Chapter 1

I stood on the edge of the pavement watching as the car slowly drove down the street. At the end just as it stopped prior to turning right onto Ferrybridge Road, Cal turned and waved one last goodbye. I stood there waving, hoping that it wasn’t goodbye. I knew she’d be back at the weekend, but it felt to me like something was ending. She blew me a kiss as the car turned and was gone from view.

I stood there for a while, trying not to be worried about the future, before I turned and walked back inside.

“Don’t look so sad,” Mum said as I walked in, “she’ll be back at the weekend, and as you said, it’s only five weeks, and if she doesn’t come home one weekend, you can always go over there.”

“I’m not sad,” I replied, “I’m worried.”

“And what do you have to worry about?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing really, I just don’t feel right about things.”

“Not right how?” she asked me.

“I don’t know,” I replied, “I can’t put my finger on it. I’m just wondering things like how long it will be before Cal decides that it’s easier to stay over there for the weekend. You know, there’s a concert, a party, something else on.”

“You can always go over and go with her,” Mum suggested.

“Assuming I’m invited,” I said dejectedly and turned to walk into the house.

“Of course you’ll be invited,” she said, to my retreating back, “why wouldn’t you be?”

My turmoil was settled a couple of hours later, just as we’d finished tea, when my phone rang. I could tell by the ring tone that it was Cal calling. It was the guitar riff from the beginning of Roy Orbison’s Oh! Pretty Woman.

“Hi Sweetheart,” I said as I answered.

“No need to sound so enthusiastic,” she replied, picking up on my tone.

“Sorry,” I answered, “I’m missing you.”

“Already?” she asked, “I haven’t had chance to start yet. I’m here, I’ve got my room sorted. I’ll be sharing with another girl, but she’s not here yet. Mum’s just left so she should be home soon. What are you going to do with yourself until Friday. Pine away for me?”

“Probably, but Charlie is arriving on Friday as well,” I replied, “so I have plenty to look forward to. And don’t forget we have Mel’s parents’ barbeque on Saturday. Which reminds me, I’d better ask her if it’s all right to bring you and Charlie at school tomorrow, it wouldn’t be polite to just turn up with both of you.”

“Probably not,” she agreed, “I wonder what she and her parents will make of you turning up with two girlfriends?”

“I won’t be turning up with two girlfriends,” I objected, “just one and a friend who happens to be a girl. If you remember the arrangement when Charlie went off to LA.”

“She’ll still think you have two girlfriends,” she said, a smile in her voice, “who knows, maybe she’ll decide that if there’s room for two, then there’s room for three.”

“Do you think so?” I asked.

“Only over her dead body, boy,” Cal growled.

I realised, suddenly, that I felt much better about Cal being away for talking to her.

“Her dead body?” I queried.

“Well your dead body would be cutting off my nose to spite my face, wouldn’t it?” she replied.

I laughed.

“Yes, I suppose it would,” I said, still chuckling.

“There’s a concert in the Stoller Hall tonight,” she replied, “I’m going to that.”

“Have you decided what A levels you’re going to take?” I asked.

“Yes, I have to take Music, then I’ll do Music Technology and German,” she replied, “that should easily get me into Royal Northern. I also have to learn an instrument. I thought Piano would be good since I already play a bit. I may have to stay here on Saturday mornings occasionally, for rehearsals or practice.”

“Sounds like a busy two years,” I told her.

“But worth it for the end result,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, “what do you think of the idea of looking for somewhere to buy in the area, letting it out for the next two years, then we live in it when we leave school, and become real students?”

“Can we afford it?” she asked.

“That depends on the price, but I’d guess that so long at it costs less than about two million, we can,” I replied.

“Well, if we can find somewhere we’d want to live in, at the right price, I suppose we could,” she agreed.

“So we need to find out when houses for sale are featured in the M.E.N. and you need to bring a copy home with you each week,” I suggested.

“M.E.N?” she queried.

“The Manchester Evening News,” I replied, “the local daily newspaper.”

