Sugar Secrets…& Conflict

by Mel Sparke

  The girl tentatively took her hands away from her ears and gazed at the four lads on the stage, all carrying on manfully, despite the electronic glitch that had interrupted their song.

  “Mmmm – who’s the singer?” asked the girl, her eyes suddenly glued to Ollie as he began to belt out the chorus.

  “That’s Ollie,” the tall bloke replied in a friendly Glaswegian growl. “Fancy him then, do you?”

  “You know me – I always make a beeline for the cute ones,” laughed the girl, resting her head on his shoulder and gazing up at him. “Well, I fell for you, didn’t I, Alex McKay?”

  Alex smiled down nervously at her and twitched his arm just enough to make her move her head away

  “Steady – Maya’s friends are here, remember? I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea…”

  “Don’t worry,” she grinned at him. “I’ll be discreet!”

  The girl reached across and wrapped her fingers around his, giving them a conspiratorial squeeze.

  CHAPTER 11

  A PRICKLY SUBJECT

  Sitting alone on a bench in the schoolyard, Maya squeezed her eyes tightly shut and ran through a brace of equations again in her mind.

  “Dreaming of anything nice?”

  Opening her eyes, Maya was greeted by Sonja’s beaming smile.

  “I wasn’t dreaming and it wasn’t nice, unfortunately,” smiled Maya. “And what are you looking so happy about? Don’t you have an exam today too?”

  “I certainly do, but what’s the point in freaking out about it? Either I know my stuff by now or I don’t,” shrugged Sonja matter-of-factly.

  “And knowing you, you do.” Maya commented.

  Sonja was that rarity: someone who found exams relatively stress-free, while practically everyone else around her was quietly cultivating ulcers. Of course, she had another incentive to swot up properly for her exams – getting the right grades would guarantee her a place at the university closest to her boyfriend Owen. And making that happen was Sonja’s number one priority.

  Maya glanced up at the clocktower that dominated St Mark’s School and saw that she still had a bit of time before she’d have to make her way to the exam hall.

  “So how was the gig last night?” she asked. “What did I miss?”

  “Oh, only everything,” said Sonja, her pale blue eyes wide. “There’s big ructions happening between Anna and Ollie. Anna’s being such a bitch to him – she’s wrecking his career! I can’t believe she’s got so power-crazy! I’d ask Owen about it but I think he’d get all defensive. He’s always so protective of his little sister, just like Peter is with me. I just don’t know whether to bring it up with him or not. What do you think?”

  “What?” Maya responded with shock. It wasn’t Sonja’s question that bothered her. It was the fact that things had obviously deteriorated since she and Kerry had spoken about it in the End a couple of days previously.

  “Can’t tell you now – it would take too long,” said Sonja tantalisingly. “How are you fixed later? We could meet up for a coffee this afternoon and I’ll fill you in.”

  “Uh, right. Where – at the End?”

  “I don’t think so!” laughed Sonja. “Not since I’ll be talking about the two people who work there! What about the coffee stand in the park, about 430 pm?”

  “Yes, sure,” said Maya, feeling bewildered and upset by this mysterious piece of news. She didn’t know how she could concentrate on her exam with all that hanging over her head.

  “Listen, I’ve got to run. Catch you later, yeah?”

  Maya nodded at her friend, who had turned to make her way towards the sixth-form college annexe.

  “Oh, Maya – I totally forgot!” Sonja suddenly called back to her. “Urn, Alex turned up at the gig last night…”

  “Did he?” Maya replied, a smile instantly coming to her lips at the mention of her boyfriend. “What did he have to say?”

  “Not a lot,” said Sonja, looking uncomfortable. “He was with someone. A girl with cropped red hair. Can’t remember what he said her name was. Molly or something?”

  Maya stared at her friend without actually seeing her. She’d spoken to Alex earlier the previous evening – their teatime telephone catchups becoming a ritual during their enforced separation – and he hadn’t mentioned that he planned to go and see the band that night. Not that she minded; Maya spent a lot of time worrying that Alex felt too old to have anything much in common with her crowd of mates. The fact that he wanted to see the band even though she herself wasn’t going would normally have been a good sign.

