by Carmen Reid
That would take days. Even if Auntie allowed the phone connection to be used by the computer – and she wouldn’t – this computer wouldn’t be ready to go until half term was over.
DO YOU ACCEPT? the computer screen was asking her.
NO, she clicked.
If only Min had Greg’s real address instead of his ‘www’ one. Then at least she’d be able to write to him. But in the excitement of meeting him for the first time, she hadn’t thought of that. She didn’t even have his phone number.
Chapter Twelve
AMY COULD HEAR Niffy’s tread on the stairs. She was stomping up the steps one by one. Just listening to her footsteps, Amy could tell how furious her friend was.
At least she was coming up to see them. Amy and Finn had been waiting for her to appear in the playroom ever since they’d left the stables. But she’d been avoiding them for over an hour.
Quickly Amy got up from the sofa and went over to the door. As soon as Niffy’s head emerged at the top of the stairs, she began her apology.
‘I’m so sorry, Niffy. It wasn’t my idea . . . I’m not sure why I went along with it. It wasn’t a nice thing to do . . .’
There was no response, so Amy stumbled on: ‘Finn was just trying to make me laugh, I think. Niff? Please, I really am sorry. I think he’s sorry too.’
Worse, much worse than saying anything, Niffy just glared at her. Glared and carried right on past without stopping, without saying a word.
Stomp, stomp, stomp – she went straight on down the corridor and into her bedroom, slamming the door with a deafening crash to make it quite clear that she didn’t want anyone to come in and see her.
Amy went back into the TV room, feeling extremely guilty. ‘I think I should try and talk to her,’ she told Finn.
‘Give her five minutes,’ he said, and patted the cushion next to his on the sofa. ‘Sit – it’s just getting to the really interesting bit.’ He nodded his head towards the TV.
Amy sat down next to him, and for a few minutes they both pretended to concentrate on the film, although really their minds were not on the screen at all.
Each was focused entirely on the other. They didn’t look at each other, but they listened to and felt and sensed each other, all the time looking fixedly ahead, as if what was on TV right now was the most important thing in the world.
Then, all of a sudden, Finn stretched out an arm and placed it on top of the sofa above Amy’s shoulder. The arm was definitely on the sofa; it wasn’t on her shoulder – but it was there, very close behind her. She could feel the warmth of it radiating towards her.
She just let it lie there, without any comment, and continued to stare at the screen. Several long, almost entirely breathless minutes went past.
Amy knew she should go and talk to Niffy. She and Finn had just played a horrible trick on her and they had to apologize properly.
But she just couldn’t leave the sofa now . . . The arm was behind her head and she was desperate to know where it was heading next.
Amy hadn’t moved away from the arm – Finn took this as a good sign. So now he moved his hand very gently onto her hair. Slowly he stroked from the back of her head, down her neck, until his hand was resting on her shoulder.
The touch of his hand against her neck made Amy shiver with surprise and a tingle of excitement.
Finally she took her eyes off the TV and turned her head slowly to face him – wondering, with a clench of nerves in her stomach, what was going to happen next.
Finn was looking at her very calmly. She gazed back, a smile spreading across her face. They were very focused on each other. A deep, long, intense look was burning between them.
Amy’s gaze had dropped down to the lips that were moving towards hers. They were thin but shapely, and a vivid pink. They looked soft, and she wanted so much to know what it was going to be like . . . kissing Finn.
She could feel his breath against her cheek, and she reached forward just a tiny bit more so that their lips were now bumping together. The thump of excitement in her chest threatened to jump right out of her throat.
Finn’s kiss was needy and interesting, and the longer it went on, the longer Amy wanted it to go on. As he moved his head back, Amy moved hers towards him, not wanting their lips to break apart . . .
The playroom door was several inches ajar, so when Niffy walked towards it, she couldn’t help seeing what was going on inside. Her brother’s arm was around Amy’s shoulders. He was pulling Amy in towards him – Amy’s eyes were closed and she was tilting up her face towards his!
