What’s Up With Jody Barton?, page 2
The Chunky Bus is a private joke. What my dad is actually referring to is the number 98, which runs between Holborn and Willesden Green. It travels right through the heart of London and then it heads up past Marble Arch and on through Maida Vale and straight through Kilburn and it keeps on going until it eventually reaches a bus stop directly outside our cafe on Willesden High Road. And this is where everyone always gets off. Sometimes one or two of them will come into our cafe. After that, the number 98 carries on for just another hundred metres or so as far as the Willesden bus depot and, once it’s there, it turns right round and heads straight back to the West End. My dad reckons this is specifically so it can scoop up another load of tourists who can’t wait to swap the fancy restaurants and the glazzamatazz of central London for a genuine Champion Chunky Breakfast in Chunky’s Diner. My dad is a seriously funny man sometimes.
Then there’s my mum. She can be quite funny too when she wants to be. Her name is Angie Barton. Like me and Jolene, she has brown hair and hazel eyes and she’s actually still really attractive even though she’s forty, wears a lot of leopard print and fiddles with her hair too much. Whenever she comes up to our school for open evenings, she easily out-glams all the other mums. They all look like Iggy Pop compared to her. I have to say, though, that sometimes her sense of humour is a bit random. I’ll give you an example: if it had been left to her, our cafe would now be called Angie’s Tasty Baps. Whichever way you look at it, this is even worse than naming it Chunky’s Diner. Luckily, it was a family decision and the rest of us ganged together and overruled her on this occasion.
But that’s my mum. She’s always been a loose cannon when it comes to naming things. She was the one who dished out the names for me and Jolene, and she nearly made a mess of that too.
‘I wanted to give you names that reflect my love of music,’ she’s said to us a million times.
‘Fine,’ Jolene has snapped – a million times – back at her. ‘So why couldn’t you have called me Britney or Kylie or Mariah or Fergie? Any of those would have been cool. But why the heck Jolene? I’m the only Jolene in my entire school. It makes me feel like a freak.’
That’s another difference between Jolene and me. She’s a total drama queen. I’m totally not.
And, without fail, my mum always says, ‘Fergie? Why on earth would I name you after that strumpet? She’s brought nothing but shame upon the good name of our royal family.’ Then she starts fiddling furiously with one of her honey-coloured hair extensions and says, ‘You know full well why I called you Jolene! It’s the title of my most favourite song ever. And it’s a beautiful song and Jolene is a beautiful name so stop breaking my heart, you ungrateful little madam, and thank your lucky stars I didn’t call you Backwoods Barbie.’
This is my mum’s idea of a private joke. Unfortunately, it’s such a private joke that she’s the only one of us who actually gets it.
And then – and this is where the story gets really disturbing – my mum turns to me and says, ‘I wanted to call you Dolly – after the beautiful woman who sang that beautiful song.’ And she begins to twiddle a hair extension round her little finger and puts her head on one side and laughs. And all the time she’s laughing she’s looking at me with big round emotional eyes and I’m never quite sure what to do with myself.
My mum is talking about an American country music singer who has very big hair and very big bazookas and who’s called Dolly Parton.
If my mum had gone ahead with her genius plan, I’d now be called . . .
Dolly Barton.
So I reckon that’s why I wasn’t in any hurry to be born, and hung on inside for those extra fourteen minutes. I was just giving my mum plenty of time to change her mind.
‘I’m glad you didn’t call me that,’ I always say. ‘I’d have been a total joke.’
But my mum just carries on looking at me with this weird faraway look on her face and says, ‘It’s a shame, Jody. I’d absolutely set my heart on calling you Dolly. Jolene and Dolly. My very own country-music twincesses. I had it all planned out and nothing was going to change my mind. But then you popped out and it was obvious that you weren’t a Dolly!’
So, anyway, she eventually decided to call me Jody – for no better reason than that it worked well in a pair with Jolene. And, even though it’s not what I’d have chosen, I’m cool with it. After hearing that horror story, who wouldn’t be?