  But not in this instance.

  “Maya – sorry, I really have to go,” Sonja called over. “Look, we’ll talk about this later too, OK?”

  Feeling numb, Maya gave another half-hearted nod in response.

  Alex had been pretty vague about events when he’d told Maya about the house party he’d been to on Monday night. There’d been no mention of talking to anyone in particular, and no mention of Holly – but from what she remembered about Alex’s one-time description of her, she was a hundred per cent sure that the girl with the cropped red hair was Holly.

  So what the hell’s he doing, thought Maya, an icy shiver shooting up her back, taking his ex-girlfriend out while I’m stuck at home, none the wiser?

  CHAPTER 12

  ANNA BLOWS A FUSE

  “Hey, you!”

  “Hey, you! What are you doing here at eleven o’clock on a Friday morning?” OIlie grinned at his girlfriend as she slid into the empty window booth.

  Kerry hauled a heavily packed bag up on to the table, started undoing the buckles and pulled out a couple of note-stuffed ring-binders.

  “What brings me here is two noisy double-glazing fitters who’re hammering the house apart and singing along at the tops of their voices to a scratchy tape of Oasis – while I’m trying to swot.”

  “Could be worse; they could be playing Bryan Adams,” OIlie laughed, reaching over and giving the table a quick wipe. “Anyway, how can you slag off Oasis? That’s sacrilege, that is!”

  “Ol, you know I like Oasis. But when you’ve heard every track forty times and you can’t hear Liam Gallagher’s voice ‘cause a big Geordie called Bruce is howling out the words to Dont Look Back in Anger, it tends to lose its charm.”

  “Point taken. But I thought they’d finished at your place at the beginning of the week?”

  “They’ve come back just for today, to finish off, whatever that means.”

  ‘Probably means they’re going to charge your mum and dad for extra work that they could have done when they were there before. Oh, well, if you want peace and quiet to study, you’ve come to the right place. Ever since the breakfast time rush, it’s been dead as a very dead dodo in here – Irene and me have had more breaks than we know what to do with,” said Ollie, straightening up and tossing the damp dishcloth over his shoulder. “That is, it’ll be quiet until the regular Friday mum-and-baby tribe arrive – then it’ll be so noisy you’ll be glad to get back to Bruce and his yodelling!”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Kerry smiled. “So is it just you and Irene at the moment? Anna doing a late start, is she?”

  Ollie glanced quickly in the direction of the kitchen, then crouched down conspiratorially beside his girlfriend.

  “She’s due in any minute,” he whispered, even though the banter of the Radio One DJ was loud enough to drown him out. “Listen, I’ve got some good news, Kez.”

  “At last! I thought you looked in a pretty good mood this morning!”

  Kerry hadn’t even heard what he was going to say, but a wave of relief washed over her. He must have made it up with Anna – that was the only thing it could be.

  Or maybe he’s cleared the air with Joe, she suddenly thought. That would be just as brilliant to hear…

  With all the tension going around at the moment, Kerry was starting to feel more and more down as the week progressed. First it was Anna and OIlie rubbing each other up the wrong way, t
hen it was OIlie and Joe, and last night it had got even worse; Sonja had got on her high horse about the whole competition thing and snapped – unfairly, Kerry knew – at Matt. And if that wasn’t enough, she and Sonja had spotted Alex at the Railway Tavern bar at the end of the night, looking very pally with some pretty redhead who most definitely wasn’t Maya.

  Kerry had gone to bed with a headache as a result and had woken up with an even worse one, fuelled by the noisy double-glazing racket going on at home. The headache was then accompanied by a nervous tummy flutter as she’d made her way along to the End, dreading how things might be with Anna. Would she be curt with Kerry, as an offshoot of what was going on between her and Ollie?

  But now Ollie had good news and Kerry couldn’t wait to hear what it could be.

  “Kez – it looks like…” Ollie couldn’t resist teasing her by building up the suspense.

  “Like what? Get on with it!”

  “Like we will be able to do the Battle of the Bands thing after all!”

  “Ollie that’s brilliant! But how?!” gasped Kerry, wondering what had made Anna change her mind.

