Louise Rennison - ‘Stop in the name of pants!’

I wonder if Dave the Laugh will tell Emma about our accidental number four episode. Probably not. After all, it didn’t mean anything and, as he said, we are mates in a matey way. And what goes on in the woods stays in the woods.

Hmmm. He also said in the woods that he has always really liked me. Maybe he meant that in a matey-type mate way.

Will I tell Masimo?

If he doesn’t ring me, I won’t have to make the decision. Anyway, it was only an accidental number four, verging on the number five. It could happen to anyone.

It could happen to Masimo and his ex-girlfriend. What was her name? Gina. Yes, it might happen if, for instance, she happened to be in Rome.

Even if she is not there, I bet he and his mates will be roaring round Rome on their scooters smiling at all the girls in their red bikinis or whatever it is they wear there.

Probably nothing. They probably go to work in the nuddy-pants because they are wild and free Pizza-a-gogo types. They don’t have inhibitions like us, they just thrust their nungas forward proudly and untamed. Probably.

The only thing that is really thrusting itself forward proudly is my nose. Even Dave mentioned it.

Perhaps it has grown bigger and bigger in Masimo’s imagination in the week he has been away. He hasn’t even got a photo of me to remind him that I am more than just a nose on legs.

Perhaps because he is foreign he is a bit psychic. Perhaps he has a touch of the Mystic Meg about him and he knows about the Dave the Laugh incident.

Jas has probably sent a message via an owl to let him know. Just because she has got the hump with me. AGAIN. About the stupid tent business.

And I mean that quite literally because my cat Angus (also known as a killing machine) is pretending my foot is a rabbit. In a sock. If I even move it slightly, he leaps on it and starts biting it.

Also, ouch and double ouch. I can’t get into a comfy position to take the pressure off my bum-oley. I think I may have actually broken something in my bottom. I don’t know what there is to break, but I may have broken it. I wonder if it is swollen up?

Then I heard the phut phut of the mighty throbbing engine that is my vati’s crap car. Carefully easing my broken bottom off the bed and slapping at Angus, I went downstairs. Angus was still clinging to my sock-rabbit-foot even though his head was bonking against the stairs.

As I got to the hall I heard the front door being kicked. Oh good, it was my delightful little sister.

“Gingey, Gingey, let me in!!! Let me in, poo sister.”

Then there was squealing, like a pig was being pushed through the letter box.

It wasn’t a pig being pushed through the letter box, it was Gordy, cross-eyed son of Angus. I could see his ginger ears poking through.

Oh, bloody hell.

I said, “Libby, don’t put Gordy though the letter box. I’m opening the door.”

She yelled, “He laaikes it.”

When I got the door open, it was to find Libby in Wellington boots and a bikini. Gordy was struggling and yowling in her little fat arms and finally squirmed free and leaped off into the garden sneezing and shaking.

Libby was laughing. “Funny pussy. Hnk hnk .” Then she came up to me and started hugging my knees and kissing them. In between snogging, Libby was murmuring, “I lobe my Gingey.”

Mutti came up the steps in a really short dress, very tight round the nungas. So very sad. She gave me a hug, which can be quite frightening seeing her enormous basoomas looming towards your head. She said, “Hello, Gee, did you have a larf camping?”

I said, “Oh yes, it was brillopads. We made instruments out of dried beans and Herr Kamyer did impressions of crap stuff with his hands that no one could get except Jas. And, as a pièce de résistance , I fell in a pond and was attacked by great toasted newts.”

She wasn’t even listening as usual, off in her own Muttiland.

“We went to see Uncle Eddie’s gig at The Ambassador last night. It was like an orgy; one of the women got so carried away she stole his feather codpiece.”

Is that really the sort of thing a growing, sensitive girl should have to listen to? It was like earporn.

I watched her bustling about making our delicious supper (i.e. opening a tin of tomato soup). She was so full of herself burbling on and on.

“Honestly, you should have been there, it was a hoot.”

I said, “Oooooooh yeah, it would have been great to have been there. Really great.” But she didn’t get it.

Libby was still kissing my knees and giggling. She had forgotten that they were my knees; they were now just her replacement friends for Josh. But then she had a lovers’ tiff with her knee-friends, biffed me on the knee quite hard and went off into the garden, yelling for Gordy.

I said, “Mum, you didn’t take Libby with you to the baldy-o-gram fiasco, did you?”

“Don’t be silly, Georgia, I’m not a complete fool.”

I said, “Well, actually, you are as it happens.”

She said, “Don’t be so rude.”

I said, “Where’s Dad? Have you managed to shake him off at last?”

And then Vati came in. In his leather trousers. Oh, I might be sick. Not content with the horrificnosity of the trousers, he kissed me on my hair. Urgh, he had touched my hair; now I would have to wash it.

He was grinning like a loon and taking his jacket off.

“Hello, no camping injuries then. No vole bites. You didn’t slip into a newt pond or anything?”

I looked at him suspiciously. I hoped he wasn’t turning into Mystic Meg as well in his old age. I said, “Dad, are you wearing a woman’s blouse?”

He went completely ballisticisimus. “Don’t be so bloody cheeky! This is an original sixties Mod shirt. I will probably wear it when I go clubbing. Any gigs coming up?”

Mum said, “Have you heard anything from the Italian Stallion?”

Dad had his head in the fridge and I could see his enormous leather-clad bum leering at me. I had an overwhelming urge to kick it, but I wasn’t whelmed because I knew he would probably ban me from going out for life.

I gave Mum my worst look and nodded over at the fridge. I needn’t have worried, though, because Dad had found a Popsicle in the freezer and was as thrilled as it is possible for a fat bloke in constraining leather trousers to be. He went chomping off into the front room.

Mum was adjusting her over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder and looking at me.

I said, “What?”

And she said, “So… have you heard anything?”

I don’t know why I told her, but it just came tumbling out.

“Mum, why do boys do that ‘see you later’ thing and then just not see you later? Even though you don’t even know when later is.”

“He hasn’t got in touch then?”

“No.”

She sat down and looked thoughtful, which was a bit alarming. She said slowly, “Hmm – well, I think it’s because – they’re like sort of nervous gazelles in trousers, aren’t they?”