About a Girl (12 page)

‘Miss Kittler?
Aloha, e komo mai
. Welcome to Oahu.’

The door to the car opened and a short, stocky man in a plain black uniform held out his hand. I sat there staring at him. Didn’t people speak English in Hawaii? Had I overlooked something else epically important? His broad smile slipped into a squint when I didn’t make a move, but all I could do was stare at him. His big brown eyes were far too pretty to belong to a man. He had eyelashes that would make Bambi blush.

‘Miss Kittler?’

‘Hi, yes,’ I croaked, my first words since immigration, and eventually reached out to take his hand. I was an idiot. ‘I’m here for the photo thing? For
Gloss
?’

I was also at my most eloquent when straight off a plane. Eloquent and stinky.

‘Yes, of course,’ my host replied, very politely and in perfect English, leaning in to place a lei around my neck without so much as wrinkling his nose, even though I knew for a fact I was rank rotten. Long-haul flights were the worst. Was this Bertie Bennett? I was so confused. ‘I’m Kekipi. You must be very tired from your trip. Let me show you to your cottage.’

To my mind, a cottage was something small and thatched with roses round the door and either a talking hedgehog wearing an apron or a witch inside. The house I was taken to was not a cottage. It was beautiful, with sparkling white-washed walls and a sloping slate roof ? an immaculately decorated piece of heaven. And from where I was standing, I could see another four of them dotted along the beach, each one a perfect miniature of the main house complete with tiny veranda, huge windows and matching white wooden lawn furniture. Child Tess had watched too much
Wish You Were Here …?
and adult Tess enjoyed an awful lot of
Location, Location, Location
. If Kirstie and Phil could see this, they would die. Everything was so beautiful, I could hardly bear it. It looked as though someone had turned up the contrast on the TV. The blue sky was more vivid than I’d ever seen it and dotted with cotton-wool clouds that flew fast overhead, even though the breeze by the shore was perfect and light. The sea was clear, the sand was white, the trees were a bright, lush green and punctuated with pretty hot-pink and purple flowers. If ever there was an argument for intelligent design, this was it. It was paintbox perfect, every colour bright and bold but beautifully balancing out the next. All I wanted to do was pull out my camera and capture every single sight right away. Surely that had to be a good sign?

‘I manage the estate for Mr Bennett,’ said the man in black, interrupting my house porn moment and carefully resting a hand on my shoulder as he gently sheepdogged me through the front door of my new home. ‘The cottage is fully stocked for you, but please call me if there is anything at all you should need. Just press 1 on any of the phones and someone will come down right away. Mr Bennett would like to invite you up to the house for dinner this evening ? he usually dines at eight. Until then, please do make use of all our facilities. I’m happy to give you a tour if you’re not too tired?’

There were facilities? If I were to take Kekipi to my house, my tour would take in the extra-fast kettle that boiled in under a minute, the coffee stain on the living-room carpet that I could not for the life of me get out, and the magical airing cupboard that, despite its name, always smelled damp.

‘I am a bit tired, to be honest.’ I gave him a very grateful smile and tried not to be too aware of the fact that even in my Converse I towered over the man. I was an ashen-faced, tongue-tied, stinky giant. ‘But I’d love to get the tour later? The place is beautiful.’

I waved my arms around like an over-impressed Big Bird, eyes wild and red. The real Vanessa would have been mortified by my public display of enthusiasm.

‘Of course, Ms Kittler,’ Kekipi nodded. ‘Just press 1 on your phone whenever you like.’

‘Oh, call me Tess,’ I said automatically and felt my eyes widen like saucers. ‘Ness! I mean Ness. Or Vanessa. Because that is my name.’

‘Of course, Vanessa.’ Kekipi didn’t even blink. What a total pro. ‘
Mahalo
.’

‘Um,
mahalo
?’ I repeated with a very stunted bow, not entirely sure what I should be doing.

‘It means “thank you”,’ Kekipi said with a small wink that I might have imagined. ‘In case you were worried that I was swearing at you in a foreign language.’

After he had rolled my suitcase into the cottage, Kekipi
aloha
’d me again and then left me alone to relax. I stared out of the window in disbelief. How could I possibly be here? And what was I supposed to do now? Chuck on my swimsuit and head out to the beach? Dig out my shorts and hike up that beautiful mountain we’d passed on the way in? Bash my head against the closest brick wall until I knocked some sense into it? These were all good options. However, another option was to storm the kitchen, root through each and every cupboard, then rifle through the fridge until I found a box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts and a huge bag of Cheetos. And so, right there in the kitchen, in the middle of paradise, I stood in all my post-flight skanky glory and troughed every last nut and every last Cheeto. Because what else was a girl supposed to do?

