by Mel Sparke
You can tell it’s a house full of women, Sonja ruminated. Poor Dad doesn’t get a look-in!
Her father’s few toiletries were consigned out of sight to the pine cabinet above the sink, while his razor was nowhere to be seen - he’d taken to hiding it since all three of his daughters had an annoying habit of nicking it for their armpits and legs.
And if the traces of her dad’s belongings in the bathroom were pretty marginal, there was no sign of Sonja’s big brother Peter at all. But that was no surprise, considering he’d lived away from home for the last couple of years. Sonja’s mother made sure he still had a room to call his own, though he’d been demoted to the smallest one in the house - Sonja having made a bid for his large room the moment he’d left it.
No trace… the words slipped into her mind. But she wasn’t thinking of Peter this time - it was Owen’s face that floated in the steam in front of her.
Sonja shook her head and the vision disappeared. She’d made a vow not to think about Anna’s gorgeous big brother again; it hurt too much. It hurt too much to care for someone that madly, but never hear from him.
Sonja gave one final stretch in the rapidly cooling water and pushed herself out of the bath with a whoosh of water. Standing on the deep-piled bath mat, she stretched across to the heated towel rail and yanked a huge, fluffy towel from one of the bars. As she did so, she caught a hazy glimpse of herself in the steamed-up, full-length mirror on the back of the door.
A quick rub with the towel and the condensation was cleared enough for Sonja to take a long look at herself. She pulled the scrunchie out of her piled-up mop of blonde hair and let it tumble over her damp shoulders.
Studying her reflection, she knew she was pretty - and all thanks to her mum. Helena’s Swedish background had given all four of her children the same colouring (blonde, summer sky blue-eyed, warm skin-toned). The only thing they’d taken from their dark-haired father was his height. Sonja was the shortest of the children at 1.8 metres and that made her taller than any of her girlfriends - unless you counted Natasha, and Sonja was still unsure how much of a friend she really was.
The conversation she’d had with Natasha earlier at the End was still preying on her mind.
What was with all that blowing hot and cold stuff? she wondered, turning this way and that in front of the long expanse of mirror. Is Natasha trying to put me off modelling?
Another thought came crashing straight in behind that one. Or is she jealous? Doesn’t she want the competition?
Sonja smiled as the steam slowly encroached on her reflected image and decided that perhaps the time had come to get her own modelling career off the ground.
CHAPTER 5
SNAP DECISIONS
“Dutch?” suggested Anna.
“Or Belgian?” wondered Maya.
The two lads on the other side of the café stopped poring over the map spread out on the table between them, exchanged a few words and started to laugh.
From their vantage point in the window booth, Maya and Anna (who preferred to take her ten-minute break enjoying the scenery in the café than out the back with Nick) exchanged looks.
“What do you think that was all about?” said Anna, twirling the spoon around in her mug of hot chocolate.
“Maybe something like, ‘Have you spotted those two really pathetic girls sitting ogling us?’” Maya grinned.
She was only joking. Maya knew that Anna worked the same way as her. When checking guys out, they both went for the subtle approach: quick glances when they wouldn’t be seen, as well as acting as though they were so wrapped up in their own conversation that they hadn’t even noticed Potential Talent’s existence.
Of course, their whole cover would be blown the minute the other girls arrived. At the sight of the two very good-looking backpackers, Kerry would probably turn bright red and knock something over, while Sonja and Cat would try to outdo each other in getting the boys’ attention - Sonja by zapping them into submission with those blue eyes of hers and Cat by heaving her bosom into battle station position.
“I wonder what’s brought them to Winstead?” Anna puzzled, still trying to attune her ears to the language the lads were speaking above the sound of Radio I. While the café was quiet and no one was putting money into the jukebox, she’d taken the small radio that Nick kept in the kitchen to listen to football scores and had stuck it behind the counter to try and create a little atmosphere.
