All Mates Together

by Cathy Hopkins

  Cathy Hopkins lives in London with her husband and two cats, Emmylou and Otis. The cats appear to be slightly insane. Their favourite game is to run from one side of the house to the other as fast as possible, then see if they can fly if they leap high enough off the furniture. This is usually at three o’clock in the morning and they land on anyone who happens to be asleep at the time.

  Cathy spends most of her time locked in a shed at the bottom of the garden pretending to write books but is actually in there listening to music, hippie dancing and checking her Facebook page.

  Apart from that, Cathy has joined the gym and spends more time than is good for her making up excuses as to why she hasn’t got time to go.

  Big thanks to Brenda Gardner, Melissa Patey and all the fab team at Piccadilly. And thanks as always to Steve Lovering for all his support and help, especially in accompanying me to all the locations in the books and taking photos of them.

  First published in Great Britain in 2006

  by Piccadilly Press Ltd,

  5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR

  This edition published 2008

  Text copyright © Cathy Hopkins, 2006

  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 Cathy Hopkins 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 85340 974 5 (paperback)

  eISBN: 978 1 84812 306 9

  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

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

  Typeset by M Rules, London

  Set in Garamond and Fineprint

  Cover design by Simon Davis

  Cover illustration by Susan Hellard

  Contents

  1. At Last!

  2. All Mates Together

  3. Car Boot Sale

  4. The Big Move

  5. New House Horrors

  6. Reality Kicks In

  7. London

  8. Boys!

  9. Lookalike Me

  10. Mrs Snob

  11. Reversals

  12. Panic

  13. Headline News

  14. The Big Day

  ‘I NEVER THOUGHT THIS would really happen,’ I said as I looked around at what was left of my bedroom. It was so neat and tidy. Usually it was jam-packed with stuff: clothes and shoes spilling out of the wardrobe, posters of the latest pin-ups fighting for space on the wall, books and magazines weighing down the tiny shelf above the radiator, and Emma’s dolls, pencils and crayons cluttering up the floor. Most of it had now been packed away and all that was left was the bunk bed, empty drawers and shelves.

  ‘We’ll come and help you move into the new place too,’ said Becca, who had come over with Lia early that morning to give a hand with last-minute jobs.

  ‘When is D for departure day?’ asked Lia.

  ‘Day after tomorrow,’ I said. ‘And I can’t wait! At last, at last, at laaaaaaaaaaaaaast, a room of my own. Not that I don’t love Emma, I do. ’Course I do. But hey, share a room with my kid sister and have jellybeans stuck to my bed covers for the rest of my life? I don’t think so. It’s going to be so brilliant decorating how I want and well . . . just having some space to myself for a change.’

  Becca and Lia are my best friends. Becca has been since junior school and Lia since the beginning of Year Nine, almost a year ago when she came down from London to live here in Cornwall. Both of them have had their own rooms forever, so I don’t think that they really know what it’s like to share a room with a six-year-old psychopath. I’ve had to share with her since I was nine, just before Mum died and everything changed forever.

  ‘So have you thought about a colour scheme for your new room yet?’ asked Becca as she pulled her long hair back up into a clip. She has fab hair. It’s the most amazing colour: like a red setter dog’s, rich and glossy – unlike mine, which is short and dark and booooooring unless I spike it up.

  ‘I keep changing my mind,’ I said. ‘I want you guys to see the room before I decide anything. Plus Jen said that sometimes it’s a good idea to live in a place for a few weeks before making up your mind. Get the feel of it, you know?’

  Jen is Dad’s fiancée, soon-to-be wife. She is coming to live with us at the new house, and she and Dad are going to get married at the end of the summer holidays, which is in about four weeks’ time.

  ‘My mum says that about pets,’ said Lia. ‘When we got our pot-bellied pig, she said to live with him for a while and the right name would come. Then we found out that he was a she, so it was a good job that we didn’t name her too soon.’

