Tessa in Love

by Kate Le Vann

  Tessa

  in

  Love

  Kate le Vann was born in Doncaster and lives in York. She has written for CosmoGirl!, Vogue, Company and The Big Issue, and is the author of four highly acclaimed novels for teenagers, Tessa in Love, Things I Know About Love, Two Friends, One Summer and Rain.

  Praise for Kate le Vann

  “One of the finest evocations of young love that I have ever read - subtle, delicate and utterly moving.” Jan Mark, Books for Keeps, on Tessa in Love

  “Written in a modern, easily-accessible style, this novel has literary qualities that are so often missing from the ‘chick-lit’ genre. Compelling and compassionate . . . The endearing and completely credible relationship with her brother is delightful and the moving and gentle awareness of a real relationship developing gives an added layer to the sensitivity of the whole novel.”

  Carousel, on Things I Know About Love

  “Told with a good deal of light humour and a credible voice, Two Friends, One Summer charts Sam’s journey to a realization that instant gratification is not all, and that some things are worth waiting for.”

  Books for Keeps, on Two Friends, One Summer

  “Entertaining and accessible . . . heartwarming . . . sensitive, perceptive prose.”

  The Telegraph on Rain

  Many thanks to Brenda Gardner, Yasemin Uçar and everyone

  at Piccadilly, and to Miranda Eason, Celia Duncan and

  everyone at CosmoGIRL!

  This edition published 2009

  First published in Great Britain in 2005

  by Piccadilly Press Ltd,

  5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  Text copyright © Kate le Vann, 2005

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,

  mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

  permission of the copyright owner.

  The right of Kate le Vann to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted

  by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978 1 84812 000 6

  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD

  Text design by Louise Millar

  Cover design by Susan Hellard and Fielding Design

  Set in StempelGaramond and Carumba

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  ‘Love is the last thing we need right now, Tessa,’ Matty said.

  As the credits rolled, we were both in a drippy, hopeless kind of state, having laughed at the cheesiness of the movie for as long as we could, and then fallen for it anyway. As usual.

  ‘But why?’ I said loudly, sounding a bit like I was going to burst into song. ‘I want it. And you’re in love anyway. Lee is perfect for you and he’s not going to die in a sword fight.’

  ‘No, but...’

  ‘He’s seriously cute.’

  ‘Well, yeah, but. . .’

  ‘We spend half our time watching soppy old films and wishing our lives were like theirs and yours is. Without the tragedy.’

  ‘Augghh!’ Matty said, rolling over as if I was too much for her to take. We’d moved on to the carpet during the hero’s death scene: the sofa was too far away from the action.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, and shoved a handful of Maltesers in my mouth so I wouldn’t be tempted to interrupt for a while.

  ‘This year,’ she said, ‘Lee finishes his A-levels and we finish our GCSEs, which means serious work for both of us at the time it’s most important to spend time together, and at the end of the year he’ll go to university, and then two years after that maybe I will, and we have to make decisions about whether we’ll have a long distance relationship or ... you know, something else.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘Oh?’ she said, pretending to be annoyed. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’

  I was still sucking chewed-up Maltesers out of my teeth, to be honest, but I liked the way my hesitation sounded thoughtful and serious. ‘Well... it is going to be difficult,’ I said. I couldn’t work out whether she was properly sad or just post-movie sad, but I wanted to cheer her up either way. ‘But you’ll make it work. You’ll find ways of being together, and he’ll have long holidays. I know you’ll be OK. And speaking as someone who’s never had any problems with romance apart from not having any bloody romance, I’d swap with you in a second. I’m the one who just spent Valentine’s Day last week playing computer games with my little brother, whereas – if I remember correctly – you were out with Lee being given pink roses and a crystal bracelet.’

  Matty smiled dreamily and idly played with the bracelet. ‘Loads of boys fancy you,’ she said. ‘You’re just too choosy.’

