by Carmen Reid
‘No!’ Gina exclaimed, a little horrified, a little excited. ‘Hey – we need to go and take our seats.’
‘Break a leg!’ they chorused to Amy one last time.
‘What is this?’ Peta asked in confusion. ‘Everyone is telling me to break my leg? Why?’
When the lights went out, the curtain opened on Amy standing floodlit in the centre of the stage.
‘Hi, Adrian . . . I’m so glad you could come . . .’ she began in a voice which for a moment sounded both tight and wobbly, but as she went on, she began to breathe, to fill the space, to grow in confidence.
Gina, sitting in the darkness with her hands tightly clenched on her lap, felt almost as frightened as Amy, but as the words went on, filled out and became real once again, she too breathed a sigh of relief.
Then, for thirty-five minutes, three budding actors and one budding writer made a little very special magic. The magic which somehow, on an ordinary night, managed to transport an audience of four hundred fidgety, preoccupied school pupils and their teachers to somewhere completely new and different.
For thirty-five special minutes, they really did care about Stella and Adrian, and whether or not Scarlett was going to come between them. And when the curtain came down, Gina found herself clapping just as hard as everyone else in the audience, and brushing a tear from the corner of her eye.
Chapter Thirty-five
‘WE ARE NOT going to find anything here!’ Amy protested in mock anger.
‘Yes we are!’ Greg insisted. ‘We are probably going to find every single thing we could ever have wanted for Christmas, and much, much more besides.’
‘C’mon,’ Min said. Just a few moments ago, Greg had taken hold of her hand and now she was gripping it tightly, worried that if she accidentally let go, he would never hold her hand again. After the cinema disaster, she was determined to take every chance to get close to him today.
So Niffy and Amy followed Greg and Min into the huge discount store on Prince’s Street.
It was the last Saturday of the autumn term, and every single boarder was out on the high street Christmas shopping.
It was a perfect shopping day. Cold and dark already, at three o’clock, with every street, every tree, every lamppost festooned with small, sparkling Christmas lights.
Yes, there were crowds, but they were cheery festive crowds; people who apologized and smiled when they bashed their bulging carrier bags against your legs. There was nothing but seasonal goodwill at the long queues for the tills.
The girls, on admittedly limited budgets, were buying presents for their families and friends. Min, who had far more brothers and sisters than anyone else, had much more shopping to do, and although Greg was supposed to be there to help, he was really only a distraction.
‘Look!’ Amy and Niffy said at exactly the same time, pointing at one of the tables laden with gifts – all the bits and bobs that wouldn’t attract a glance at any other time of year.
The two girls raced each other to the table and snatched up the thing that had caught their eye at the same moment.
‘I’m getting it for him!’ Amy insisted.
‘No, I am!’ Niffy replied.
‘I saw it first!’
‘You did not!’
‘For goodness’ sake!’ Min intervened.
Both Niffy and Amy had an old-fashioned film clapperboard in their hands. Both knew that arty, film-making Finn would love it. Each one of his mini home films could now start with a call of ‘Action!’ and the snap of the clapperboard in front of the screen. He would be able to yell ‘Cut!’ and hear the satisfying snap.
‘Maybe you could toss for it?’ Min suggested.
‘Stop it! Stop it, girls. Calm down,’ Greg weighed in. ‘It’s OK – take the clapperboard, but over here I have found the gift that no man can be without. You will be fighting over who is going to give Finn this.’ And he held up a mug which read: TOO SEXY FOR MY MUG.
‘You have the board,’ Niffy agreed straight away. ‘I’m getting him that.’
‘C’mon, fan out . . . shop, shop, shop – we should have left to meet Gina in the Arts Café’ – Amy glanced at her watch – ‘about twenty minutes ago.’
‘Now you take a look at those.’ Dermot handed a heavy plastic bag to Gina. ‘I need to get up a ladder – very important job to do.’
He headed for the café entrance, which was filled with Christmas shoppers desperate for a seat and a caffeine fix, and began to set up a tall stepladder. As he went off in search of the toolbox, Gina unwrapped the package on her lap.
Inside the plastic bag were three rectangles swathed in bubble-wrap. Gina took out the first one and pulled off the Sellotape. She unwound the bubble-wrap until a framed photograph of an astonishingly white beach with blue sea slid out onto her lap. The small wooden fishing boat pulled up onto the sand was her clue that this was Barra rather than Barbados.
‘Oh!’ she said to herself. Dermot was so clever and so thoughtful! These were the pictures he’d promised to look out for her mother. And he’d had them framed! Opening the second and the third, she couldn’t help but be impressed by how good they were. He was a really accomplished photographer.
She looked over at him, hoping to attract his attention and voice her thanks. But he was now halfway up the ladder, a hammer and what looked like a bush in one hand, several nails between his teeth and an expression of total concentration on his face.
