by Mel Sparke
“Lot of yuppies, though,” Joe noted, looking round at the designer-dressed, champagne-sipping throng in the main room.
“Well, it would be, wouldn’t it,” shrugged Ollie. “That’s the whole point of tonight – get all the eligible, well-off potential punters along; let them see the place, ply ‘em with some free drink and then hope they sign up and stump up a nice fat joining fee!”
Kerry huddled close to Ollie; she needed his confidence. She was uncomfortably aware that they were the youngest people there, and no matter how they’d dressed up, it felt patently obvious to her that they were there under false pretences. She glanced back to check that her other friends were still with them and saw Sonja and Cat’s beaming faces as they stared round at the party set-up. They were in their element. Of course.
“Let’s go over and see Matt first,” Ollie grinned back at the girls over his shoulder. “I’m dying to see the look on his face when he spots Anna!”
“This… beats jogging round the park… on a drizzly morning,” panted Ollie.
“Are you allowed to do that?” asked Maya. Ollie was thumping away on the running machine, his eyes glued to the screen above his head that was showing MTV.
‘“Course,” he said breathlessly, slowing his pace. “Everyone’s… allowed to try… the equipment.”
“Potential clients are meant to look at the equipment, I think,” Maya contradicted him. “You aren’t a potential client – not on your wages – and you’re not meant to use gym equipment without a proper instructor around. Especially after you’ve knocked back a few free champagnes…”
“Oh, Maya,” Ollie grinned as he leapt off the machine, “what would we all do without you looking out for our welfare?”
“I dread to think,” smiled Maya, leaning casually against the wall with her arms folded across her chest.
Ollie had appointed himself tour guide of the fitness club and was on his second lap of its facilities. He’d ambled round with Kerry and the others earlier and now it was Maya’s turn.
“I like Billy,” said Ollie out of the blue, parking himself on an exercise bike while he got his breath back.
Maya felt a wave of pleasure. She appreciated Ollie’s straightforward opinion. The girls, she knew, were looking at Billy purely from the point of view of a potential love interest for Maya, no matter how much she protested that he wasn’t.
“He seems pretty sorted. He was telling me that he wants to be a professional photographer, after winning that competition,” Ollie continued.
Again, Maya felt a wave of pleasure wash over her. Billy had won the photography competition at the art gallery in town with a picture of her; a candid shot she hadn’t even realised he’d taken. She’d tried to play it down ever since, but couldn’t deny to herself how flattered she’d been.
“Is he going to be all right out there on his own?” Ollie asked, nodding in the direction of the general party.
“Of course!” Maya replied slightly indignantly. It wasn’t like a date, where Billy might expect to have her undivided attention. She’d brought him along to meet her friends and that was exactly what she’d left him doing when she went off snooping with Ollie. “He was talking to Anna, remember?”
“Is that wise?” laughed Ollie, standing up and falling into step behind Maya, who was heading towards the exit.
“What do you mean?”
“The way Anna’s looking tonight, is he going to be able to resist her?”
“He can do what he likes,” Maya shrugged. “He’s a free agent.”
“Sure about that?”
Maya was ready to bite Ollie’s head off after that last comment. Then she spotted his ear-to-ear grin.
“Was that your impersonation of Cat or Sonja?” she laughed, linking her arm with his.
“Take your pick,” he answered as they headed out into the corridor. “But are you sure it’s OK to take my arm? Won’t Billy be jealous?”
Then he yelped as Maya pinched him.
Sonja tapped Matt on the shoulder and passed him a pint glass of orange juice.
“Thanks, Son, I’m dying of thirst,” Matt barked above the music.
“Pleasure,” she smiled back.
A little shiver of excitement ran down her spine as their fingers brushed round the glass – but it was more to do with the look in his eyes than the physical contact.
