Superstar Babes

by Narinder Dhami

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Also by Narinder Dhami

  Copyright

  About the Book

  The Bindi Babes love a challenge! Amber, Jazz and Geena want to have the new school library named after their mum. They have a genius plan to raise funds for it – they’re going to stage an amazing reality experiment. The sixth form block is turning into a Big Brother-style house for one week only – and they’re going to be the stars. With spoilt relatives, film stars and love-struck boys into the mix, they know it’s not going to be easy but the Babes can handle it – can’t they?

  From the author of Bend it like Beckham.

  Superstar Babes

  Narinder Dhami

  Chapter One

  ‘YOU’VE GOT ALL my money now, Amber!’ Jazz shrieked, hurling a fistful of banknotes at me. ‘There are times when I really, really hate you!’

  I smiled with quiet satisfaction and began gathering up the scattered notes. Meanwhile Jazz vented her frustration by whacking me round the head with a pillow. I yelped with surprise and grabbed a ruler off the desk next to the bed to defend myself.

  ‘I’m only asking you to pay what you owe!’ I shouted, poking her hard in the ribs. ‘I can’t help it if I’m financially brilliant and have a fantastic business brain!’

  Jazz picked up a biro and we began to fence, lunging and parrying like Olympic champions.

  ‘Oh, please,’ said Geena, picking up the dice. ‘This is meant to be a perfectly civilized game of Monopoly. There’s no need to go over the top.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Jazz grumbled, attempting to stick the biro into my arm. ‘Amber always buys expensive places like Mayfair and puts hotels on them and then it costs us hundreds of pounds.’

  ‘Really, Jazz!’ Geena said in a superior manner. ‘It is only a game. One, two, three, four . . .’ She moved her top hat around the board and her face fell. ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Oh, look,’ I pointed out. ‘You’ve landed on my hotel in Park Lane. That’s—’

  ‘Whatever it is, I don’t have enough,’ Geena snapped, fanning out a paltry collection of notes.

  ‘I told you not to buy Liverpool Street Station.’ I wagged my finger at her. ‘The railway stations never make much money. Well, it looks like I’m the supreme Monopoly champion. Again.’

  Geena shot me a bitter look.

  ‘Remember, Geena, it’s only a game,’ I reminded her.

  Geena didn’t answer. She just launched herself at me and began trying to stuff her feeble collection of banknotes down the back of my T-shirt. Very undignified behaviour for a girl of fifteen, wouldn’t you say? Jazz, who’s only a twelve-year-old child, immediately joined in. This is the problem with having sisters so close in age to me (a very mature almost-fourteen-year-old). They’re so competitive.

  ‘You two appear to be rather bad losers,’ I spluttered, trying to fend them off.

  ‘Ha!’ Geena said savagely, pinning me down on the duvet. ‘Where’s your Get out of jail free card now, Amber?’

  ‘Do not pass GO,’ Jazz intoned, bouncing up and down on my legs. ‘Do not collect two hundred pounds. Do not annoy your sisters or you’ll end up dead.’

  Even though I was face-down on the bed with a mouthful of duvet, my mind was working overtime, as usual. This, at a rough count, was the seventeenth argument we’d had this week. Seventeen arguments about Monopoly and things which had been borrowed without permission and whose turn it was to take out the rubbish – that kind of nonsense. Fifteen of them had ended in mild violence. The other two hadn’t, only because Dad had put a stop to them.

  Maybe something significant was going on here.

  ‘Stop!’ I shouted through the duvet.

  ‘That’s strange,’ said Geena. ‘I thought I heard Amber tell us to stop. She said it as if we were actually going to obey her.’

  ‘How ridiculous,’ Jazz commented, shoving the Community Chest cards down my front, appropriately enough, along with the rest of the banknotes. ‘Pass me the Monopoly board, Geena. I have plans for it.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand.’ I managed to roll over, even with Geena weighing me down. ‘I know why we’re arguing like this.’

  ‘So do we,’ Geena replied. ‘You bankrupted us with an extremely annoying and very smug smile on your face, so now we’re exacting our revenge.’

  ‘Very well put,’ Jazz approved.