  “Well,” said Ollie, winking at her, “let’s just say I haven’t lost my boyish charm…”

  Anna frowned at the sight of the white splodge on a spiny leaf of the palm tree that Matt had given her and which now stood sentinel outside her front door.

  “Gee, thanks,” she muttered to the long-gone bird that had left its calling card on her plant.

  Then she shook herself, realising how silly it was to get annoyed by a spot of bird poo after the relaxing start she’d had to her morning. Trying to tune out the just audible clattering going on in the café downstairs, Anna had put on a laid-back CD and run herself a deep bath that smelled deliciously of magnolia and calendula aromatherapy oils.

  Luxuriating in the warm water, she’d given herself a little talking to. OK, so it wasn’t her fault that things had gone awry with Ollie, but it would be to her own advantage, as well as Ollie’s, to try and make amends.

  She couldn’t change her mind about Ollie getting the day off for the band competition the following Saturday – there was no one else who could fill in at the café, considering the only other person who often lent a hand was Ollie’s fellow band member, Joe – but she could talk to Ollie about it today and explain how truly sorry she was that it had to be that way.

  He’s too sweet and funny to fall out with, she smiled to herself, turning away from her plant and clattering down the metal steps that led to the backyard below. So, he’s been a bit self-absorbed and thoughtless recently – but people can’t be perfect all the time. He’s bound to be different today, now that he’s had time to let it sink in and realise there was nothing I could do about—

  Anna pushed open the back door of the kitchen and stopped in her tracks.

  “Irene!” she yelped, running across and grabbing the grey-haired woman away from the open oven door. “What are you doing? You were just about to pull that baking tray out without any oven gloves on! You could have burnt your hands!”

  “Oh! I – I – oh, silly me! I just— I just wasn’t thinking!” Irene was flustered, blinking in surprise at her close call.

  “Sit down a minute,” said Anna, ushering the older woman over to a wooden stool. “That’s not like you, Irene; you’re always so careful. Are you feeling all right?”

  “Ooh, my mind was just in a bit of a tizz, that’s all,” said Irene, flapping her hands as if to banish Anna’s concerns.

  “What about?” asked Anna, unused to seeing down-to-earth and cheery Irene looking so frazzled.

  Irene scanned Anna’s face as if she were trying to make up her mind what to say. Then she rolled her eyes and sighed.

  “You mustn’t be annoyed with him…”

  Anna hesitated. She could practically hear the alarm bells jangling in her mind.

  “Who – Ollie?”

  “Yes… but promise me you won’t be annoyed. I mean, I know you already told him I couldn’t work next Saturday, but you can’t blame the poor lad for asking again. And I’m sure my brother won’t mind if I change the date of my visit to another weekend…”

  “OIlie asked you to do his shift?!” asked Anna incredulously.

  Without another word, she strode out of the kitchen through to the front café, where she could see OIlie sitting talking to Kerry in the window booth. Luckily, there were no customers in – although Anna was so cross she wasn’t sure she’d have been able to have a civilised word with her co-worker anyway, even if the place had been packed.

  “OIlie!” she barked.

  He spun round, the smile on his face fading in the glare of her scowl.

  “How dare you bully Irene into agreeing to swap shifts with you!”

  “But I didn’t bully her! I only asked—”

  “You as good as bullied her! She’s in there now in a real state – it’s her brother’s Golden Wedding party next week and, thanks to you, she nearly burnt her hands while she was worrying how to break it to him that she couldn’t come!”

  “But I didn’t know that! I didn’t think—”

  “No – you didn’t think and that’s the problem. You haven’t been doing much thinking at all lately,” said Anna, hands on hips, and uncharacteristically angry words spilling from her mouth. “The only thing you have been thinking about is yourself – what you want to do, what you want to happen. Well, here’s a shocker, OIlie Stanton – the whole world doesn’t revolve around you. And I’m very sorry about the competition, but Irene isn’t going to give up her weekend for you, so you better just get used to the idea!”

  With that, she turned and stormed back to the kitchen.

  OIlie and Kerry stared at each other over the table, too stunned by the barrage to speak.