“Bad map-reading skills?” shrugged Maya with a smile. “After all, living here’s one thing, but I don’t suppose the Rough Guide to Britain inspired them to take the train to the end of the line and land in gloomy old Winstead in late October.”
“Actually, it’s a pity those lads aren’t Italian,” said Anna, still stirring, although her hot chocolate was now less than lukewarm. “You could have learned a few phrases from them before you jet off there on Saturday.”
“What, phrases like, ‘I’m here on holiday with my parents, but please don’t think I’m a loser?’”
“Are you really that bothered about going on holiday with your parents? I’ll swap, if you want - I’d do anything to see Florence.”
Maya felt guilty. Anna was only a little bit older than her, but she was having to take care of herself. Wages for an eighteen-year-old waitress probably didn’t stretch very far - not to Florence, that was for sure.
“Sorry - I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful about it. It’s just that I suppose I’m at the stage where I’m feeling too old to be going on holiday with Mum and Dad and the kids. I’d love to go away with my friends, but that’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?” asked Anna. Being on her own was sometimes excruciatingly lonely and financially difficult, but she hadn’t realised how much she’d begun to take her freedom for granted.
“My parents have only just started to loosen the leash with me the last few months, since we had a big bust-up in the summer,” Maya explained. “I’m just grateful that they let me do the ordinary stuff these days, like going out on a school night occasionally. I wouldn’t dare push it any further.”
Now it was Anna’s turn to feel guilty. In the short space of time that she’d properly become a part of Ollie’s crowd, she’d never heard Maya moaning about her home life; she always seemed so together, so assured.
But Anna knew more than most what it was like to put on a brave face and hide your troubles away. After all, none of her new-found friends knew exactly what had made Anna leave everything behind in her old life and come to a sleepy backwater like Winstead. And she didn’t know if her secret was something she would ever be able to tell them.
“Oh, look,” said Maya, diverting Anna’s attention to the street outside. “Here comes Kerry and Sonja. How about a bet?”
“What on?”
“How long it takes Sonja to find an excuse to talk to those lads.”
“Right!” laughed Anna. “You go first.”
“OK…” said Maya thoughtfully, “I’ll bet you that she’s yapping to them within the next five minutes.”
Maya and Anna both looked up at the wonky clock on the café wall, as if by some miracle it would actually tell them the right time, then realised their mistake and glanced down at their watches.
“Well, I’ll say it’ll take her closer to fifteen minutes,” said Anna. “What are we betting?”
“How about 10p?”
“Oooh, I think I can manage that. Done!”
The door tinkled open and Sonja strode in, her shining, honey-blonde hair bobbing, apparently immune to the blustery wind outside that had whipped poor Kerry’s curls into a mutinous bundle of frizz.
“Looks like you’ve been here a while,” said Sonja, peering at Maya’s empty coffee cup. “How come?”
“We got let out of the last lesson - Mr Stanley went home early with flu.”
“Nice one,” said Sonja enviously. “Anyhow, are you on or off duty, Anna? Who’s serving?”
“Oh, I’ve just about finished my break. Wh
at do you want?”
“But we don’t want to rush you, Anna, that’s not fair!” Kerry chipped in, trying to smooth down her over-excited hair.
“Don’t worry about it,” smiled Anna. “Ollie’s off tonight rehearsing and you’ll die of thirst if you wait for Nick to serve you.”
“What’s he doing through there anyway?” asked Maya, peering behind the counter to the kitchen. “It’s not like he’s got any cooking to do. It’s too quiet in here for that.”
“He said he was going to do some ‘tidying’, which means he’s sitting at the back door reading a music paper,” smiled Anna knowingly. “But, yeah, you’re right, it is quiet - there’s only those boys over by the jukebox.”
Anna gave Maya a conspiratorial wink as the other two girls swivelled their gazes around.
“Oh, yeah,” said Sonja disinterestedly.
Maya’s eyes met Anna’s and a barely perceptible frown flitted across her forehead. Sonja? Not intrigued by these new boys in town? Was she ill?