Gone was Matt’s laid-back, hooded-eyed gaze. His eyes were wide, glinting with excitement, the black pupils enormously large, even in the subdued lighting. If she didn’t know him better, she might have supposed he was on drugs. But she had read once that when a person is attracted to someone else, their pupils do dilate, for some strange hormonal, chemical, unknown reason.
Could there be something in that? she wondered.
Matt switched his gaze away from Sonja. He felt, bizarrely, that she might be able to see through his eyes to the thoughts behind them; instead he looked out over the room.
He was relieved that the last couple of tracks had finally got people up and dancing. That was always the yardstick he measured himself by: if he was doing his job well, and matching the right type of music to the crowd in front of him, then they’d shake off their shyness and get up on the dance floor pretty early in the evening.
Tonight, they’d taken so long that he felt as if he was losing his touch, but then, if he was honest, he hadn’t exactly had his mind on the job over the last couple of hours.
Matt was too conscious of the hammering in his heart and the hairs on his neck standing up.
He was too busy trying to work out if he was having a heart attack, or if he was suddenly head-over-heels, flat-on-his-face in love…
CHAPTER 10
TROUBLE IN PARADISE
In the still of the night, Ollie, Kerry and Joe stood in the middle of the bridge and gazed down at the black water of the river below. Three luminously white shapes caught their attention.
“Look, there they are!” said Kerry excitedly, pointing at the swans roosting for the night by the bushes that lined the riverside path. “Don’t they look beautiful in the moonlight?”
“Not as beautiful as you…” Ollie replied, pulling her closer to him, his arm round her waist.
Kerry felt fleetingly irritated. His supposed hug felt more like a clumsy tug and, apart from that, did he have to say slushy stuff like that in front of Joe? It’s as if Joe isn’t here, she thought uncomfortably. As if Joe’s feelings don’t count or don’t matter…
“Can you make them out, Joe?” she asked their friend, trying to include him in the conversation and hopefully make some subtle point to Ollie.
“Uh… think so. Those white shapes, yeah?” Joe nodded. “‘Course, at this distance, they could just be white plastic bags that have blown into the bushes.”
Kerry found herself laughing far too loudly at his not-particularly-funny observation, still over-compensating for what she saw as Ollie’s thoughtlessness.
“you know,” she began conversationally, watching the reflection of the moon wobble gently in the water below, “I still can’t get over what a brilliant job Cat did on Anna!”
“Well, yeah, that’s true,” Ollie agreed, “but don’t let that put any ideas in your head!”
“What do you mean?” Kerry quizzed him.
“I don’t want you offering your services as a guinea pig! I don’t want Cat changing one thing about you…”
Ollie leant forward and affectionately pecked her on the cheek. Involuntarily, Kerry shivered. He’d done it again.
“Cold, babe?” Ollie asked, misinterpreting the gesture. He cuddled her closer. Kerry felt more stifled and more annoyed for Joe’s sake.
A car horn blared on the road behind them and all three spun round to see Matt and Sonja waving from Mart’s Golf. Reinforced boxes containing speakers, lights and records were piled to the roof in the back seat, as well as the hatchback’s boot.
“They managed to get that lot packed up quickly enough!” observed Joe. Ton
ight they’d all done their share: helping Matt set up and then packing most of his gear away while the others – with the exception of Sonja and Kerry – drifted on home as the party at the fitness centre fizzled out.
“Yeah, it was good of Sonja to offer to help with last of the stuff and let me and you off the hook,” Ollie said to Joe. The two boys tended to be roped in to do Mart’s donkey work pretty regularly when he was gigging.
“She probably just offered ‘cause she knew it meant a free lift home,” Joe pointed out.
“What?” Ollie pretended to be hurt. “And turn down the chance to walk home with me and Kerry?”
From the bridge, Ollie could have taken the road straight along as far as the top of the park and been home in minutes, with his friend and neighbour, Joe. But, of course, being the caring boyfriend that he was, he’d be taking a twenty-minute detour, down the west side of the park, past the station and the darkened End-of-the-Line café, and on to the enclave of streets where Kerry lived.