Niffy could feel her breath jump and catch in her chest the way it did before any big event: a hockey match, a show-jumping round. Clearly these two really had impressed each other when they’d played that horrible trick on her in the stable. Never mind making her feel like a total idiot, so long as they’d got what they’d wanted out of it.
Piggy in the middle . . . one big green gooseberry – that was all she was going to be for the rest of half term. Fat chance of Amy coming to the pool with her tomorrow – she’d just want to hang around Finn, listening to his every word, laughing at his jokes, slobbering all over his face.
Niffy could feel her hands shake. She balled them into fists to try to steady them. She couldn’t just stand here and watch this; listen to these terrible slurping and sucking noises.
What had got into these two? Didn’t they realize how horrible this was for her? Didn’t they know that this just wasn’t right?
‘NO!’ she suddenly heard herself shouting out. ‘No. No. NO!’
Amy and Finn jumped apart at the sound of her voice and turned in astonishment to face her.
Chapter Thirteen
‘GINA? GINA!’ LORELEI was sitting up in bed, gently shaking her daughter’s shoulder. ‘Wake up, baby. You’ve just got to see the colour of the sky.’
When Gina finally opened her eyes, they focused on the small window set in the white wall and she registered the astonishing deep blue colour. For a moment, hovering between sleeping and waking, she thought she was back home. It was like a Californian sky, but somehow a clearer, cooler blue.
Lorelei got out of bed and went over to the window to take a closer look. ‘Wow, we’re right beside the sea! We couldn’t see it in the dark last night. Look! Look down there.’
Gina got up and went to stand beside her mom. Together they looked at the sandy beach only five hundred metres away; it led down towards a bright turquoise-blue sea.
‘Wow!’ Gina breathed. ‘That is soooo pretty.’
‘I think I recognize that beach.’ Lorelei sounded excited. ‘I think we used to go there. Isn’t it beautiful? C’mon on, get dressed. Let’s go outside and take a look.’
As she and Gina pulled on jeans, boots and big warm sweaters, Lorelei had an idea. ‘OK, we’ll get the girls up and we’ll all walk down to the hotel for breakfast. The fresh air will wake us up and make us hungry, and anyway, we can’t waste one minute of the sunshine – it might be gone in half an hour.’
Now, Gina knew that this really was true: she remembered the Scottish saying: ‘If you don’t like the weather, come back in five minutes,’ because that’s how changeable it was up here.
Although she liked the idea of walking to the hotel, she got dressed deliberately slowly: she didn’t want to have to wake Paula and Maddison. All the things they’d said to each other last night were coming back to her word for word.
It wasn’t exactly the kind of argument that was just going to disappear overnight, was it? A little part of her hoped that it was, because now that the sun was shining and her mom was in a good mood, Gina felt much happier too, and although Paula and Maddison had been really annoying, she regretted everything she could remember saying to them.
But she wasn’t ready to say sorry . . . Well, not just yet. Well, not unless maybe they said it first . . . So she stayed in her bedroom, taking an extra-long time to dress and then brush her long golden hair before pulling it into a ponytail. She l
iked the way she looked this morning: tight, light-blue jeans, clumpy brown biker boots and a chunky caramel-coloured cashmere jumper; just a little slick of pink lip gloss, and then she felt ready to face the day.
Gina could hear Lorelei talking to Maddison and Paula in the sitting room. They were all ready to go; they were just waiting for her to make an appearance.
Taking a deep breath, Gina went into the little sitting room. ‘Hi . . .’ she said with a little shrug of her shoulders, avoiding eye contact with Paula and Maddison.
‘Hi,’ they both said back, with about as much enthusiasm as she’d put into the word.
‘OK? All set? Got your walking shoes on? And windcheaters, just in case it suddenly pours on us?’ Lorelei was asking with a smile – she’d obviously not registered the tension in the air.
She opened the cottage door and let in the most amazing view. The bright, bright blue seemed to go on for as far as the eye could see, turquoise sky meeting turquoise sea in a seamless join way out over the horizon.
