Bindi Babes (17 page)

The reception was held in a hall about a mile away. By cutting through the back streets and jumping one red light (Geena said it was two, but Dad swore the second one was amber), we reached the hall and nicked the last space in the car park. I glanced round as we went in, but I couldn't see Mr. Arora's car.

The hall was filling up fast. It had been decorated with streamers and garlands of flowers, which some of the kids were already dismantling and chucking at each other. There were tables everywhere, and the harassed caterers were rushing out of the kitchen and plonking silver dishes of crisps, peanuts, samosas, pakoras and bhajis on them, which were pounced on and scarfed in five seconds flat. Dad headed straight for the bar in the corner. There was a dance floor in the middle of the hall, and a band was setting up onstage.

“Stop checking out the lead singer and look for Mr. Arora,” I instructed Geena. “Where's Jazz got to?”

Jazz had got left behind somewhere in the crowd surging forward for food. She bobbed up at my elbow about a minute later, grinning widely. “Mr. Arora's over there by the door,” she said in a stage whisper. “What are you going to do?”

“Ask him if he wants to marry Auntie,” I said. “Don't be
stupid
. I'll get him to come over and meet her. You hang on to her. Don't let her go anywhere.”

I pushed my way through the crowd as the band began to play. Rocky, one of Inderjit's cousins who's quite good-looking but thinks he's so
it
, tried to grab my hand and pull me onto the dance floor, but I avoided him with a sweet smile.

Mr. Arora was standing near the door talking to a couple of men I didn't know. I went over and touched his arm.

“Amber.” He stared down at me, his face crinkling into a warm smile. “Hello, what are you doing here?”

“Inderjit's my cousin, sir,” I said. “I didn't expect to see
you
, either.”

He laughed. “I was at college with Harry, the groom.”

“Oh.” That explained that. “Would you like to come and meet my aunt, sir?”

All right, it was a bit upfront, but he was hardly going to say no, was he?

“That would be lovely,” Mr. Arora replied politely.

Dizzy with triumph, I led him across the dance floor. Heads turned as we made our way to the other side of the hall. He was
so
good-looking, it was impossible not to imagine Auntie falling at his feet. And she looked all right too. It was going to work, I was sure.

Geena and Jazz had cornered Auntie, managing to get her away from the gaggle of gossipy women she was talking to. They were looking around for a free table when I stepped forward, smiling innocently.

“Auntie, this is my teacher, Mr. Arora,” I said smoothly. “He's a friend of Inderjit's husband.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Mr. Arora said with that winning smile. Auntie smiled back. They stared into each other's eyes. I almost expected to hear a Bollywood love song playing in the background, but the band were actually belting out very loud bhangra with a techno beat.

“I think I see a free table,” Geena said. “We'll go and save it, Auntie.”

I nodded. Leave them alone together. Great idea. Geena and I turned and went off, but had to go back
and remove Jazz, who was still there, grinning knowingly from one to the other.

“Ow!” Jazz complained as we carried her away by her elbows. “I wanted to hear what they were saying.”

“They're not going to get all lovey-dovey if you're standing there with your ears flapping,” I said.

We sat down at the table and kept watch. At first, everything went well. Mr. Arora and Auntie were talking, their heads together. They seemed oblivious to all the noise around them. They were smiling. It was looking good.

“Shall we get up and dance?” said Geena, who had one eye on Auntie and Mr. Arora, and the other on the singer who, admittedly, was very fit and looked like an Indian Leonardo DiCaprio.

“No, wait,” I said.

Something had happened. It had all changed. Auntie took a step backward, frowning. She was waving her hands around a bit. Mr. Arora looked puzzled. Then he frowned too. Auntie put her hands on her hips and began talking at speed. Mr. Arora folded his arms and tapped his foot.

“That's not good body language,” remarked Jazz, staring intently.

“God, they're
arguing
,” Geena said.

“No, they
can't
be,” I groaned.

They were arguing. Why, I don't know. Words were being tossed back and forth between them now and things were getting heated. We saw Auntie snap out a final retort and, with a swirl of her peacock-blue sari,
turn away and head in our direction. Her face was grim. Mr. Arora, looking like he did after he'd just had a run-in with George Botley, stalked off in the opposite direction.

“I don't think they like each other,” Jazz said, aghast.

“But they
have
to.” I felt sick. Our plans were tumbling down in ruins.

“Who's that guy your aunt was talking to?” Dad appeared at the table, clutching a tray of soft drinks. “I don't think I know him.”

“My teacher,” I said shortly.

Dad's eyebrows shot up. “Your
teacher
?” he repeated. “But it looked as if they were
arguing
.”

“They were.” I seized the opportunity to stick the knife in and twist it. “I just wish Auntie would stop interfering, Dad. I don't know what she's been saying to Mr. Arora, but she could make things really tough for me at school.”

Dad's lips tightened as Auntie reached our table. “What were you saying to Amber's teacher?” he asked without preamble.

“Nothing.” Auntie looked more furious than I'd ever seen her before. “I've met those kind of guys before. They think they know it all, but they don't know anything.”

She took a glass from the tray and walked off, leaving us all stunned. Looking worried and angry, Dad went after her.

“So that's that then,” Jazz said flatly. “We're stuck with her.”

“Oh no.” Geena slumped down on the table with her head in her hands.

“All right,” I said, rallying a bit even though I was shocked. “It's bad, but not that bad. Arora's out. But we can look around for someone else.”

“It's not that.” Geena raised a tragic face. “Don't you realize what we've
done
?”