  I laughed. Their pet pig is called Lola. Lia’s dad named her. He said she reminded him of one of his fans who used to run around after him wearing pink high-heels. Lia’s dad is Zac Axford, the famous rock star. The Axford family are the most glamorous family in the whole of Cornwall. They live in a massive house, the size of a hotel, and have a garden the size of a small country. Lia’s totally normal though – personality-wise anyway, but in the looks department she’s stunning. Tall, slim, white-blond hair, silver-blue eyes. Most boys’ fantasy girl, as far as I can make out. I’ve seen them when she walks past. It’s hysterical. They look at her like their eyes are about to pop out of their sockets and their tongues fall out on to the floor. Not that she notices. Lia says she thinks she looks like a duck and has no boobs. Funny how no one is happy with the way they look. Like Becca: she’s really pretty too but she thinks she’s fat when actually she’s curvy. Mad. They both look fab.

  Becca looked thoughtful for a moment as she looked round my room. ‘It will be strange you living somewhere new. It’s like I’ve always known you here. Always come here after school.’

  ‘I know, but hey, you can come for sleepovers at my new house now without having to share a sleeping bag with one of Emma’s Barbie dolls and a My Little Pony stuck in your ear. It has five bedrooms: one for Dad and Jen, one for Luke, one for Joe, one for Emma and one for me. The boys are really looking forward to having their own rooms too – they’re going to be on the top floor. Dad even said that maybe we can get a kitten when we’re settled in. It’s going to be brill for all of us.’

  I was glad that Dad was marrying Jen. I liked her and she’d never tried to act as if she was our new mum. She made it clear from the beginning that she understood that Mum could never be replaced. Jen works as an air hostess and, up until recently, she flew all over the world. After we move, though, she’s only going to do internal flights that go from Newquay to other parts of England so that she’s never away for too long. Dad wanted her to give up altogether and help him run the village shop, but she said no, that being together twenty-four hours a day is a recipe for relationship disaster, whereas absence makes the heart grow fonder. I think she is very wise and am glad she’ll be coming to live with us. As well as being a good cook, she makes Dad laugh, and it’s great to see him happy and smartening himself up a bit. His hair got all straggly round the collar at one point, but now he has it cut regularly, and in his new jeans and shirts he looks halfway decent for a grown-up. For a long time after Mum died he was so sad and quiet and didn’t seem to bother about how he looked. Like all the life had gone out of him. He tried to act as if he was OK, but I could tell that he wasn’t. It hit him hard. He threw himself into his work and kept himself busy all the time, but I think he was mainly doing it so that he wouldn’t have to think too much about the fact that Mum had gone.

  I had to h
elp out a lot in the house, because he was working at the shop so much. That’s another reason I am glad that Jen is moving in – she can help with some of the household chores. Luke is eleven and Joe is nine and Emma’s six, almost seven. That means a ton of laundry, a ton of washing up and mountains of food to be bought and prepared. I don’t know what’s happened to Luke and Joe lately, but all they seem to do is eat and eat and eat. Toast and peanut butter and crisps and chips and sausages and pasta, but they never seem to get much fatter. As the eldest in our family, and seeing as we had no mum, I have had to do a lot of babysitting and housework. It is going to be soooooooo brill to be able to be a normal teenager at last.

  At that moment, Dad popped his head round the door.

  ‘Hey, girls,’ he said. ‘Seeing as most of the kitchen is packed up and you girls are all going to be at your sleepover supper later at Lia’s, I’m going out to get some pizza. I’m taking the boys and Em with me so that you can get on without them under your feet, Cat. OK?’

  ‘OK, Dad. What’s still to be done?’

  Dad shrugged. ‘Not sure. Maybe you could go from room to room and make a list, then we’ll divide up what’s left of the tasks later.’

  After they’d gone, I got a piece of paper and began to make a list.

  Bathroom: pack up last bits of toiletries. Clean. Make sure wet towels are put in separate bag from dry towels.

  Hallway: don’t forget coats and jackets, welly boots.

  ‘Most of it seems to be sorted,’ said Lia as we went from room to room.

  Becca nodded and laughed as she came out of Luke and Joe’s room. ‘Wow! I don’t think I have ever seen that room look like anything but a bombsite. Amazing!’