  Matty is so sweet – although if I looked like her I’d probably be nice to everyone and go around loving the world too. She is insanely good-looking, with this glossy reddish-mahogany bob (the colour is, admittedly, helped out a bit by L’Oréal), perfect porcelain skin and Angelina Jolie lips. And a real chest with a real C-cup, while I struggle to fill an A. My dirty-blond hair just seems to go mousy and frazzled when I try to colour it, and my skin is imperfect deathbed-white, and at no point in my life has there been a time when loads of boys fancied me.

  But Matty always talked as if we were both pretty. When we went to parties, she’d say things like, ‘I think we might just knock them dead tonight; I think jaws will drop when we walk in,’ although what tended to happen with me was, I only made people’s jaws drop when they yawned with boredom.

  ‘I’m not choosy,’ I said. ‘I’m easy.’

  ‘Ha ha ha ha ha!’ Matty said. Then she gave me a look, that meant something like, ‘I have made an excellent point and won the argument.’

  ‘How many people have asked me out?’ I sighed.

  ‘Well,’ Matty said, ‘you scare them off. They think you’re beautiful and unattainable ...’

  ‘Oh God, Matt, come off it. . .’

  ‘Tessa, you do give boys a hard time!’

  I sometimes gave boys a hard time because I knew they didn’t fancy me, and by arguing with them, it was as if I was keeping a bit of self-respect. So, they might not have thought I was good-looking or sexy or fun, but I could put them straight on global warming or tell them how their super-cool trainers exploited workers in Vietnam, and kid myself that I was being clever, at least.

  Well, maybe I’m being unfair to myself. What actually happened was, I panicked a lot. I did really try to care about what was happening in the world, and I did get frustrated that most of the people I knew never seemed to look beyond the latest designer labels and photos of celebrities with cellulite. But if I was talking to a boy I fancied and he was teasing me for not knowing about some hip band, I tried to remember how Matty would do it, the way she made arguing seem adorable and flirty, but I always ended up sounding over-serious (even though I wasn’t), as if my sense of humour had been surgically removed at birth. I think boys never realised I might be joking – Matty said
they sometimes told her I was quite intense. But I wasn’t intense! I just. . . couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t really boring, so I often clammed up.

  ‘Well, all I know is, being gorgeous never put anyone off,’ I said.

  ‘But who do you want?’ Matty said. ‘You haven’t mentioned anyone since John Cheeseman.’

  I squealed. ‘Don’t!’

  ‘But you loved John Cheeseman!’ Matty said, wickedly.

  ‘I was in a very different “place” .. .’

  ‘Ooh, John Cheeseman is sooo sexy,’ Matty said, getting into her impression of me. ‘What can I do to get John Cheeseman?’

  One year before, a new boy came to our school called John Cheeseman. He was a blond and I liked blond boys, he wore glasses and I liked boys with glasses, and he seemed shy and quiet. I talked to Matty about him and she sort of got us together at a party with a bit of not very subtle hinting, and he turned out to be a) obsessed with playing Dungeons and Dragons, b) convinced he would be the youngest ever Conservative prime minister, and c) – this is the one that really mattered – the kind of boy who licks not just your tonsils when he snogs you but most of your face, up to and including your nose and down to your neck. John Cheeseman had also – the final insult! – not wanted to ‘see’ me after our incredibly wet snog, and spent the next week hiding behind corners when he spotted me. In a moment of incredibly out of character sassiness, and because he was one of the few people at school who was definitely less cool than me, I finally followed him round a corner and said – loudly -’Stop running, John Cheeseman, no one is coming to get you.’ For a week this was kind of a school catchphrase, which was half funny and half drop-dead embarrassing.

  John Cheeseman was also the last boy I had snogged. And sort of the first. I half-heartedly fancied the same people I’d half-heartedly fancied for years, but nothing was ever going to happen with them, and I wasn’t sure I really wanted it to. I wanted someone else. Someone different.

