Page 80 of It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
‘And didn’t she know it. She was properly smug about it, especially when the only Saturday job I could find a few months later was at BHS.’
‘Ah, but you couldn’t get a decent fry-up at Kookaï.’
‘Exactly! Though Elle never seemed to quite understand why I thought the on-site self-service restaurant was such a bonus. But I digress. So I’m fifteen, and Elle suggests I meet her in town after work one Saturday for some late-night shopping and a bite to eat.’
‘Oh God, I think I can see where this is heading…’
‘Yup. So there I am on the bus into town early one Saturday evening, wondering why Elle told me not to wear a coat, despite the fact that it’s freezing out, but also feeling ever so grown-up for heading out for what I thought would be a fun shopping trip and girly dinner before we got the bus back to Scarnbrook.’
‘You lived on the same street, right?’
‘Yeah, next door to each other. She moved in with her mum at the start of Year Nine. I’m surprised you remembered that.’
Tom tapped his temple to signal his excellent ability to recall information.
‘Anyway, as soon as Elle’s shift ended, we headed over the road to The Body Shop, where they used to give you free makeovers if you bought a couple of products. So we bought some body lotions and lip balms in return for a full face of make-up each. Then, in the shopping centre loos, Elle produces two “going out” tops from Kookaï – to this day I don’t know if she paid for them. We got changed into those and zig-zagged our partings before making our way to the restaurant for this so-called girly dinner, and Spaghetti Tree was indeed the venue. Not that I’d ever heard of it before then, mind.’
‘An early adopter.’
‘Hardly. So as the waiter showed us to our table, I noticed that all the other tables also appeared to be occupied by teenagers our age, all of whom seemed to have ordered exactly the same pizza. Which no one was eating.’
‘The infamous margherita.’
‘Yes! And then, at eight thirty on the dot, the lights dimmed, and everyone started pushing their tables up against the wall.’
‘Oh God, these are just the cringiest memories, Mal.’
My lips twitched at the mention of ‘Mal’ again, before I continued my tragic teenage tale. ‘And – as you well know – all of a sudden, the restaurant had transformed into some kind of dingy, underage nightclub. I was in shock. And I suggested to Elle that we should get out of there, but she just laughed and told me to relax. She said there was a well-known legal loophole that you could drink alcohol in a restaurant aged sixteen, as long as you drank it with food, hence all the stacks of uneaten cheap pizzas. Which sent me into a spin because a) I was pretty sure you still needed an adult to actuallybuythe booze and b) I wasn’t even sixteen at that point anyway.’
‘Blimey, what a way to be initiated into the Spaghetti Tree underbelly.’
‘Tell me about it. By now, we’re sat next to our table, pizzas untouched as that seemed to be the done thing, backs against the wall as all manner of things start happening on the dancefloor. Elle’s swigging from her bottle of Metz, trying to look all aloof, but she wouldn’t take her eyes off the entrance. Turns out some bloke had come into Kookaï the Saturday before, liked the look of her and had mentioned something about meeting him and his mates at Spaghetti Tree the following weekend.’
‘So, she wanted you there as her wing woman?’
‘Wingchild, Tom.’
‘Urgh, right. Did he show?’
‘Yeah, about an hour after the restaurant underwent its nightclub transformation. He was half-cut and had obviously forgotten who Elle even was. Though she had no problem reminding him the instant she clapped eyes on him.’
‘Was this meant to be a funny story? Because it sounds horrific. How old was this bloke?’
‘In his early twenties maybe? I found out later that Elle had told him she was nineteen.’
‘Well, he probably knew that was a lie, hence he suggested they meet up in a well-known underage drinking hole.’
‘Urgh, I’d never even considered that angle before.’
‘So how did the night play out?’
‘Well, I basically just sat in that little corner over there…’
I pointed to the opposite side of the restaurant where a group of four girlfriends were donning red and yellow paper crowns from their Christmas crackers and taking group selfies as they did so.
‘…nibbling away at our pizzas, which were actually quite delicious by the way—’
‘Yeah, I always did feel sorry for the chefs.’