‘Tess, thank God.’ Amy answered her phone on the first ring. When I’d turned mine on, it had been full of panicked messages from my best friend demanding that I call her immediately and asking which mental institution I was in. ‘Where are you? What are you doing? Why has your phone been off for an entire day? Where are you?’

‘Oh, Amy.’ I leaned against the kitchen counter, wiping Cheeto dust off my fingers onto my jeans, and stared out of the huge French doors that opened onto my own little patio just steps from the beach. ‘Remember when we were little and I didn’t want to go on Brownie camp so I ran away?’

‘Are you under the tree at the bottom of my garden again?’ she asked. ‘Because you only lasted two hours before you had to come in for a wee last time and you’ve already been out all night long. Tell me you haven’t wet yourself.’

‘I haven’t wet myself,’ I replied hesitantly, mentally checking that that was in fact true. ‘I left you a note. Didn’t you see the note? I’m in Hawaii.’

What if Amy hadn’t seen the note? What if burglars had seen the note? What if they’d broken into the flat and stolen my precious … oh. Never mind.

‘That’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said,’ she said after a moment’s consideration. ‘And bear in mind I was there that time you announced to the entire pub that you were going to win the
X Factor
.’

‘I still think that if I had entered the year the singing binman won—’

‘
Off topic, Tess
,’ Amy shouted down the line. ‘Tell me you are not in Hawaii.’

‘I am, though.’ I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince her or myself. A quick peep out of the window confirmed I was not in Clerkenwell. ‘Dead sure about it. I can see the sea and everything. Deffos in Hawaii.’

‘You aren’t, though.’

‘I am, though.’

‘You can’t be.’

‘I know. But I am.’

‘But you’re not.’

‘Amy.’

‘
Tess
.’

Somewhere halfway around the world, my best friend made a clucking noise in a West London flatshare that echoed down a long-distance phone line all the way to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Sighing in agreement, I pulled off my socks, shimmied out of my jeans and tiptoed across the floor to the patio. The AC kept the tiles cool and I left little half-footprints as I went, footprints that dissipated into thin air almost as soon as I left them behind.

Bertie Bennett’s bay curved around his property gracefully, the pretty, clear water lapping against the white sand, the white sand giving way to green grass and the green grass hugging the little cottages at the bottom of the hill, each one surrounded by huge, swaying palm trees. It looked like the kind of place Vanessa would hang out. She was last-minute getaway in Hawaii; I was a wet weekend in Brid.

‘So you’re actually in Hawaii?’ Amy asked. ‘Why? How? Have you been watching too many romcoms? Because people don’t actually get up and leave the country at the drop of a hat unless they’re Julia Roberts or very stupid.’

I stepped off the deck and felt the fresh grass against my toes. It was just a hop, skip and a jump to the beach, but I only had a hop and a skip in me. After that, it was a bit of a slog.

‘Then by that definition, I might be very stupid.’

It took a surprisingly short time for me to catch Amy up on my first-ever documented case of spontaneity and/or a psychotic episode. Understandably she didn’t say very much while I was talking, but when she did, it was with great reverence.

‘This,’ Amy exhaled loudly, ‘is amazing.’

Not what I was expecting her to say.

‘You don’t think I’ve gone mad?’ I bit my thumbnail gently and made my way towards the sea. It was cool and delicious against my hot sweaty feet.

‘Oh, I absolutely think you’ve gone mad,’ Amy confirmed quickly. ‘But it’s about time you went mad. This is brilliant.’

‘I’m standing on a beach in my pants pretending to be someone I’m not because I lost my job and, apparently, my mind, and that’s a good thing?’

‘Yes!’ she gushed. ‘Like I said, it’s brilliant. Can you see a hula girl? Are there coconuts everywhere? Is there an erupting volcano?’

As stupid as I knew all that sounded, Amy still appeared to know an awful lot more about my destination than I did.

‘Coconuts maybe. There are a lot of palm trees,’ I confirmed, looking past my immediate surroundings for the first time. Oh, what a shock – everywhere was painfully beautiful. ‘Zero hula girls, but there’s a great big fucking mountain behind me. I don’t know if it’s a volcano or not. I hope not because if it is and it erupts, I’m definitely going to die.’