‘Isn’t this fantastic!’ Lorelei exclaimed. ‘I can’t believe how beautiful it is. I remembered it being absolutely wonderful, but I still can’t quite believe it. When we arrived yesterday in the gloom and the wet, I thought I’d made a huge mistake. I thought maybe it was only pretty here in the summer. But no, it really is breathtaking all year round.’
‘In between storms and rain and darkness,’ Gina reminded her.
‘C’mon, let’s get out there!’ Lorelei urged them.
They left the house and began to follow the small winding road down towards the hotel. The wind was chilly and brisk, but the bright golden sunshine lifted Lorelei’s spirits further.
‘I’m finally relaxing,’ she told Gina. ‘This feels good.’
Gina couldn’t help smiling back at her mom. Even though Paula and Maddison didn’t seem ready to cheer up yet, she could still smile at her mom.
‘There are some places we have to visit while the weather’s like this,’ Lorelei went on. ‘There’s a big sheltered beach I remember, where the seals come right in and lie around and roll in the sand, just like fat brown tourists in Florida . . . seriously!’ she added when Paula giggled. ‘And a boat! You guys would like to go out in a boat, wouldn’t you? While the weather’s so beautiful and the sea is calm.’
The three girls stole glances at each other, scowled and shrugged half-heartedly.
‘Where’s your sense of adventure, girl scouts?’ Lorelei teased. ‘OK, how about I dare the three of you to go out in a rowing boat? Does that fire you up any more?’
‘Sure,’ Gina said first.
‘Mmm,’ Paula and Maddison added with noncommittal shrugs.
‘What’s up with you guys?’ Lorelei wanted to know. ‘Did no one sleep well?’
This didn’t get much of a response, but she told them cheerfully, ‘You’ll probably all feel much better after a good breakfast.’
Gina wasn’t so sure. She was wondering how to get out of being stuck on some stupid boat with two stupid friends who’d flown halfway across the world just to fall out with her.
They made their way along the road, which twisted and turned and eventually took them high above the beach. Gina watched in amazement as her mother took her BlackBerry out of her pocket. Surely she wasn’t going to start her search for a signal this early in the day?
‘Mom!’ Gina warned. ‘I thought you were starting to relax.’
‘I am,’ Lorelei said with a smile, and with that she tossed the phone casually out over the edge.
Open-mouthed with surprise, Gina, Paula and Maddison watched as it spun several times, glinting in the sun, before hitting the water with a little splash.
‘Huh?’ Gina said, turning to her mom with a grin. ‘You’re kidding!’
‘No,’ Lorelei assured her. ‘Don’t worry, it’s insured!’
Chapter Fourteen
AMY SAT AT the Nairn-Bassett kitchen table and picked at her breakfast anxiously. She was the first one up – apart from Mr and Mrs N-B. Last night, after Niffy had caught her and Finn snogging on the sofa, Amy had tried to speak to her friend.
She’d knocked on her bedroom door, and when there had been no reply, she had tried speaking to her through it, but still no word had come from Niffy.
Obviously the joke with Ginger, followed by the sight of Finn and Amy getting . . . erm . . . cuddly, had been too much for her.
Amy tried to see it from her friend’s point of view, but really, what was her problem? Amy was sure that if she had a big brother, she’d love him to go out with Niffy. Wouldn’t it be fun? Shouldn’t it all be cosy and friendly?
All right, all right, the Ginger prank had been cruel, and Amy could understand her friend getting in a right royal huff about that – but what exactly was wrong with Amy kissing Niffy’s big brother? What was wrong with it?
‘Nif, I’m really sorry about Ginger,’ Amy had said to the door last night. ‘I . . . we . . . should never have done that. I’m really sorry . . .’ Then she’d paused, racking her brain for something else to say. She wondered if her friend was even listening to her.
‘I really like Finn,’ Amy had added, feeling a leap of excitement in her stomach as she said the words. ‘I’m sorry that you mind . . . Niff?’ She had banged on the door once again. ‘Let me in. Please.’
But there had been no reply, not even the slightest sound of movement, so after a few minutes Amy had decided to leave her. Maybe she’d have calmed down by the morning.
Plus there had been the lure of going back to the playroom – back to the sofa with Finn.