  “…so it’s stormy, stormy, stormy today, I’m afraid!” the voice of the newsreader boomed from the radio, his weather forecast predicting more than he could possibly have realised.

  CHAPTER 13

  CAT TO THE RESCUE?

  Passing the newsagent’s window, Cat’s attention was grabbed by what she saw.

  Hesitating, she turned to the window and gazed up and down at the dazzling vision in front of her.

  “Not bad. Not bad at all, girl!” she smirked at her reflection, twisting this way and that to strike the best pose in her cute cropped trousers and chunky Buffalo trainers. The orange padded sleeveless vest was another new purchase and she’d accessorised it by tying her blonde hair into two bunches using vivid tangerine scrunchies.

  Her eyes flickered slightly to the right, where the newsagent stood, mouth agape, watching her, a postcard he was just about to put in the window still clutched in his hand. Leaning forward, Cat cheekily blew him a kiss and skipped away giggling.

  “yoo-hoo!”

  Just as she was about to cross the road over to the End-of-the-line café, Cat heard an unmistakable sing-song voice.

  “Hi, Vera!” she chirped, swivelling round to see the mad old lady who ran the launderette waving to her.

  “C’mere a minute, dear,” said Vera, waving her inside.

  Cat smiled to herself as she trotted into the suds-smelling shop. It was Saturday morning and she was in no rush to do anything in particular, so wasting a few moments seeing what Vera had to say for herself could be fun.

  “Ooh, let me turn that down for a second,” tsked Vera, fiddling with the volume control on her radio. “Can’t stand that housey music, can you? Now Boyzone – they’re a lovely bunch. Nice lads and such nice tunes, don’t you think?”

  Cat shrugged and tried not to laugh. From the window of the End, Vera, on the other side of the road, was an entertaining sight, constantly spinning and singing her way around the washing machines and puzzled punters, with only her mop for a partner. But obviously ‘housey’ music didn’t get her toes tapping.

  “What’s up, Vera?” asked Cat, trying not to stare at the blocks of blue eyeshadow that Vera had smeared unsubtly over her eyelid
s.

  “Well, I’m a bit worried about your friend Anna.”

  In Vera’s eyes, Anna could do no wrong after she’d been her guardian angel and come running to the old lady’s aid when thieves tried to rob the launderette a few weeks before. Now it seemed that Vera was trying to repay the favour by looking out for Anna this time round.

  “Why are you worried, Vera?” asked Cat, peering over in the direction of the café. She’d been involved in a lot of college stuff lately and hadn’t spoken to any of the crowd apart from Maya earlier in the week. Suddenly, she wondered what she’d missed.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, my love, but I do know that Anna’s been very down the last few days. I’ve been watching – and she looks miserable as sin, not her usual, lovely self at all,” said Vera, shaking her head and tutting. “I did catch her yesterday when she popped over to Mr Patel’s for a magazine, but she wouldn’t tell me what was wrong – she just shook her head and said she was fine. But she’s not fine – and I think it’s got something to do with the lovely lad in there. You know, what’s-his-name that looks like a sheepdog.”

  “A sheepdog?” Cat repeated, wondering who or what Vera was on about.

  “Yes, you know – your friend! The good-looking lad who always has his hair in his eyes!”

  “Oh, you mean Ollie!” giggled Cat, catching Vera’s drift and laughing at the idea of her mate with his floppy fringe being likened to a large, hairy pooch. Only Vera could come up with that one.

  “Yes, yes – Ollie! That’s it! Anyway, I’m sure they’re not talking. And I’m sure they had a row yesterday morning. I could see them. That other girl was there… your friend… Curly-Wurly…”

  Cat furrowed her eyebrows at the mention of a chocolate bar. Then it clicked.

  “Kerry? With the curly, reddy-brown hair?”

  “That’s the one!” Vera clapped her hands.

  “I wonder what Anna and Ollie could be fighting about…” Cat mused.

  “Well, that’s what I called you in for. They’re both such sweet young people, but Anna’s not going to tell a silly old lady like me all her problems. But maybe she’ll tell you. Maybe she needs a friend…”