“Oh,” she replied, “right. Yes, I’ll do that.”

“Good,” I replied, “so, have you met any of your fellow students yet?”

“Not yet,” she replied, “but dinner is in ten minutes so I should at least meet some others then.”

“You’d better go get ready then,” I told her, “hopefully you’ll have plenty of people to talk to. Ring me later if you get lonely.”

“I will,” she replied, “love you lots.”

“I love you lots,” I replied.

“But I love you more.”

“No, I love you more.”

This went on for most of the ten minutes before the dinner bell rang at her end, so loud I heard it over the phone.

“You’d better go,” I said.

We hung up, and I wandered into the living room to find Alison and Geoff, her beau, canoodling on the settee.

“Do you two mind if I put the telly on?” I asked.

“Can’t you go and watch the one in your bedroom?” Ali asked, “we’d kind of like some privacy.”

“Then why don’t you go to your room?” I replied.

“Because if we did, the parents would ground me until menopause, and castrate Geoff,” she replied.

“You could be right at that,” I answered, “all right, I’ll go. Don’t you two do anything I would.”

“Don’t you mean wouldn’t?” Geoff asked.

I just looked at him.

“No, maybe not,” he added.

I patted him on the shoulder on my way out, adding a little squeeze with the last pat. I think he got the message.

Upstairs I decided to forgo the delights of TV and got down to some homework. I was beginning to get the hang of differentiation in Maths, and the teacher was threatening us with writing a programme in computing in the next couple of weeks. I’d ordered a copy of Borland’s Delphi 6, to practice at home on, although the school was using its predecessor, Turbo Pascal. Apparently Delphi was object oriented, and that seemed to be the way that programming was going, so I thought I’d be future proofed if I taught myself that. I’d also bought a couple of teach yourself manuals.

The three problems in Calculus I had to do were a struggle, but I got through them and was happy with my answers after an hour. I turned to my laptop, booted it and pulled up the Delphi programme.

Opening the first of my books at chapter 1, read through the first section, then tried the exercise.

Ten minutes later I clicked on compile and, my first programme didn’t run, it threw up an error.

I went back and read through the section again, I’d done everything right. Finally, frustrated, I turned to the back of the book and the suggested solutions to exercises. There I saw my problem, a misplaced semi-colon.

Under a minute to reload the code, make the change and then run the programme.

Success! I was a programmer.

Admittedly, even I didn’t see a lot of use for a programme that printed the words ‘Hello World’ onto the screen and then sat there waiting for you to press Enter to get rid of it.

I immediately thought of an enhancement, it needed an extra line to prompt the user to press Enter to continue.

I was starting to think I was going to enjoy this course, particularly after I added another writeln command to print ‘Press Enter to exit’, beneath the Hello World.

Flushed with success, I spent the next two hours going through the book and trying out the exercises.

The first thing I did on Wednesday morning was to send a text to Cal, wishing her luck. I even remembered to finish it with ‘Toi, toi, toi’, which I was reliably informed, was the standard operatic version of the theatre’s ‘break a leg.’

I got a text back at lunch time, telling me the facilities were fantastic, the teachers great and the other students all seemed to be a pretty nice bunch, and a promise to ring me after school.

Despite two hours of statistics, one of Calculus and two hours in the computer lab, being taught about as much as I’d learned the previous night from my book, I enjoyed school that day, it seemed to be over in a flash and I was waiting for the bus home.

I thought it strange that I hadn’t seen Mel all day and looked for her at the bus stop. She wasn’t there either and I did want to ask her whether it was all right for Charlie to come to the barbecue as well on Saturday. I decided I’d have to ring when I got home.

My first job, once I arrived at home, was to make myself a sandwich, I hadn’t had much lunch. So, wholemeal bread, Edam slices and Branston Pickle, a large glass of diet Pepsi and a couple of biscuits, and I set off upstairs to my room.

About twenty minutes later I heard the front door open, then slam shut, Alison was home.

A few minutes after that, the bathroom door shut and I could hear the water running in the shower. Alison had had either games or PE last period.