  ‘I don’t mean this.’ With an effort I threw them off and jumped to my feet. Cards and notes from the Monopoly game showered down around me, falling out from under the hem of my T-shirt. ‘I mean, I know why we’re arguing all the time.’

  ‘I thought that was normal,’ Jazz said.

  ‘Well, kind of,’ I agreed. ‘But it’s been worse since Auntie got married and moved out, wouldn’t you say?’

  Auntie had moved in with us months ago and had immediately set about interfering in our lives with determination and, quite frankly, a great deal of glee. Before she arrived from India, it was just us three and Dad. Our mum died almost two years ago after she’d been ill for a while. Auntie had taken charge of everything and still liked to think she had us under her thumb, even though she’d now got married to the gorgeous Mr Arora, a teacher at our school, and moved out. Mind you, she’d only moved next door.

  ‘I know exactly what’s going on,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘We’re arguing so much because we’re bored. We need a new project. Something to get our teeth into.’

  Geena sighed loudly. ‘Amber, if this is some pathetic attempt to reason with Jazz and me before we beat you to a pulp, I can tell you that it isn’t working.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’ Jazz brandished the Monopoly board threateningly.

  To be perfectly honest, it was just a cunning ploy to get them to stop attacking me. But now that I’d had the thought, there might just be something in it.

  ‘Look at it like this,’ I said quickly. ‘We decided that we’d get Auntie married off and now she’s married to Mr Arora – I mean, Uncle Jai.’

  ‘What’s your point?’ asked Geena suspiciously.

  ‘Then there’s Molly Mahal,’ I went on regardless. ‘We helped her too, didn’t we? She’s a big Bollywood star again now, thanks to us.’

  Molly Mahal was another of our projects that had turned out amazingly well. She was a Bollywood actress who’d been down and out and living in Reading, but we’d helped her get her career back on track (I’ve got a lot more to tell you about Molly Mahal later).

  ‘And don’t forget Kiran. We helped her through a bad time after her dad died, and now she’s a good mate. And then there’s Baby and Rocky. We got them together, didn’t we?’

  ‘A match made in me, me, me heaven, that one,’ Geena remarked.

  ‘I’m getting bored,’ Jazz said, opening and snapping the Monopoly board shut dangerously close to my nose. ‘What, if anything, are you trying to say, Amber?’

  ‘I’m reminding you how many people’s lives we’ve been a very important part of,’ I said, quite lyrically. ‘How many hearts we’ve touched. How many futures we’ve changed.’

  ‘As far as I recall, we got Rocky and our bimbo-brained cousin together to keep him out of the way at Auntie’s wedding,’ said Geena, ‘to make sure he didn’t get a chance to perform his gruesome rap music.’

  Jazz and I both shuddered at the memory.r />
  ‘Well, that in itself was a challenge,’ I pointed out. ‘And that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Maybe we need a new challenge.’

  Geena and Jazz didn’t look at all convinced.

  ‘We need a project that’s going to use all our enormous intelligence, skills and creativity to the full,’ I went on, getting quite carried away, the more I thought about it. ‘Well, mine anyway, as I’m the ideas person around here.’

  ‘Your ideas, Amber, have got us into more trouble than I care to remember,’ Geena retorted, rather too forcefully, I felt.

  ‘So you want a new project, Amber?’ Jazz repeated thoughtfully.

  I nodded.

  ‘A new challenge?’

  I nodded again.

  ‘Well, here’s one,’ Jazz went on gleefully, staring out of the bedroom window. ‘George Botley is walking up our garden path right now. And he’s wearing a shirt and tie.’

  ‘What?’ I shrieked.

  I bounced across the bed, shedding a few more bits of Monopoly along the way, and peered outside. George Botley was indeed marching towards our front door in a very determined fashion. He was wearing our school tie with a shirt and jeans. Not a good look. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about George Botley. Not at all. He’s in my class at school and he has a thing for me, but I don’t encourage him. Not ever.

  I flung open the window. ‘George!’ whispered, hoping Dad hadn’t already spotted him from the living room. Or Auntie from the house next door. It was a dark November evening, but there was a streetlight just outside our house, and anyway, Auntie has eyes like a hawk and radar like a bat. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh, hi, Amber.’ George beamed up at me. ‘I’ve come to ask your dad if I can take you to the movies.’