So we all live up above Chunky’s Diner. Mum, Dad, Jolene and me. Personally, I love it. My bedroom is at the very top of the house and I can look down on all the cars and vans and double-decker buses, and if I press my face right up against the glass of my window I can even see the big white arch of Wembley peeping over the rooftops. I don’t like football, but I like Wembley. And I like that arch. I don’t know why but it makes me happy whenever I see it. Maybe because it looks like a big weird rainbow hanging over north-west London. Or like the handle on a giant’s shopping basket.
And, even though it’s not the poshest place in the world, I like Willesden High Road too. It’s got practically everything I need. Like a library and a supermarket and a cake shop and a tube station. It’s also got a lot of other stuff I don’t need. Like sixteen hairdressers and four tanning salons and a really random shop that sells nothing but old front doors and fireplaces. But at least it means that there’s always plenty happening on our street. And there are always plenty of weird and way-out people walking around on the other side of our big cafe window. I swear to God I saw Justin Bieber once. And Nelson Mandela. And Lady Gaga. She was wrapped up in a tartan blanket and riding along on a mobility scooter.
I read on the internet that 7,172,091 people live in London. That’s more than seven million people. They all wander down Willesden High Road at some point. Somebody interesting was bound to push open our cafe door sooner or later. Then, one rainy Sunday afternoon in early February, somebody interesting did.
Jolene saw him first. Of course she did. She’s fourteen minutes ahead of me in absolutely everything. She watched him jump down from the Chunky Bus, flick the hair out of his eyes with a sudden sideways jerk of the head and then lean against our window and chat for a bit on his mobile phone.
My dad has a real issue with people doing this. For some reason, he reckons it’s bad for business. He even went through this embarrassing phase of charging outside and saying, ‘What do you think this is? A Public Leaning Post?’ One day he made the mistake of saying it to Natalie Snell and her mum. Natalie Snell is the hardest girl in my school and her mum is even harder. My dad said, ‘What do you think this is, ladies? A Public Leaning Post?’
And Natalie Snell’s mum looked him up and down, blew a massive bubble in her pink bubblegum and said, ‘Nah, mate. From where I’m standing it looks like a fat bloke with an attitude problem.’
So my dad doesn’t tend to hassle people any more. He usually just lets them lean. He’s not happy about it though.
But that Sunday afternoon my dad wasn’t around to get upset. He’d popped out to buy 400 turkey twizzlers from Frosty Frank. My mum wasn’t around either. She’d nipped down to The Talon Salon to have her nails sharpened. So neither of them saw the boy leaning against our window. And neither did they see him put his phone away, push his hands into his pockets and bump open the door of our cafe with his shoulder.
Or that’s how Jolene tells it anyway. She also says it was the hottest head-turning Hollywood entrance she’s ever seen in her entire life. Considering that we’re in Willesden Green and nearly all our customers are over seventy, there’s probably a lot of truth in that.
But I wouldn’t know. I was busy scraping food off plates and into the bin. As far as I was concerned, whoever had walked in was just another random boring customer.
I heard the Random Boring Customer say, ‘Strawberry and banana smoothie, please. Just fruit. No yoghurt, OK?’
And then I heard my sister Jolene say, ‘It’s your smoothie – have it how you like. Anything else?’
And the RBC said, ‘Nah, just that thanks.’
And then I heard the sound of his strawberries and bananas being whizzed together in the blender and a minute or so later I heard Jolene say, ‘That’ll be one seventy-five then, please.’
He said, ‘Cheers.’
She said, ‘Ta.’
Coins clinked. The drawer of the cash register clunked. And somewhere a chair scraped against the tiles as the Random Boring Customer pulled it away from a table and sat down.
Big fat deal.
So I carried on scraping plates, and then, when that was done, I moved over to the sink and switched my attention to the massive stack of washing up. I should just explain that we don’t have a separate kitchen in our cafe. Our entire catering operation depends on nothing more than a hot-plate, a microwave and a sink behind the counter. Dad says separate kitchens create an unfriendly barrier between the caterer and the customer. And, anyway, we don’t have the space for one. I should also explain that it’s always me who does the washing up. Jolene won’t do it because she reckons it wrecks her nail transfers. I don’t have any transfers on my nails so I’m not bothered.