  ‘It’s too late with all the boys we know,’ I said. ‘They know me now. I can’t pretend I’m sexy and fun.’

  ‘It’s not pretending!’ Matty said, ‘You are!’

  ‘Not to boys!’ I protested. ‘I’m weird and serious. I need someone a bit geeky like me. Someone who reads newspapers rather than FHM.’

  ‘Oh lord,’ Matty said wearily. ‘No boy our age gives a toss about newspapers.’

  ‘Well, they should.’

  ‘No, I tell a lie, John Cheeseman was very political...’

  ‘I’m warning you, Matty . . .’ I said, trying to sound serious but giggling.

  ‘Look, the point is, first you find a boy and then you change him, but make sure you start with a cute one.’

  ‘I don’t want to change someone,’ I said. ‘Is it so much to ask for him to come ready-made?’

  ‘Too. Choosy,’ Matty whispered.

  ‘Well, look,’ I said, trying to get off the subject of my love life, ‘You haven’t changed Lee, have you?’

  ‘Lee?’ Matty said. ‘The ultimate playa? I’ve tamed him.’

  ‘As if anyone would look at another girl when he’s got you.’

  Matty looked sad for a moment. ‘He looks at other girls plenty,’ she said quietly. ‘He talks about them too, more than I’d like.’

  ‘Oh, boys are crap,’ I said quickly. I was suddenly sad too, and ashamed of myself for not asking her enough about how things were going with Lee. I’d always assumed Matty could deal with anything.

  ‘But Tessa, that’s the point,’ she said, brightening up again, because she liked giving me advice. ‘Boys are crap. Don’t wait for ever for someone who you think ticks every box – just give one a chance. Forget all this politically aware rubbish; find someone who makes you laugh, and make a move.’

  ‘If only,’ I said.

  ‘And you have to admit, you have your shallow side,’ Matty said, casually plaiting her hair so that it looked accidentally gorgeous.

  I opened my mouth to protest.

  ‘Don’t even try! You love sparkly tops and boy bands and sitcom romances. What if you meet this bloke and he won’t consider you because he’s holding out for someone who only watches BBC2?’

  ‘Um . . . persuade him he can change me?’ I said. ‘OK, OK, you’re right.’

  ‘I’m an expert in this field,’ Matty said. ‘I’ve done my research.’

  I rolled my eyes, and took the next DVD out of its case: Love Story.

  ‘Oh my God, can I see that?’ I said, snatching the local paper out of my dad’s hands.

  He sat there with his hands in the same position and said, ‘Do you know, I could have sworn I was holding something.’

  ‘Sorry, Dad,’ I said. ‘But it’s important! You know there’ve been plans to build a supermarket over Cadeby Wood? Well they’re doing it, and ...’

  ‘Ah, Cadeby Wood,’ my dad said. ‘How many careless young venturers have been lost in its unfathomable depths?’

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ I said. ‘But it’s going to be even less of a wood soon.’

  Cadeby Wood had been a big, dense wood when I was really tiny. Matty and I used to collect little branches there and make them into witches’ broomsticks at Hallowe’en, and there were bluebells in the spring and wild strawberries in the summer, and Matty’s first boyfriend, Jim Fisk, had carved ‘James Lvs Matilda’ on a tree with a craft-knife and cut his hand doing it. But as we grew bigger, the wood got smaller: in the last five or six years, housing estates had started to eat away at it on all sides. Now it was just a quite big patch of trees and rocks between two estates, but everyone still called it the Wood, even though, like now in the winter, you could see through to the other side of it and no one who walked in a straight line for more than ten minutes could get lost in it. But there were still rabbits, and woodpeckers and I’d seen foxes there, and it still upset me that a supermarket was going to destroy the last bits of it that were still hanging on, just to open their millionth branch when there were plenty of other supermarkets in the area. Another real thing would be lost to another ugly man-made clone building, but they’d tell you it was about providing more choice.