  ‘What fun!’ Geena chortled, scrambling over to peer out of the window. Jazz followed, sniggering very annoyingly.

  ‘George, I already told you,’ I said through gritted teeth, ‘my dad doesn’t allow us to go out with boys.’

  ‘I know,’ George replied, ‘that’s why I thought I’d come and ask him properly. That’s why I’ve put a shirt and tie on.’

  ‘It’s your school tie,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I know, it’s the only one I’ve got,’ George explained. ‘I was going to borrow one from my dad, but he’s only got the black one he wore to my gran’s funeral.’

  I rolled my eyes while Geena and Jazz muffled their giggles.

  ‘George, you really ought to keep away from my dad,’ I said. ‘He’s more dangerous than he appears at first glance.’

  George raised his eyebrows. ‘He was nice to me at your auntie’s wedding,’ he pointed out.

  ‘George, Dad seems very nice,’ I said, ‘but in reality he’s not like that at all. Underneath that mild-mannered exterior, he’s a raging tiger.’

  Geena and Jazz were in fits on the floor by now.

  ‘I really think you should go home, George,’ I went on firmly. ‘We’ll talk about this at school on Monday.’

  George looked disappointed. ‘OK.’

  I sighed with relief as he wandered off down the street. ‘Once again, Amber’s lightning-quick brain gets her out of a dodgy situation,’ I said with pride.

  ‘Only until Monday,’ Geena retorted. ‘It does seem strange that George is so stuck on you, though. The poor deluded boy obviously needs specialist help.’

  ‘Why don’t you just ask Dad if you can go out with George, and get it over with?’ Jazz asked.

  ‘Because I don’t want to go out with him, that’s why,’ I said. Although I suppose I was fond of George in a way. Kind of like you might be fond of a pet gerbil. ‘I don’t want to go out with anyone. Can you imagine the stress of trying to keep it a secret from Dad and Auntie?’

  Jazz nodded agreement. ‘Auntie would find out. That woman knows everything.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘And we all remember what Dad said about dating. We’re not allowed to go out with a boy until we’re sixteen, and then Dad or Auntie will be going along with us.’

  ‘Which means we’re going to end up living together as three old unmarried women, arguing about Monopoly until we die,’ Jazz said glumly.

  ‘You’re being extremely quiet.’ I turned to Geena. ‘Anything you want to share with us?’

  I was kind of joking around, but Geena looked me straight in the eye and very slowly turned pink. Always a sure sign of guilt.

  ‘Me?’ she said in an over-casual voice. ‘Like what?’

  ‘Ooh! What have you been up to, Geena?’ Jazz demanded, pouncing like a piranha. ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’

  ‘No, I haven’t!’ Geena snapped, rather too aggressively. Which instantly made me more suspicious.

  Jazz and I glanced at each other and nodded. Then we both fixed Geena with a glassy, unblinking stare. That always used to freak her out when we were kids.

  ‘I do not have a boyfriend!’ Geena yelled.

  ‘OK, have you had a boyfriend?’ I probed.

  ‘I have friends who happen to be boys,’ Geena parried.

  ‘Oh, stop messing about,’ Jazz said. ‘What we want to know is – has any kissing taken place?’

  ‘Stop staring at me like that,’ Geena said irritably, stalking over to the door. ‘And don’t ask ridiculous questions. Of course I’ve never had a boyfriend, and I’ve never kissed a boy either.’

  She went out of the bedroom and the door banged shut behind her.

  ‘She’s definitely had a boyfriend and she’s definitely kissed him,’ said Jazz, glowing with excitement. ‘This is huge!’

  ‘Hold on a moment,’ I replied, beginning to collect up the Monopoly pieces from the floor. ‘We don’t have any proof yet. It’s obviously our sisterly duty to find out if it’s true or not. But we’ll take it slowly, all right?’

  Jazz rubbed her hands together gleefully. ‘Oh, the possibilities for blackmail are endless!’ she sighed.