I turned both taps on full and watched as a mutant blob of soapy foam began to grow inside the sink.
‘Jody?’
At first I didn’t hear. The water was sploshing into the sink with such force that my ears thought they were in Niagara.
‘Jody!’
I turned off one of the taps and looked round. And then I jumped. Jolene was right behind me. Even though she’s my twin and we’re very close, she was invading my personal body space. I took a step backwards.
‘I need to tell you something,’ she whispered. It was a loud whisper, but it was still definitely a whisper. Her hands had gone into mime overdrive and her mouth was working way too hard. I quickly turned off the other tap and took a step forward.
‘What?’ I said. I was loud-whispering too. I don’t know why. A very quick glance past her shoulder told me that there was hardly anyone around to ear-jack our conversation anyway. The cafe was quieter than Mrs Hamood’s Monday Maths Club. Just the Random Boring Customer sitting in the corner and Whispering Bob Harris who comes in every single day.
Whispering Bob Harris isn’t his real name. Until very recently, we didn’t actually know what his real name was. My dad tried to ask him once but WBH just put his hand behind his ear and bellowed, ‘Speak up, son. I can’t hear you.’ And then Jolene also tried to ask him and WBH said the same thing:
‘Speak up, son, I can’t hear you.’
I’d laughed so hard I nearly collapsed but Jolene was mortified and kept asking us if she looked like a bloke.
Then we realized that WBH says this to everyone. He’d probably even say it to Dolly Parton given half a chance. He still needed a name though, and for some random reason my dad decided to call him Whispering Bob Harris.
The long and the short of it is that WBH is older than God and as deaf as a doorknob.
So I really didn’t need to whisper.
But, just to be safe, I switched on our stereo and turned the volume up as loud as it would go. The song that came blaring out was my all-time favourite. ‘Light My Fire’.
‘You’ll never guess what,’ said Jolene, half-shout, half-whisper. She had a soppy grin on her face and her cheeks had gone a bit pink. I smiled to myself. This usually means that she’s fallen in love.
‘You’ve fallen in love,’ I said.
Jolene looked shocked. And then she shook her head in amazement and said, ‘OMG! Is it that obvious! How the heck can you tell?’
I almost laughed out loud. Unlike me, Jolene is always falling in love. I reckon she tells me about it at least once a fortnight. And then, just after that, she tells me she’s got a new boyfriend and then, just after that, she tells me she’s dumped him.
I didn’t LOL though because I’m not really the LOL type. And, anyway, it’s as tight as a teabag to laugh at people when they’re spilling the beans on a sensitive personal issue. So instead I just smiled again and squeezed a load more washing-up liquid into the sink.
Jolene stuck her bottom lip out and said, ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, and blew some foam off my face.
‘Yes there is,’ said Jolene. ‘You’re laughing at me.’
‘I’m not laughing at you,’ I said. ‘I’m smiling to myself. There’s a big difference.’
Jolene frowned. ‘Yeah, whatever . . . I’m being serious though, Jode! Don’t look now but there’s this boy sitting in the window and he’s the fittest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I love him. Go over to the counter and pretend to be doing something so you can get a proper look – you can see his face from there.’
I couldn’t be bothered. I’ve seen Jolene’s dream boyfriends before and they always look like members of JLS.
I picked up a dirty plate and very, very slowly I began to wash it. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Jolene’s face was looking as if it might pop with impatience. For some reason, this made me smile again and it also made my hands move even slower. To be fair though, that plate had a lot of dried-up egg and tomato sauce stuck to it.
Jolene’s face almost twitched off her head. ‘What the heck are you doing? Put the plate down and stop being a weirdo! This is important! I need you to look at him now. Quick! He could get up and walk out of my life at any second.’