  ‘It is bad news,’ my mum said, looking over my shoulder at the paper. ‘There’ll be queues of cars coming in and out of the car park right into the evening. This is a residential area. That’s such a dangerous idea. There are children playing in the street, cats . . .’

  ‘The bad news is, no more vaguely illegal bonfires,’ my brother Jack said.

  ‘Have you and your stupid friend Hoxton been starting fires again?’ Mum asked.

  ‘I’m kidding,’ Jack replied, looking shifty.

  ‘If you come in with a burned-black coat again, I’m not buying you a new one,’ she said, glaring at him.

  ‘The good news is,’ Jack went on, ‘supermarkets mean only one thing: skate park!’

  ‘Oh no . . .’ Mum said.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re pleased about this,’ I said. I loved my brother, but he was shallower than a saucer of water.

  ‘Hey, I’m not pleased about it,’ Jack said. ‘I’m just one of those people who always sees the positive side.’ He blew his nose really loudly.

  ‘I’m so depressed,’ I said. ‘It’s an area of outstanding natural beauty.’

  The rest of my family exchanged looks, as if I was out of my tree. ‘Oh, you lot just don’t know how to look at things!’

  ‘So go and join the protest,’ Jack said. ‘There’s a tree-hugging party there on Saturday. Chain yourself to a trunk.’

  ‘I think it was a newspaper...’ my dad said, holding up his hands in the same position again. ‘Yes, I think I was holding a newspaper.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, giving it back. ‘Here.’

  Instant Message with Matty Prentiss

 

  5.17 p.m.

  tessataylor: can you believe neelson’s supermarket is really being built over cadeby wood?

  mattyjp: um . . . what a shame
?

  tessataylor: v v v v depressed about it. they will kill the foxes and animals that live there, you know – with BULLDOZERS.

  mattyjp: that so-called wood is so tiny now anyway, there’re no foxes there any more, look, it is sad but they’ll do World Exclusive Mara Uris make-up range if it opens there, it is v cheap and lovely, bought it in big branch in Manchester once.

  tessataylor: can’t believe you’re not more upset, what time are you eating? come and meet me there for a min, have another look at your love tree, feel nostalgic for your youth, then angry.

  mattyjp: ha! love tree. If u had John cheeseman tree u would be the first on the bulldozer.

  tessataylor: i would not turn my nose up at a tree carved in my honour and leave it to be cut down.

  mattyjp: mum says tea nearly ready, also have to do physics homework now because EastEnders wedding is tonight followed by documentary about breast reduction, and it’s FREEZING out there!

  tessataylor: so wear a hat. five minutes, oh go on please? want to talk, also just so bored, need to get out of house.

  mattyjp: OK see u outside mine, soon.

  tessataylor: thanks, you’re a star.

  ‘You want me to come here again?’ Matty said, retying her scarf around her neck. It was cold and getting dark, and we were both wearing woolly hats, except she looked adorable in hers and I looked silly in hats.

  ‘Yeah, Saturday, I mean tomorrow, there’s like an official protest thing.’

  ‘Well, just bring me back something to sign.’

  ‘Don’t you want to go?’ I said. ‘Here –’ I showed her the notice, which was tacked to an oak tree.

  ‘Where is the James Lvs Matilda tree, anyway?’ Matty said. ‘It’s been ages since I saw it.’

  I walked her through, knowing the exact place because it was near to a really interesting white, dead skeleton tree that I loved. Jim’s carving was really faint and the ‘a’ at the end of Matilda was badly cut, because Jim had realised he was bleeding too much to take his time but really wanted to finish.

  Jim was actually still nuts about Matty, but he pretended he just wanted to be her friend now. Secretly, I had always liked Jim more than Lee, and even fancied him a bit, but I knew he’d always fancy Matty and I’d only ever be his second choice.