  ‘Why don’t you give me a hand?’ I suggested, sweeping up a pile of banknotes.

  ‘Are you mad?’ Jazz yawned. ‘Let Geena clear it up. It’s her bedroom. Anyway’ – she glanced at the clock – ‘it’s nearly time for Who’s in the House? We can’t miss that.’

  ‘No way. It’s just getting interesting.’

  So I dropped all the Monopoly pieces on the carpet again and the two of us clattered downstairs. As we reached the hall, Auntie came out of the kitchen, carrying a plate piled with samosas.

  ‘What have you two been saying to Geena?’ she asked without preamble. ‘She’s sitting in front of the TV with a face on her that would stop a clock.’

  ‘Nothing,’ Jazz said, slightly overdoing the wide-eyed innocent bit.

  ‘Auntie, don’t you ever get tired of noticing things?’ I remarked. ‘Don’t you ever wonder how much more peaceful your life would be if you just stopped worrying about other people and only thought about yourself?’

  Auntie smiled. ‘What a lovely idea, Amber. Unfortunately that’s never going to happen with you three around.’

  Geena was sitting on the sofa in the living room with a sulky look on her face that could have stopped any number of clocks. Uncle Jai – he was Uncle at home and Mr Arora at school – was arranging bowls of popcorn and bottles of cola on the coffee table. He and Auntie often came round from next door to watch Who’s in the House? with us.

  ‘AND NOW,’ boomed the TV in the corner, making us all jump, ‘whatever you do, DO NOT LEAVE THE ROOM! DO NOT CHANGE CHANNELS! Because if you do, you’ll miss the programme everyone, but everyone, is talking about! WHO’S IN THE HOUSE? Next, after the break!’

  Who’s in the House? was one of those awful reality shows that everyone moans about, but absolutely everyone watches. Ten people were locked up in a house together for weeks on end, and they had to do various tests and trials. The people who performed the worst in the tests were kicked out, one by one, by public vote. Remember I said I had more to tell you about Molly Mahal? Well, she was one of the contestants
taking part in the celebrity version of the programme.

  ‘Go and fetch your dad, Jazz,’ said Auntie, placing the samosas on the table.

  Jazz didn’t move from the armchair where she was comfortably sprawled.

  ‘DAD!’ she roared at the top of her voice.

  Auntie sighed.

  A moment later Dad wandered in, looking distracted, with his glasses perched on his forehead.

  ‘Dad, did you know that underneath your mild-mannered exterior, you’re really a raging tiger?’ asked Jazz.

  ‘I always suspected it,’ Dad replied, taking a samosa.

  ‘Popcorn?’ Uncle Jai passed the bowl to Geena, who shook her head.

  ‘I don’t know why we always have to watch this ridiculous programme,’ she said tartly. ‘I mean, it’s not as if any of us liked Molly Mahal that much when she stayed with us.’

  ‘Some of us did,’ Auntie remarked.

  Uncle Jai blushed, but luckily Auntie was smiling.

  ‘Geena’s in a teensy-weensy little bad mood at the moment,’ I said. ‘She’s got a lot on her mind.’

  Geena glared at me.

  ‘Like school work, I hope,’ said Dad.

  ‘Of course,’ Geena replied hurriedly.

  ‘I wonder if Molly Mahal’s going to win,’ said Jazz, which was the same remark she’d made every single night since the programme started.

  Auntie tutted disapprovingly as the ad break finished. ‘Geena’s right though, it really is ridiculous. It’s about time the TV companies started making more worthwhile programmes.’ Auntie said this every night too, but she still watched, along with the rest of us. ‘Do we really want to see Z-list celebrities in skimpy outfits crying, fighting and swearing at each other?’

  ‘I’m not complaining,’ said Dad and laughed, which is what he did every time.

  The rap music that always began the programme was now blaring out (Wh-o-o-o-o-o-’s in da house! ) and then the presenter, Kieron King, loomed out of the screen and began yelling at us:

  ‘Welcome to the Friday night edition of WH-O-O-O-O-O’S IN THE HOUSE?! Tonight’s eviction night, folks, and this very night, one of our celebrities will LEAVE the house and WALK THE WALK OF SHAME!’