I dumped the plate back into the foamy water and frowned. ‘Quit calling me a weirdo!’ And then I said, ‘I’m only trying to get these dishes done. It’s what Dad pays me to do, remember?’
Jolene sighed and folded her arms. And then she chewed her thumbnail. And then she said, ‘Soz.’
I ignored her.
Jolene said, ‘Sozza bozza, Jody Wody.’ Her voice had gone a bit high and whiney.
I blew some more foam off my face and started washing up again.
Jolene stood there for a few more seconds, just chewing her nails. It’s a very pointless habit considering she takes so much time and trouble over them. On each nail, she happened to have a transfer of the Tottenham Hotspur club badge and all the tooth contact was making some of those cockerels look a bit manky. Jolene is a massive Spurs fan. All my family are except for me. It’s nothing personal I’ve got against Spurs. I just don’t like football.
Jolene took her nails out of her mouth and said, ‘Soz and chips.’ One of her feet had begun to tap against the tiled floor.
‘Whatever,’ I said. And then I started counting slowly in my head. I got as far as three.
‘Look, Jode, I’m proper sorry, yeah?’ Jolene said really quickly in a really loud whisper. ‘I honestly didn’t mean to call you a weirdo. It just came out wrong. The thing is – I’m under A LOT OF EMOTIONAL PRESSURE right now because I genuinely believe that THE LOVE OF MY LIFE is . . . right now . . . sitting in the corner of our cafe and I NEED TO FIND OUT WHO HE IS. And I realize . . . yeah . . . that you don’t understand because you’re only interested in your maths project and your weird music and stuff . . . and I know you’re not remotely interested in having any kind of romantic experience until you’re at least a hundred and five . . . but I AM INTERESTED and I’M BEGGING YOU TO HELP ME FIND OUT WHO THIS BUFF BOY IS. PLEEEEASE!’
She wasn’t whispering any more. She wasn’t even loud-whispering. She was just being loud. Even with The Doors blaring out of our speakers, it’s a wonder Buff Boy didn’t hear every single word.
‘Call that an apology?’ I muttered. And then I picked up a wet tea towel and flicked it at her head. ‘More like a nonpology.’ I was quite offended actually. It probably didn’t show though because I don’t tend to get over-emotional like Jolene does – but she’d hit a raw nerve all the same. So I’m fussy. So what? I’ve never been the sort who drones on and on about love. That’s for other people – not me. And, anyway, Jolene goes on enough random dates for both of us. In fact, she’s a serial dater.
Jolene shrugged. ‘Just saying.’ And then she must have remembered how desperate she was because she looped her arm through mine and started being extra nice. ‘Please, Jody. Please just come away from the sink just for one second and tell me if you know him. And then I’ll finish the washing up and mop the floor and clean the loo and you can do nothing till Dad comes back. Absolutely nothing at all.’
And, even though she’d called me a weirdo and made me sound as exciting as a fridge magnet, this still seemed like a WIN.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘OK. But I’m hardly likely to know him if you don’t, am I?’ And I threw the tea towel down on the work surface and walked forward to the counter.
‘Him over there,’ whispered Jolene, and nodded her head towards the corner. She needn’t really have bothered. I’d already worked out that it wasn’t Whispering Bob Harris she was lusting after. But I followed her gaze anyway. And then I shifted a few steps sideways so that I could get a better look.
And that was when I first properly saw him and it felt just as if I was being struck by lightning.
He wasn’t Jolene’s usual type at all. Not only did he look nothing like Aston Merrygold, Oritsé Williams, Marvin Humes or J. B. Gill, he actually looked nothing like any member of any boy band anywhere. He did remind me of someone though.
‘It’s River Phoenix,’ I whispered in disbelief.
The boy in the corner looked just like my favourite gone-but-never-forgotten film star. And, even though I really didn’t want to agree with her, I had to admit that Jolene was absolutely spot on. He was buff.
Is buff.
Always will be buff.
And nom and peng and fit and hench and all those other words that the girls at school bandy about when they’re really just trying to say beautiful.