  ‘Hey, don’t forget the lamp shades,’ said Lia, pointing up to the ceiling. ‘You don’t want to leave those.’

  I looked up to where she’d pointed. ‘Oh yeah. Thanks, we’d have completely forgotten those and – OH!’

  ‘What?’ asked Lia. ‘What?’

  I pointed back up at the ceiling. ‘Up there. We’d all forgotten. The stupid loft! There’s a whole pile of stuff up there. Oh no. Just when I thought we were almost done.’

  Becca’s face lit up. ‘Hey! Maybe we’ll find forgotten treasure up there,’ she said. ‘You read about it all the time in books . . .’

  ‘Or fabulous old paintings that are worth a fortune,’ said Lia, ‘or an antique that is worth millions and is taken on to one of those TV shows where it’s valued . . .’

  I laughed. ‘Not in our loft, I don’t think! It’s where all the rubbish has been shoved over the years, so don’t get too carried away. I can tell you that all we’re going to find up there are bags of old clothes that should have been thrown out for the jumble, some old camping equipment, and basically stuff no one wanted but couldn’t be bothered to throw out. Still, better bring it down. I doubt if the new owner is going to want to find their new loft full of trash.’

  ‘Where’s the ladder?’ asked Becca. ‘I’m not giving up hope. You might not have looked properly.’

  ‘Yeah right,’ I said as I fetched the ladder from behind the door in Dad’s room and placed it in the hall under the loft hole.

  ‘I think there’s a light switch up there on the left hand side,’ I said as Becca climbed up first and clambered in.

  Lia went next and I was last.

  Becca turned the switch on and the space was illuminated, showing the inside of the roof, bits of old wiring, wooden joists running across the floor then in the corners under the eaves, piles of cardboard boxes and bags.

  We looked in the first group of boxes and, sure enough, they were full of old junk: goggles, snorkelling gear, flippers, an old Monopoly set, books, magazines, old shoes . . . Even Becca began to lose interest after a while when she realised that there wasn’t much of interest in there and certainly no evidence of valuable antiques or paintings, although there was a sketch pad of some of my early drawings from junior school.

  ‘They’ll be worth a fortune one day,’ I said as I tucked the pad under my arm and headed back down the ladder.

  We worked for the next hour passing the boxes and bags along and down into the hall. I stood at the bottom of the ladder and Lia and Becca passed stuff down to me from above.

  ‘Last one,’ called Lia finally. ‘It’s only a plastic bag. Think there are sleeping bags in there. Watch out, I’m going to drop it.’

  She let the bag go and it fell with a soft thud on to the carpet next to me.

  ‘OK, coming down,’ said Lia. ‘Come on, Bec. Hey, hold on a mo, Cat, Becca’s disappeared. Bec? What is it?’

  Lia disappeared from the loft hole. I could hear rustlings and their voices up above, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  ‘Hey, Lia, Becca, you OK up there?’ I asked as I began to climb the ladder.

  Suddenly Becca’s face appeared at the hole. She looked flushed with excitement. ‘Hey, Cat, get up here. I think we’ve found something!’

  A CAR TOOTED OUTSIDE the house. Lia went and looked out of the window. ‘Our lift’s here,’ she said. ‘Hurry up.’

  ‘But I can’t find my pyjamas,’ I said as I rooted around in one of the big plastic bags that I’d stuffed some of my clothes in ready for the move. ‘I can’t find anything, in fact.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I can lend you whatever you need,’ said Lia, ‘but we need to get going as I said we’d pick the London girls up on the way.’

  Becca had left over half an hour ago to go back to her house to collect her things for the sleepover, and was meeting us up at Lia’s. I grabbed my toothbrush from the bathroom and five minutes later we were speeding away, rock-star style, in a sleek black BMW to pick up our new pals: TJ, Nesta, Izzie and Lucy. Travelling in one of the Axfords’ cars never ceased to be a thrill as it was such a change from my normal ride, bouncing around in the back of Dad’s shop van with boxes full of tins of tomatoes, cat food or bottled water for company. Dad’s van stank of petrol and old boots; the BMW smelled of leather, aftershave and money.