“That’s probably why Sonja held out for a lift…” Kerry muttered. However nicely Sonja had put it, she’d let Kerry know clearly enough that Kerry’n’Ollie’s cosy coupledom could get a little nauseating for the rest of them sometimes. Kerry had felt hurt at the time, but she had to acknowledge that her best friend had a point.
“What?” asked Ollie, trying to make sense of what his girlfriend had said.
“Nothing,” replied Kerry, shaking her head.
It wasn’t because she felt she’d be number three in Kerry and Ollie’s crowd of two that Sonja had hitched a lift.
After seeing that certain sparkle in Mart’s eyes tonight when he’d looked at her, Sonja wanted yet another chance to be alone with him.
As she’d carried the last of the leads and cables to the car, her mind had raced with things to say (“You looked… different tonight. Something on your mind?”) or things to do (lean her head on his shoulder as he drove) that might help move things along between them, if her intuition was right and Matt felt something for her.
But now, driving along, aware of his presence so close to her, Sonja decided on a different tactic – she was going to shut up. She’d done nothing but chatter when they’d gone to the record fair together on Thursday and nothing had happened.
Now Sonja was just going to stare wistfully and silently out of the window and give Matt the chance to say or do something. Something that might shed light on whether they had a chance together or not…
Sonja was quiet. Matt noticed. But he liked that; the fact that there could be comfortable silences between them. That was what made Sonja so special – what made him feel closest to her out of all the girls.
But now, tonight, something totally unexpected had happened and he didn’t know how to put these sudden, new, scary feelings into words.
He glanced out of the corner of his eye and saw Sonja staring sleepily out of the passenger window.
God. I wish I could tell her! he thought, his emotions making his head throb and his senses ache. But how would she take it?
“Are you OK?” OIlie asked.
The three of them – Kerry walking in the middle of the two boys – were approaching the turning by the park that Kerry and OIlie would head down, leaving Joe to his own devices.
“Yes, of course – why are you asking?” she snapped back.
“Well, because you’ve been a bit… offish tonight.”
Some sixth sense of Joe’s, tuned in for so long to Kerry’s every move and mood, was aware of her tensing up as she walked beside him.
“Offish? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Like – like, I don’t know, a bit snappy or whatever,” said OIlie, an uncertain note creeping into his voice.
“Listen, I’m off,” Joe interrupted, turning towards the pavement and making to cross the traffic-free main road.
“Yeah, OK, see you, Joe!” OIlie called after him with artificial breeziness.
“Bye, Joe!” called Kerry softly.
As Joe reached the pavement on the other side of the road, he could make out the tone, if not the actual words, of his friends’ continuing exchange – it sounded like bickering.
And Joe realised he was glad…
CHAPTER 11
WILL SHE? WON’T SHE?
Cat curled up on the sofa and gave her mum a sideways glance.
Sylvia Osgood sat in a large, cream-coloured, comfy chair, a long-stemmed wine glass in her hand and her concentration directed at the documentary on the TV in front of her.
Frantically chewing at the skin inside her mouth, Cat tried to work up the courage to say what she had to say.
Suddenly, an ad break came up and Cat knew it was time to launch in. Sort of.
“Mum?”
Sylvia Osgood turned to face her daughter. Her perfect bob seemed unruffled, despite her earlier hour’s worth of aerobics at the tennis club exercise suite.
“Mmm?” she responded flatly, assuming that the questioning note in Cat’s voice meant only one thing: she wanted something. Probably an advance on her allowance, since that was the norm with Cat.
“Mum – one of my friends—”
“Which one?” her mother butted in. She was a stickler for precision and couldn’t stand people faffing around and obscuring the issue. Which was unfortunate, considering it was one of her daughter’s major talents.
“Um… Maya,” Cat burst out, fixing on the one friend who was in the same year as her and, like Cat, was supposed to be transferring to the sixth-form college of St Mark’s at the end of the summer break.
