll help.”

“Yes, and we’ve got my lemon possets for after,” I said. “Everybody loves those!”

I’d made the possets myself. It is my special pudding that I do. Cream, sugar and lemon juice, all whisked up and poured into little separate dishes. I am quite proud of my lemon possets! They are what Cass calls gourmet , meaning, like, very refined. Not just some old rubbish out of a tin.

I reckoned the whole meal was going to be gourmet , what with the dining table being cleared of clutter and laid out all posh and proper with place mats and sparkly glasses, and the cutlery checked to make sure there weren’t any bits of old food mouldering on it, which is what sometimes happens when me and Cass do the washing-up.

Em says we are slapdash. When she washes up she is very slow and careful. I get quite impatient! I keep trying to snatch things from her so I can get on with wiping them. This leads to breakages. We break a lot of things in our house. It is one of the reasons we tend not to have any matching plates or glasses.

Dad isn’t so much slapdash as clumsy. He managed to shatter a glass the other day just breathing on it. Well, that is what he claimed.

“I didn’t go anywhere near it!” he had said.

Dad is pretty useless, really, at everything except teaching people history. He can’t even change a plug without nearly electrocuting himself. But he is a very intelligent person. Perhaps that was why Caroline had fallen for him. She must have realised from the word go that he was not very clever at the ordinary, everyday things of life, since the way they met was when Dad reversed into her twice in the underground car park! He is not the world’s best driver. According to Cass, he could even be the world’s worst.

Poor Dad! He really did need looking after. It was why we were all working so hard to make the evening a success. Just because Dad was hopeless it didn’t mean the rest of us were.

Now that we’d finally settled on what to cook, Cass started to fret about not having a proper wine glass for Caroline to drink out of.

“I thought that was a wine glass,” I said. I pointed to one that I’d spent ages polishing with a bit of old sheet that we used for wiping up. “It looks like one.”

“Actually,” said Cass, “it’s a sherry glass.”

“Sherry is wine,” said Em.

“Not table wine. Oh, God, why didn’t I think of it before? I could have picked some up on my way home!”

“We’d only go and break them,” I said.

Cass ran her fingers through her hair, bunching it up on top of her head.

“This is serious! Caroline’s not the sort of person to drink wine out of an ordinary tumbler.”

“So why can’t she drink it out of the sherry glass? It’s ever such a nice shape!”

Cass said, “But it’s not a wine glass! It wouldn’t hold more than a thimbleful.”

I honestly couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. A glass is a glass, seems to me.

“They’re very pretty tumblers,” I said. Gran had given them to us last Christmas. “And look, there’s loads of them!”

“They’re still tumblers.” Cass took her fingers out of her hair, leaving it sticking up like a haystack. “Sophisticated people don’t drink wine out of tumblers.”

I said, “Oh.” Caroline was definitely a sophisticated person.

“I don’t want her thinking your dad’s some kind of oik. And omigod! What about plates? Do we have five plates?”

Em rushed to have a look. “There are five with roses,” she said, “but two of them are chipped.”

Cass let out a little scream. Me and Em exchanged glances. Em shook her head. Cass is usually such a calm sort of person. Very laid-back, like Dad. I was really surprised it bothered her so much. I mean … once the food was on them, what did it matter?