‘Where are you exactly? I want to Google it,’ she said, still sounding far more excited than I did. It was oddly reassuring, like maybe I wasn’t completely insane after all. ‘You really have gone completely insane,’ she added. So much for the feeling of reassurance.

I held my hand over my eyes to get a better look at a small black rock that popped up out of the ocean like a sombrero and vaguely wondered whether or not I could swim it. I couldn’t.

‘Is it bad that I don’t actually know?’ I said, closing my eyes. I needed a break from all the ridiculous natural beauty that was burning my retinas because ? oh, bugger me ? as soon as I opened them, there was some more. Every time I turned around, I got another eyeful of gorgeousness. Hawaii did not have a bad angle. Hawaii was the Ryan Gosling of destinations. ‘I flew into Honolulu, and we didn’t drive that far. Somewhere near there, I suppose?’

‘Find out ? I want to know everything. Text me every second. Or email me. Or Facebook me. Or all of those things. In fact, get on Twitter. TWEET.’

‘I thought I might have a shower before I work out what the actual fuck I’m doing first,’ I said, squinting at the sunshine. ‘I’m knackered and I smell. Oh!’

As I turned back to the cottage, a sweaty shirtless man appeared from nowhere and almost knocked me to the ground.

‘I don’t know about knackered, but you could smell sweeter,’ he grunted, half out of breath. He grabbed my shoulders and stood me up straight. ‘Nice knickers.’

Without another word, the topless man spun me round so that I was facing the ocean again and sprinted off.

‘What was that? Was that a man?’ Amy screeched down the phone. ‘You’re on a freebie trip to Hawaii, sticking it to Vanessa, and there are men there? I’m getting on the next plane.’

‘Unlike me, you’ve got work,’ I reminded her as I watched the man’s back, and backside, run away from me. My forearm shone with a slight sheen of his sweat, left behind after our brief collision. Gross. ‘Actually, I’ve got to work too. For a job I don’t know how to do. I should go.’

‘Extreme Makeover: Life Edition,’ she sighed. ‘But, um, actually … about the me having a job thing. I might have got fired again. So I could totally come.’

‘Oh, Aims,’ I said with as as much sympathy as I could muster for her third job of the year. ‘One quarter life crisis at a time?’

‘Whatever. I hated that job anyway.’ She gave me a verbal shrug down the phone, her voice painfully carefree. ‘By the time you get back, I’ll be all sensible and employed again. Or I’ll have fucked off to Cuba masquerading as a spy.’

‘And I’ll probably be in handcuffs,’ I muttered. The man had completely vanished from sight. ‘Are you all right? Do you need anything?’

‘A drink and a ticket to Hawaii?’ she asked hopefully.

‘I was thinking help with your rent?’ I felt horrible for being so far away. Amy needed me. ‘You’re sure you’re OK?’

‘I’m sure I am,’ Amy shushed me and clapped down the line. ‘You’re doing your bit right now. Go and roll around in the waves for me. I’ll talk to you later on.’

‘You bloody well will,’ I agreed. ‘Daily sanity checks needed. For both of us.’

Hanging up, I looked out at the stupidly beautiful ocean one more time.

‘Oh, just shut up, Hawaii,’ I muttered at no one in particular.

Maybe hourly sanity checks.

Back inside the cottage, I plugged in my phone with the lead I had bought at the airport and placed it carefully on the bedside table, the same spot where it lived at home. It felt good to do something normal. Looking around the bedroom, I shook my head and felt my heavy curls flap around the back of my head in a limp ponytail. If this was the guest cottage, I was almost too scared to see the main house. It was all so perfect. I’d been impressed by the living room and kitchen ? they were so shiny and neat ? but they weren’t even the half of it. A small hallway led through to an open, airy bedroom filled by a huge bed made up with the softest white linens I’d ever had the privilege of rubbing my face against and giggling into. Off to one side was a small, dark-wood dressing table, a matching desk with accompanying squishy white leather office chair, a huge MacBook Pro and a very swanky-looking printer. Oh yeah, I was here to work. On the other side of the bed was a wall of fitted wardrobes, all white wood, no sticky fingerprints or evidence of a late-night Dairy Milk binge to be seen. Resting on a white floating shelf was a bright pink ukulele. I fought every urge in my body to pick it up and start playing it badly. That time would come.