Faith - Lesley Pearse [34]
Then, out of the blue, along came the chance encounter with Jackie that suddenly transformed her life.
They stayed by the pool that afternoon chatting as though they’d known each other for years. It was all about records, boys, makeup and clothes, and the party Jackie was having that evening.
‘You must come too,’ she said, her green eyes dancing with excitement. ‘Come home with me when we leave here. If you want to change for the party you can borrow something of mine.’
‘I can’t do that,’ Laura said, astounded at the invitation.
‘Yes you can,’ Jackie grinned. ‘I can guess what you’ll do if I don’t make you come home with me. You’ll go on home and then bottle out of coming later. I can’t let that happen, can I?’
She was right. Laura probably would have been too scared to go to the party alone. Back in her room she would have started to doubt that the tale she’d first told her landlord about her dead parents and her guardian, which she continued to tell anyone who asked, including Jackie, would stand up to more rigorous questioning. She would also be afraid of wearing the wrong clothes or just not sounding right.
On the way to Jackie’s house she ran into a record shop and bought a copy of ‘Runaway’ by Del Shannon that was currently in the Top Ten. Laura remembered feeling it was a bad omen and that soon she would be exposed as a fraud.
But it didn’t turn out to be a bad omen, for within an hour or two Laura discovered Jackie didn’t care about people’s backgrounds, how they dressed, spoke or even where they lived. She got that from her parents.
Frank and Lena Thompson were artists. Frank worked as a cartoonist for the Beano comic, and Lena designed greetings cards, and the only word Laura knew at that time which would describe them was bohemian. Even their own children called them by their Christian names, and they appeared to have no regard for convention. Their house in Duke’s Avenue in Muswell Hill was a large one, with the kind of good-quality but scruffy furniture that could only be inherited.
Frank had a full, bushy beard, and wore paint-splattered corduroy trousers and a shapeless jumper, while Lena wore a dress which looked suspiciously like a Victorian petticoat. She too had hair the colour of new pennies, but it was long and plaited and she wound the plaits round her head like a crown. Laura had never met people like them before. If she’d passed them in the street she might have taken them for a couple of extras from some weird film.
Yet from the moment Laura walked into their vast, astoundingly untidy kitchen, she wished she had been born into their family, for there was an all-pervading sense of love and warmth amidst the chaos.
Toby and Belle, Jackie’s younger brother and sister, twelve and eight respectively, watched by their mother, were icing a birthday cake for Jackie. It reminded Laura of one in a cartoon, large and lopsided, with bright pink icing dripping down the sides. They had smeared and dropped icing everywhere, including their clothes and faces, yet Lena sat casually drinking a cup of tea, unconcerned by the mess.
‘We’re going to write “Happy Birthday Jackie” in chocolate icing,’ Belle trilled out.
Maybe it was because Belle was a similar age to Ivy that Laura felt an instant affection for Jackie’s little sister. She was supremely confident, with her golden hair, blue eyes, pink cheeks, dimples and the cutest little nose, but it was her willingness to accept a complete stranger as a friend that touched Laura the most.
‘You’ll have to wait until the pink icing dries,’ she said, smiling at the child.
‘We don’t usually worry about such refinements in this household,’ Lena said with a chuckle. ‘But as you seem to know about these things, maybe you could instruct Belle.’
Jackie explained how they’d met at the swimming pool, and that she’d invited Laura back for the party.
‘You’re very welcome, Laura,’ Lena said with the kind of smile that proved she meant what she said. ‘But I hope my birthday girl explained that our parties tend to be rather mad affairs.’
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