Kerry was still squinting at them, when Maya noticed how red her eyes were.
“Are you OK, Kerry?” she asked, full of concern. She hoped those bloodshot eyes had nothing to do with her and Ollie yet again - there’d been too many tears in their relationship lately and they were only just supposed to have worked things out between them.
“Oh, it’s just my contact lenses - I’ve never worn them out on such a windy day,” Kerry answered with a watery smile. “It feels like half of the kiddy park sandpit’s blown in my eyes. Think I’ll go and try and sort myself out actually…”
Scooting past Sonja’s knees, Kerry made her blurry way towards the loos.
Kerry felt strange pangs of alarm that had nothing to do with the fact that one of her dust-encrusted lenses was playing hide and seek and had slithered somewhere unreachable under her eyelid. What had made her uneasy was her conversation with Sonja on the way to the End this afternoon.
Or, more like it, her nodding session with Sonja - Sonja talking fast and furiously while all Kerry could do was mutter a few useless “uhhuhs” and “ah, but"s in between.
The trouble was, Sonja had proclaimed that she was about to get into modelling. Seriously. There were four problems here, as far as Kerry was concerned.
1. Did this mean that Sonja was right back in with Natasha all of a sudden? Kerry didn’t fancy going through all that losing-her-best-friend thing again.
2. Was Sonja getting a little big-headed here? Yeah, she was pretty - no doubt about that. But the way she was talking, it was a sure-fire deal that some agency would take her on. Wasn’t that a bit presumptuous?
3. When Sonja got on one of these rolls about how she was going to do this and she was going to do that, she ended up sounding worryingly like her cousin. And frankly, one ego like Cat’s was as much as Kerry could handle.
Finally, 4. Sonja’s out-of-the-blue enthusiasm for this new project reminded Kerry all too well of her last hare-brained and ill-starred plan - the one where she decided that Matt might make good boyfriend material, even though she didn’t fancy him in the least.
Kerry had managed to persuade Sonja out of this and had saved her from making a total fool of herself. But there was no guarantee that Sonja would listen to Kerry if things started to get out of hand this time.
Another thing that didn’t seem right with Sonja was the way she never talked about Owen. Well, not since he’d left to go back to Newcastle after his fleeting visit to see his sister Anna a few days ago. Prior to that, she was always been wittering on about him. Now, she changed the subject whenever Kerry brought him up.
And it was weird her not speaking about Owen, considering how close he and Sonja seemed to have got during his last visit to Winstead… Kerry had never found out exactly what had gone on between Sonja and Owen after the impromptu party at Nick’s flat. But Sonja had seemed so happy that Kerry had hoped that Sonja and Owen might try to make a go of their relationship - even if it was a long-distance one.
Retrieving the lens at last, Kerry clipped it with its partner inside her plastic carry case and splashed her face with water. She was quite glad she’d forgotten to bring her emergency back-up pair of specs - she didn’t really want to see how bad her tangled hair and bloodshot eyes were.
With a head fuzzy with a jumble of thoughts and eyes fuzzy through lack of lenses, bumping into a backpack came as a surprise to Kerry as she made her way towards her friends.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” said an apologetic voice, although it was Kerry’s bumbling that had brought about the collision. The bulging nylon bag was made of such ferociously loud, luminous shades that it was as hard to miss as a double-decker bus in an airing cupboard.
An olive-skinned face rose into Kerry’s line of vision and her automatic blushing response kicked into action, right on cue. It never failed.
“Are you OK? I shouldn’t have left my bag there…” the boy said in a concerned, lightly accented voice.
“No - yes… I, urn, I’m fine…” Kerry nodded, hoping her tumbling hair was hiding most of her flushed cheeks.
With a fixed grin, she steered herself towards the girls and flopped down with relief beside them.
“I’d like to believe you did that deliberately, as a ruse to get talking to those boys, but I don’t suppose that’s true,” laughed Maya, trying to put Kerry at ease.