Jazz and I looked at her blankly.

“All that stuff we've done for tomorrow,” Geena went on. “The
assembly
. It was all for nothing. Now we're going to get into the biggest trouble of our whole lives. For
nothing
.”

“J
azz, don't forget the music stands,” I panted.

I was heaving the right backdrops into place, after we'd spent ages adding scenes from
Aladdin
on Friday. We'd come to school very early so we had time to put things right. We'd had to persuade the caretaker to let us in, though, by claiming that there were some last-minute adjustments to be made for the assembly. He didn't buy that, so we'd threatened to set Ms. Woods on him, which is enough to put the fear of God into anyone. “Did you remember to bring the screwdriver?”

Jazz nodded, taking it from her pocket. She went over to the music stands stacked in the corner of the
hall, and began to tighten up the screws that held the stands together.

“I hope we don't forget anything,” she said nervously.

“I've got a list.” Geena whipped a piece of paper from her bag and waved it at us. She was removing some of the acetate sheets from the overhead projector—we'd added a few alternative, ruder lyrics to the songs we were going to sing.

“That was efficient,” I said, heading toward the piano. There was a whoopee cushion under Mrs. Murray's seat and we'd stuck the piano lid tightly shut with loads of Blu-Tak.

“I couldn't sleep for worrying last night,” Geena explained. “So I got up and wrote the list.”

“Don't forget the punk metal CD we put in the sound system,” I reminded her. “I hid the proper one behind the stereo.”

Geena bobbed behind the curtain and came out again a moment later with the CD in her hand.

“I wonder if Dad and Auntie will have made up by the time we get home tonight,” she remarked, stepping down from the stage.

Dad and Auntie hadn't spoken to each other since the wedding reception incident with Mr. Arora the previous afternoon. I'd stirred it a bit, too, by moaning to Dad about how difficult my life at school would be as a result.

“I hope not,” I replied. If Auntie and Dad were fighting, it might be our only way of getting rid of her now.

“I'm glad we didn't saw through the head's chair legs like I suggested,” Jazz said. “We'd never have been able to repair those.”

“I can't lift this,” I gasped, struggling with the piano lid. “Give me a hand.”

All three of us pushed and heaved at the piano. Eventually the lid popped open, and we began scraping off the Blu-Tak.

“I can't believe we did this,” Jazz said soberly. “Are we mad?”

“We had a good reason,” I reminded her.

“I know.” Jazz glanced sideways at me. “But …” She cleared her throat awkwardly. I knew that something quite shocking was coming and I had a fair idea what it was going to be. “Apart from Auntie, didn't you kind of
enjoy
it?”

“I don't know what you mean,” Geena said uncon-vincingly.

“Oh yes, you do,” Jazz retorted. “I don't know about you, but I'm fed up with trying to be perfect all the time. I just want to be
me
.”

“Oh God,” I said. “What a prospect.”

Jazz stuck her tongue out. “I don't mean that I want to behave like this all the time. I'm just tired of trying to pretend to everyone that everything's OK when it isn't.” She came to a full stop and stared wide-eyed at Geena and me.

“All right,” Geena admitted. “I
do
know what you mean.”

“And I think we should stop trying to get Auntie married off, too,” Jazz mumbled, staring down at her feet. “It's got us into loads of trouble so far, and all this”—she waved her hand around the hall— “would have got us
suspended
.”

“You know, I think she's right,” agreed Geena soberly. “Much as I hate to admit it. We'd better just drop it, Amber. It was a stupid idea.”

“It was
my
idea,” I reminded her.

Geena raised her eyebrows at me. “I rest my case.”

“The teachers think we started all this stuff because of Mum,” I blurted out, surprising even myself. “They think we might need help or counseling or something.”

For once Jazz and Geena did not look away or run off. They both regarded me thoughtfully.

“What do
you
think?” Geena asked, looking at me intently.

The hall doors flew open, and we all nearly jumped out of our skins. Ms. Woods stood there. Her hair was as wild as ever and she looked on the verge of hysteria.

“Oh, hello, girls,” she said, eyeing us a bit warily. “I just popped in to make sure everything's ready. But I see you beat me to it.”

“Yes, miss,” Geena said, sliding the CD smoothly into her pocket. “Everything's fine.”

We helped Ms. Woods set out some more chairs. There wasn't time for us to talk anymore, and we hadn't really said anything earth-shattering. But
somehow I felt better. Lighter. As if someone had come along and lifted a huge weight off my back.

Five inspectors turned up, but they were a bit disappointing. As Mr. Morgan, the headmaster, marched into the school hall with the inspectors behind him, everyone sat up to get a better look. Geena, Jazz and I were on the stage behind the curtains with the rest of the assembly cast, and we were all fighting to get a peek. After all the buildup, we were expecting them to look like gangsters or film stars. But there was a mousy woman in a blue suit, and four men who looked like rejects from Mrs. Dhaliwal's marriage file. They sat down, poker-faced, and waited to be entertained.

“They don't look like inspectors,” Jazz muttered, as Ms. Woods flapped around giving us a last-minute pep talk.

Ms. Woods rushed up to us, crackling with tension. “Geena, are you ready to give the introduction?” she whispered. “Amber, the backdrop. Everybody else, stand by!”

Looking perfectly calm and composed, Geena glided out onto the stage. Her voice was clear and confident as she stood in front of a large map, showing the spread of world religions, and read out the short introduction about how the assembly was to celebrate the diversity
of religions and cultures in our school. Meanwhile, I took up my position at the ropes that controlled the backdrops.