‘Oh,’ said Ellie again. ‘Ehm. Bummer.’
He nodded and looked at her. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘Thatcherbaby or not, I still think you’re beautiful.’
‘How come I can wash all this rotten egg and it didn’t make me want to puke, but now you do?’
They smiled at each other.
Ellie left him to Match of the Day and wandered up to her old room, which was exactly as she’d left it eleven years ago for college. She picked up her Strawberry Shortcake doll, inhaled deeply and looked around the room.
It looked pretty much as the flat had done for her party: covered in peeling old thin magazine posters of the Brat Pack: in particular, her favourite, Andrew McCarthy.
‘Oh Andrew,’ she said, as she had done for so many years in her teens.
‘What are we going to do?’
As usual, Andrew stayed entirely schtum. Ellie had never given up, despite the range and variety of questions he’d completely ignored over the last decade-and-a-half, including:
‘Should I let Stuart Mannering put his hand up my blouse?’
(The answer should have been no, and she knew that, but she let him do it anyway.)
‘Should I finish my homework or go out and hang around the boys doing wheelies on their BMXs at the bottom of the street?’
(Ditto.)
‘Will I ever meet a nice boy?’
(Most likely not a pubescent one.)
‘Will I ever get over Miles Sampson not being in love with me?
(Yes. Well, pretty much. As long as nobody is playing Lloyd Cole and the Commotions albums.)
‘How do I get the substitute Social Studies teacher to notice me?’
(Stop trying; it’s working and he might get sent to prison.)
‘Am I gay because I really, really like my gym teacher?’
(No, it’s a teenage occupational hazard.)
‘If I wish really hard, will I grow up to get a huge pink apartment like Demi Moore’s in St Elmo’s Fire?’
(Yes, if you become a coke whore.)
‘Now everyone at school has seen The Breakfast Club sixty-four times, will school become more like The Breakfast Club with everyone breaking down social barriers and revealing their inner selves?’
(Definitely not, although Stuart Mannering will reveal his entire outer self in biology and get two month’s detention.)
‘Will I get to meet John Cusack on a long trip across America?’
(Perhaps, if you’re six foot tall with long shiny blonde hair.)
‘Wouldn’t it be great if I had a really gorgeous lover who died and then came back and made pottery with me?’
(As yet unexplored.)
‘Will you come to rescue me, like you rescued Molly Ringwald?’
(So far, no.)
‘Oh Andrew.’
She looked at him again. The poster had worn away around his mouth from chaste kisses.
‘Where are you, then? The middle-youth of the world needs you.’
She thought harder.
‘Actually, we do bloody need you. Where the hell are you?’
As she stared at the battered magazine-torn image, a thought began to stir within her. I mean, here, surely was a man with a bit of knowledge about growing up and not playing the adolescent for ever. She stared at it a bit more with mounting excitement. ‘What,’ she wondered, ‘is he like now?’ She pictured him – a little older, not much. With shock, she realized he was only halfway through his thirties and she gulped internally – not that much older than her. Oh my God. If there was one person in the world who understood what she was going through, she suddenly had the utter conviction that it was him. Why she was feeling so bleargh. And why she felt that something was passing her by, but she didn’t know what it was.
Excitedly, she jumped up and took out her mobile.
‘Julia? Where’s Andrew McCarthy?’
‘What?’ said Julia. Behind her, someone managed to drop an entire tray of glasses. The bar crowd appeared to think this worthy of a round of applause.
‘Look. I can’t really talk. We’re up to H, an I … an I … can’t … motor functions.’
‘Julia!’
She could hear Julia sit up and try and pay attention.
‘Is this some guy you picked up on the way over to your dad’s house?’
‘No, you know, Andrew. I mean, what happened to him? He just disappeared. He just stopped being famous and disappeared. Maybe he’s dead!’
‘Don’t be silly … he can’t be dead … you and him have a date …’
‘Yeah, ha ha ha. This is serious. A movie star has disappeared off the face of the planet.’
‘That’s not serious. A rainforest tribe disappearing, maybe. But, you know, I just can’t see Sting doing the tribute album for the guy who made Weekend at Bernie’s II.’
‘Hmm,’ said Ellie.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘That doesn’t sound like nothing.’
‘I just might have had an idea, that’s all.’
‘A grumpy idea or a cheerful one?’
‘Hard to say. Depends on whether he’s … nothing.’
‘I don’t like the sound of this.’
‘Oh, got to go!’
‘Go where? You’re at your dad’s!’
‘Yes, and his deep fried lard is burning. Got to go!’
She put down the phone and sat back on the bed, deep in thought. God, she had seen those films so many times. It hadn’t been until much later that she’d realized her mother had been desperate to get her out of the house that year, and had let her disappear to the cinema as often as she wanted, so she could get on with the business at hand of arguing with Ellie’s dad and preparing to move to Plockton.
Ellie looked at the back wall, where her old ice skates were hanging by their grubby white laces. That was what her father had done: every time she wasn’t at the cinema, her dad had taken her ice skating. He was mad for it. Of course by the time she’d got to fourteen she’d disdained it utterly and much preferred trying to freeze-frame the video with Julia, to see how far under the duvet they could get in Class. And now she was being petulant about doing her dad’s washing up. Some things never changed. And what was grown-up anyway? And why did she suddenly have an inexplicable desire to go ice skating?
‘Ikea on a Saturday morning,’ said Ellie. The rest of the car ignored her. ‘Did anyone hear me? I said, IKEA ON A SATURDAY MORNING. ARE WE NUTS??? Why can’t we go … I don’t know … ice skating or something?’
Julia turned around from the front seat, where she was trying to navigate her way through Croydon and placate the rest of