Family Fan Club. Jean Ure

much money—”

      “Tell us about it!” said Laurel.

      “I’m trying to, if you’d only listen! We’re just the same as they are, only in another age. Meg’s the oldest, right? And she really cares about the way she looks.”

      “She’s mumsy,” said Laurel. Meg was her part. She didn’t think she wanted to be compared to Meg.

      “She’s not!” said Jazz. “She’s pretty – like you. And she enjoys being pretty.” Jazz warmed to her theme. This was what being a director was all about! Giving your cast something to work on. “She only gets mumsy when she gets married. Like you probably will.”

      “I will not!” Laurel was indignant. She was going to be a top fashion model. She wasn’t going to get mumsy!

      “Well, anyway, you’re both pretty,” said Jazz. Everyone acknowledged that if Rose was the brains of the family, Laurel was the beauty. “And you both like to wear nice clothes. You can’t deny it! You’re always going on about clothes.”

      “Clothes are important,” said Laurel.

      “Yes, but they’re specially important to you. The rest of us don’t care so much. Wouldn’t bother me,” said Jazz, “if I didn’t ever wear anything but dungarees.”

      “Now you’re making me sound like a fribble!”

      “You’re not a fribble. It just happens to be something you’re interested in. We’d probably be interested, as well,” said Jazz, “if we looked like you.”

      “Hm!” Laurel tried not to sound self-satisfied, but she did like it when people told her she was pretty. “What about you?” she said.

      “Me. Yes. Well,” said Jazz, “I suppose I am a bit like Jo. I mean, I am quite ambitious—”

      “Quite?” said Rose. “I thought you told us you were going to end up in Hollywood and be a megastar?”

      Jazz grinned. “All right. I’m ambitious! And I know I can be impatient sometimes, just like Jo.”

      “Yes, and, you’re definitely boyish,” said Laurel, getting her own back for the mumsy bit. She wasn’t ever going to get mumsy! She looked pointedly at Jazz’s hair, cropped so close to her head it might almost have been a cap.

      “I’m not a bimbo,” agreed Jazz.

      “Maybe you’ll turn out to be a lesbian,” said Rose.

      Jazz picked up a cushion and threw it at her. Laurel shrieked, “Rose! Don’t be so disgusting!”

      “There isn’t anything disgusting about it,” said Rose. “What’s disgusting about it? Honestly, you’re so prejudiced! Anyway, if she’s really like Jo she’ll end up marrying some old man who could be her father. That’s what I call disgusting.”

      “Ageist!” taunted Jazz; and for once Rose actually had the grace to look abashed.

      “Just get on with it,” she said. In spite of herself, she was curious to hear what Jazz would say when she got to her.

      “OK. Well – Beth.”

      “Am I like her?” said Daisy.

      “Yes, you are!” Jazz leaned across and gave her a hug. “’cos you’re good and sweet and everybody loves you!”

      Nobody argued with that. Daisy might be a whole year older than Rose, who had just started in Year 7 that term, but she was still everyone’s pet and treated very much as the baby. She went to a special school, for children with learning difficulties. It wasn’t that she was stupid; just that she couldn’t learn as fast as other people. At Daisy’s school there were only fourteen children in a class. At the comprehensive, there were thirty. Daisy couldn’t cope with that. She had come home weeping every day because “big girls” had bullied her, so Mum had used some of her Icing money to pay for her to go to Linden Hyrst. That was one of the few times when Mum and Dad had been in agreement. They weren’t having their little Daisy being bullied.

      “So what about Amy?” said Laurel, putting the question that Rose had been dying to put for herself.

      Oh! Amy and Rose are definitely alike. Self-opinionated, for a start – you are, Rose, so don’t deny it!”

      Rose wouldn’t. She rather prided herself on having opinions and voicing them.

      “Vain—”

      “Vain?” Vain was something else! Rose’s head jerked up in genuine outrage. How could Jazz accuse her of being vain? “I’m not pretty enough to be vain!”

      It was true. Of the four of them, Rose was the only one who could be called homely. (Meaning plain, only it wasn’t kind to say so.) She was bright, vivid, intelligent – almost a genius, her sisters thought, but not pretty. It didn’t bother her. She left all the girly stuff to the others.

      “You’re still vain,” said Jazz. “You are vain of your brain.”

      Laurel laughed and punched the air. “Yessssss!”

      “You are,” said Jazz. “But that’s OK. We’re all vain about something. Except Daisy!” she added, giving her another hug. “She isn’t.”

      “I am a bit,” said Daisy.

      “You?” Jazz laughed. “What are you vain about?”

      “My nose,” said Daisy, pressing a finger against it. Daisy had inherited Mum’s nose. Small and neat and just the tiniest bit tip-tilted.

      “Well, I never knew that!” said Jazz.

      

      “Oh. No!” cried Laurel. She banged down her fork and stared accusingly at Mum across the kitchen table. “Not her again!”

      Her was an actress friend of Mum’s, known to the girls as Queen of the Soaps, or Lady Jayne. Her real name was Jayne Crichton, pronounced Cryton. She could be quite snooty if anyone called her Critchton. She could be quite snooty about a lot of things. Modern manners. Modern speech. Modern diction.

      “Speak up! Don’t mumble! Everyone today has sloppy diction. No one projects any more. How do you think you’re going to be heard in the back row of the stalls?”

      Mum said she was an actress of the old school and they had to be patient with her.

      “But why does she always have to come at Christmas?” wailed Laurel.

      “Because she has nowhere else to go.”