  I put on my sunglasses and grinned at Lia. ‘This is the life,’ I said. ‘I think I was born to live this kind of way.’

  Lia grinned back. She really was born to live that way.

  Lucy, TJ, Nesta and Izzie were waiting for us in the early-evening sunshine in the driveway outside the holiday cottage that TJ’s parents had recently bought and where the girls were staying. The Axfords’ chauffeur (who was a local nineteen-year-old boy called Stuart) looked like he’d died and gone to heaven when an avalanche of pretty, perfumed, lip-glossed girls burst into the car. Izzie dived in the front (she’s the tallest) and Lucy, Nesta and TJ squeezed in with Lia and me in the back.

  ‘Seatbelts, girls,’ said Stuart, and there was another commotion as everyone squirmed about finding them, then clicking them on.

  ‘Super-spiffing and fabola,’ said Nesta in a false posh voice as we set off once again. ‘Right ho, chaps, let’s go for tiffin at the Axfords’.’

  ‘Yah. Top-ho and super-marvellous bumper bazzing,’ said Lucy in an equally daft voice. ‘Oh my loid, did anyone put my daaaaahling corgis in the back?’

  ‘I do hope so, my dear,’ said Izzie, also in a very snooty voice. ‘Or else it’s dead-dog meat for tea.’

  ‘Oh not again,’ said Nesta. ‘Dog meat is so frightfully common, especially when served with white bread, and it just doesn’t go with cucumber.’

  TJ rolled her eyes. ‘Pardon my mad friends, they’re having a competition to see who can speak most like the Queen,’ she explained.

  ‘OKaaaaay,’ laughed Lia as Nesta did a royal wave out of the window at passers-by.

  I only met these girls recently, but already we’re all good mates. TJ was first down last Easter and we bumped into each other on the beach one afternoon. Her dad was ill at the time and she was having a cry about it. What was so totally amazing was that she was in my secret crying place. It’s an area on Cawsand Bay that’s hidden away from the rest of the beach, and it�
�s where I go when I’m feeling freaked out or missing Mum. We got on immediately, and what was even more incredible was that we discovered that we had both been seeing Lia’s elder brother, Ollie. Neither of us knew about the other, and it all backfired on him, because TJ and I became friends and we both blew Ollie out. TJ’s dad got better and her parents fell in love with the area, bought a cottage as a second home, and the rest of the girls came down for the summer hols.

  They’re a fab bunch and we get on brilliantly, even though they are a year older than Lia, Bec and I. They exude city sophistication. Nesta is totally awesome to look at. She’s gorgeous, with long black hair and a perfect body. I think her mum’s Jamaican and her dad’s Italian, which is why she looks so exotic. If she wasn’t so nice and funny, I would have to kill her. Izzie is the tallest of the four and is one of the most interesting girls I have ever met. She’s into so many things I never even heard of until I met her: New Age stuff, crystals and witchcraft and astrology. She’s also got a pierced belly-button, which looks way cool. TJ and Izzie have both got dark hair, but Izzie’s is more chestnut-coloured and she has the most amazing green eyes. Lucy is small with blond hair and is a great laugh. She’s the fashion expert out of all of them and wants to be a designer when she leaves school. She’s sooo stylish and I hope one day that she’ll give me some advice, because we’re about the same height and she really knows how to dress. TJ is probably the most sensible of the four of them, but only just. She can be pretty mad too, although mainly she’s just a sweetie.

  ‘So what’s on the agenda for tonight, my lowly ladies-in-waiting?’ asked Nesta.

  ‘Becca’s dad is bringing Mac and Squidge up with Bec,’ replied Lia, ‘so I guess the usual: eat, drink and be merry.’

  ‘Mac was telling us about that game you guys play down here,’ said Lucy. ‘Truth, Dare, Kiss or Promise. Can we play that?’

  Lia and I groaned. ‘Oh noooooo,’ I said. ‘We’ve all had enough of that game. Let’s do something else.’