Gina got up to take a closer look, and watched as Dermot reached up to nail a large ceiling hook in place. The nail wobbled a little and threatened to go in squint, but he was finally able to get the hook up.
Now he slid the huge bunch of greenery over the hook. He let go carefully, wanting to make sure it took the weight.
Everything seemed to be working: the green stems, leaves and berries were dangling down in the doorway. It was enormous! Dermot’s mother had gone totally over the top, as she tended to do at Christmas (‘I’m a Christmas person – I like to pull out all the stops’). It went a little way to compensate for his dad’s incredibly grumpy mood at this time of year. But then anything to do with spending money and having fun was bound to make his dad grumpy. Dermot glanced over towards the counter, where his dad was banging at the coffee machine, slamming down mugs and jugs and plates. In a hurry as usual. He shook his head. When was the guy ever going to lighten up?
‘The photos are great!’ Gina called up from the foot of the ladder. ‘My mom is going to love them. It’s really, really nice of you.’
‘I’m a nice guy,’ Dermot joked as he slowly made his way down the ladder. ‘As long as your mom decides she can now love me, then my cunning plan will have worked.’
‘What is that, by the way?’ Gina pointed up at the enormous green bush.
‘What is that?’ Dermot asked in amazement. ‘You don’t know? I thought you guys invented it.’
‘Huh?’
The café door opened, and Niffy and Amy burst in, followed by Greg and Min.
‘Hi!’ Dermot greeted them. ‘I’m just explaining to Gina about mistletoe. Apparently she’s never heard of it.’
‘That’s mistletoe?’ Gina looked up in surprise. She’d never seen the real thing – well, if she had, she’d never seen so much of it. This was a great wild straggly bush, which Dermot’s mother had hacked from an oak tree deep in a Borders forest.
‘Yes!’ Dermot told her. ‘And there’s a tradition – isn’t there?’ He looked over at Gina’s friends for support.
‘Oh yeah.’ Gina smiled at him. ‘I know all about the tradition.’
With that, she put her arms around Dermot’s waist and, trying to forget that his dad was just across the room – not to mention many, many customers – closed her eyes and pulled him in for a kiss.
‘Me too!’ Niffy joked, and planted noisy, puckered smackers on both cheeks of the person standing next to her, which happened to be Amy.
‘And you two!’ Amy said, pointing at the slightly stunned Greg and Min.
They were still holding hands and looking up at the mistletoe in some sort of reverential amazement.
Min turned to Greg.
Greg turned to Min.
She didn’t dare close her eyes, because she didn’t want anything unexpected to happen and put them off. Not this time.
No, this time it was definitely, definitely going to happen. Right now. She didn’t care who was watching . . .
Right underneath the bush, Min and Greg stood and turned towards each other.
Greg’s soft lips brushed against hers, and Min felt a thrill of surprise pass from her mouth to her toes. Just as she pressed her lips a little harder against Greg’s, feeling the thrill pass from her toes and straight back up again, Dermot’s bent nail pinged out of the plaster, the hook loosened, then jumped from the ceiling, sending the mistletoe crashing down on top of them.
‘Wow!’ was Dermot’s response when the shrieks, shower of plaster dust and cries of surprise had died down. ‘Now that’s what I call chemistry!’
‘No! Physics!’ Min laughed.
MEET THE AUTHOR . . .
CARMEN
Full name: Carmen Maria Reid
Home: A creaky Victorian house in Glasgow, Scotland
Likes: Writing (luckily), chocolate in any shape or form especially if caramel is involved, Jack Russell dogs, cute blue-eyed guys in glasses, children (especially hers), buying handbags, holidays by the sea, Earl Grey tea in an insulated mug, very very long walks, very, very long jeans, shepherd’s pie, hot bubble baths (for inspiration), duvet coats, playing tennis
Dislikes: Large animals, drinking milk (bleurrrrrgh), high heels (she’s already 6ft 1), going to the gym (but she goes anyway), filling in forms or paperwork of any kind, flying
Would like to be: The author of lots more books (Secret ambition was to be a ballet dancer or Olympic gold medal winning runner)
Fascinating fact: Carmen spent four years boarding at a girls’ school very like St J’s
Also available by Carmen Reid
Secrets at St Jude’s: New Girl
Secrets at St Jude’s: Jealous Girl
For adult readers:
The Personal Shopper
Did the Earth Move?
Three in a Bed
Up All Night
How Was it For You?
Late Night Shopping
www.carmenreid.co.uk
Praise for the Secrets at St Jude’s series:
‘Raucous, hilarious and heart-warming . . . from one of the UK’s bestselling authors of women’s fiction. Packed full of friendship, fun, entertainment, love and hope’ Lovereading
www.rbooks.co.uk
SECRETS AT ST JUDE’S: DRAMA GIRL
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 409 09617 7
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2012
Copyright © Carmen Reid, 2010
First Published in Great Britain
Corgi Childrens 9780552561211 2010
The right of Carmen Reid to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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