‘Come here,’ Finn had ordered with a smile when she’d returned.
Then the sofa had become a small enclosed world where no one and nothing else mattered – except how good it felt to hold Finn’s face in her hands and put her mouth against his and explore all the interesting tastes and touches and places that she felt so curious to know about.
The kitchen door creaked open, and there, in a shabby old tartan dressing gown, with her hair all wild and on end, stood Niffy. She looked really groggy. In total contrast to Amy, who was dressed, washed, lightly made up, with her hair beautifully smooth and combed.
‘Hi, Niffy,’ Amy said brightly.
This just earned her a grunt in response.
‘Lou, manners!’ Mrs N-B snapped. ‘I know you’re not worth talking to until you’ve eaten half a loaf of bread, but at least say hello.’
‘Hello, Amy,’ Niffy said, but totally stiffly.
‘Hi,’ Amy said back. ‘How are you doing? Did you sleep OK?’ She was trying to sound as nice and as cheerful and as friendly as she possibly could, to make it clear that she wanted to be forgiven.
Niffy sat down at the other end of the table from Amy and poured out a mug of tea. ‘I met Finn on the stairs – apparently you two are doing some filming together today. How nice.’ Her eyes flashed angrily at Amy. ‘I’ll just go to the pool on my own then. At least that way I’ll still be able to get into my school skirt.’
The hand bringing the thickly buttered toast laden with marmalade towards Amy’s mouth froze in mid-air.
‘And . . . action,’ Finn instructed.
Amy turned to face the camera with an exaggerated scowl on her face.
On her head was an old tweed flat cap, borrowed from the Nairn-Bassett cupboard; she was also wearing one of Niffy’s frayed and muddy waxed jackets.
‘D’you know what I think about television today?’ she asked in a deep, posh voice that sounded quite uncannily like Mr Nairn-Bassett’s. ‘I think it’s all utter twaddle. Utter twiddle-twaddle and poppycock.’
Finn was finding it hard to film and refrain from bursting out laughing.
‘Now, in my day,’ Amy went on, still in the deep, posh voice, ‘if you wanted to have a laugh, you went out with some of your rugger chaps and you’d go to some poor old chap and pull down his trousers. De-bagging, we called it. Yes, that was what we did for fun.’
Finn was beginning to
sweat with the effort of not laughing.
‘Then along came that Monty Python lot. They were all right. They understood what fun was all about. It was about telling jokes in a posh voice and walking about looking like a complete twit and all that kind of thing. They were funny. But since then . . . downhill all the way. Complete and utter twaddle.’
Amy had tried to avoid Finn’s eye as she was saying all this, but the more the camera shook, the harder this became.
Finally she looked at him directly and the two burst into squawks of helpless laughter. Even if Mr N-B himself had walked in at that moment and told them not to laugh, they wouldn’t have been able to stop.
Unfortunately it was Niffy, just back from her trip to the swimming pool, who walked in.
She opened the door of the playroom, saw them both falling about, helpless with hilarity, and assumed at once that they were having some sort of private joke about her, especially as Amy was wearing her jacket.
‘Making fun of me again?’ she snarled, then turned to leave, and slammed the door behind her.
Chapter Fifteen
WAS THIS REALLY a good idea? Gina couldn’t help wondering as she headed towards the cold, wet and completely uninviting sea.
A big, round, bearded guy by the name of Logan had rented them a rowing boat. He’d done it with an unmistakable twinkle in his eye – as if, yes, he was agreeing to this, but no, he didn’t think the girls were up to it.
‘So ye can all swim?’ he’d asked – twinkle, twinkle.
When they had all nodded sulkily, he’d asked, ‘But can ye row?’
‘Well, kind of . . . I’ve done it a bit,’ Paula had replied.
‘It’s very calm out there, otherwise I wouldn’t let ye. Stay close to the shore, so I can keep an eye on ye, and come back in as soon as the rowers get tired,’ he told them. ‘Oh, and you’ll all have to wear lifejackets, ye know that.’
He’d directed them to a pile of what looked like fat, yellow, smelly cushions.