“If only…” mumbled Kerry, trying to tuck her unruly curls behind her ears.
“Anyhow, before Kerry distracted us by tripping into the arms of those boys,” said Maya cheekily, turning her attention towards Sonja and playfully ignoring Kerry’s indignant squeak, “you were saying? You want me to do some photos for you?”
“Yeah,” nodded Sonja. “I want to send some shots out to agencies as soon as I can. But all the photos I’ve got are just so out of date, and they’re all just snapshots.”
Maya thrilled at the unspoken compliment: Sonja wanted professional shots done and she considered Maya professional enough to do them.
“No problem. We can both have a think about how and where to do them over the next week or so and then I can—”
“What?” interrupted Sonja, with an irritated note in her voice. “I haven’t got time to hang around. They’ve got to be done this weekend. I want to get them sent off while I’m on half term!”
“I’m going to Florence for a week, remember?” Maya pointed out, slightly irked by Sonja’s attitude.
“In that case, there’s only one thing for it,” shrugged Sonja. “You’re going to photography club tomorrow, right?”
“Ye-es,” Maya answered dubiously.
“Well,” said Sonja brightly, “can you ask Billy if he’ll do them for me?”
Sonja’s hands were resting palms down on the table, but Maya felt as if she’d just been slapped.
CHAPTER 6
THIS IS YOUR LUCKY NIGHT…
“Remember to keep it down, lads,” said Stuart Stanton, coming through to the back room of The Swan carrying a tray piled with cans of Coke and crisps. “The doors aren’t lined with lead and I do have a pub full of customers on the other side.”
“Thanks, Dad,” grinned Ollie, taking the tray from him. “We won’t go over the top - promise.”
“It’s brilliant of your parents to let us use this place to rehearse in,” said Billy Sanderson, gazing round the sizeable room once the door had shut behind Ollie’s dad.
The back room of the pub - host to Ollie and Natasha’s seventeenth birthday party back in May - was set aside for functions. Often packed at the weekends, it generally stood empty during the week. And right now it was playing host to the first live run-through of the latest incarnation of The Loud.
“Well, my dad used to play in bands when he was younger, so he understands,” Ollie explained.
“What kind of stuff did he play?” asked Billy.
“Ska, mod, two-tone - all that ‘60s stuff that was revived around the time of punk.”
“Cool!” nodded Andy, his
black hair slightly spiked in a not un-punkish way. “My mum and dad have never been into music - they just don’t get it. They’ve only got about three tapes in the house and they never play them. Mind you, that’s just as well; one of them’s the soundtrack to The Phantom of the Opera…”
Andy stuck his fingers in his throat and made a retching noise.
“At least they’re not going to do what my mum does,” Joe chipped in. “She’s always got the radio on and she sings along all the time.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad to me - at least she can’t moan if you play your stuff quite loud,” said Billy.
“Ah, but you don’t know what she likes singing along to. Can I just say, Celine Dion and Mariah Carey?”
“Urghhh…” grimaced the other three boys in unison.
“That must be painful,” Billy acknowledged.
‘“Specially when she can’t hold a note,” said Joe wryly, chuckling at the familiar image of his mum, Susie, happily howling an unrecognisable tune above the clatter of the washing machine.
“Better not ask her to do any backing vocals for the band then, eh?” laughed Billy.
“You haven’t heard me singing properly yet, remember,” grinned Ollie.
Three hours later, two of the songs that Joe had written (although Ollie had to pretend they were his) and one written by Andy were finally sounding vaguely like proper tracks. They stopped and started, everyone fluffed different parts, but it still sounded half-way decent.
Grinning at each other with excitement, they decided to run through all three songs once again before they finished for the night. So caught up in what they were doing, it wasn’t until the last chord of the last song faded away that the members of The Loud realised they had an audience.
“Yeah! Brilliant!” whooped Nick, clapping his hands as he moved out of the shadows at the edge of the room.