“Yes, what about Maya?” asked Cat’s mother, appearing slightly more interested now that she thought that money probably wasn’t the issue for discussion.
“Uh, well,” Cat tried to begin, now realising that Maya wasn’t a good choice to pick on for the ‘what if…’ scenario she was about to put to her mother. But she’d started, so she was going to have to finish… “Maya was thinking of packing in school – ‘cause she’s seen a course she wants to do at college and they’re accepting late applications…”
“Maya? Maya wants to leave before she’s done her A levels?” queried Sylvia Osgood. “But what on earth does she plan to do at college with no A levels?”
Cat hated her mother’s snobbery, which was the whole reason she’d dreaded telling her anything about her own plans.
“I, er, don’t know,” Cat waffled, not having thought out her strategy clearly enough for this conversation. “I haven’t spoken to her myself – one of the others told me. But what do you think? Do you think it’s a terrible idea? Or do you think it could work out, if it’s something she really wants to do?”
“What do I think, Catrina?” Sylvia widened her eyes at her daughter. “What do the Joshis think, more like! I mean, I think Maya’s making a terrible mistake, but they’re both doctors. They’re not exactly going to jump for joy over the fact that their daughter wants to leave school with practically worthless qualifications and go in for some half-baked, dead-end college course, are they?”
“But if she knows what she wants to do and the course leads to that, why waste time doing A levels?” Cat flared momentarily. But she was immediately cowed by her mother’s steely glare.
“Uh, well, it’s not definite – she was just thinking about it,” Cat waffled some more. “Oh, look – the programme’s started again.”
As her mother’s attention was diverted back to the documentary, Cat sank down deep into the overstuffed sofa, knowing that in a roundabout way, she’d confirmed what she suspected her mother’s feelings were on leaving school to do a beauty course, which only might lead to an acting career.
And it wasn’t looking good.
From his sprawled position on the vast, grey leather sofa, Matt watched his father tighten up his golf club tie in front of the huge antique mirror above the fireplace.
“No work on tonight then?” asked his elegantly grey-haired and not so elegantly portly father, conversing with his son thr
ough the reflection in the mirror.
“Nope,” Matt replied, twirling a coaster from the coffee table around in his hand. “Bit of a dry spell at the moment.”
“Hmff,” grunted his father, straightening the lapels of his blazer.
On the one hand, he wished his son had embarked on a more stable, respectable career, while on the other, he was too busy and didn’t have the inclination to try to confront him about it.
If the truth be told, Matthew Ryan senior also suffered from a certain amount of guilt when it came to his only son. Guilt about sending him to a boarding school; guilt about his marriage breaking down; guilt that Mart’s mother was too busy with her new family to bother with her eldest child; and guilt at the amount of time he spent away from home, because of work commitments. Added together, these had a lot to do with why he didn’t hassle his eighteen-year-old son about getting a ‘proper’ job.
“What’s the plan with you tonight then, Dad?” Matt asked, in a disinterested but dutiful tone of voice.
“Dinner at the club. Going to chat to Dean and Stan and some of the others about investing in this leisure hotel complex up in Scotland. Think they’ll bite.”
Matt stared dully up at his father as his well-fed frame came into view. He knew the names of all his property developer father’s friends – might even recognise a few of them if he ran into them – but frankly, he didn’t have the faintest interest in his father’s dealings.
“Don’t wait up,” Matthew Snr joked feebly as he headed out of the door. The bachelor lifestyle he shared with his son in this vast house didn’t sit on him all that comfortably at times.
“Yeah, whatever. Have fun,” muttered Matt.
Twenty minutes passed and Matt found himself vacantly flipping through terrestrial and cable channels with the remote set to mute.
His head was whirring loudly enough to compensate for the lack of sound on the TV. Thoughts were in there that had been bouncing off his cranium since Saturday night.