Girls to Total Goddesses (6 page)

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10

We went to the Dolphin Cafe. Charlie got an espresso and I chose a chai latte. I was guilty about how many calories I was going to be sipping, but I had a feeling I’d need a bit of strength to cope with this conversation and I hadn’t been able to have much breakfast because I’d been too excited, thinking I’d be seeing Beast. My three different layers of lipgloss were going to be wasted on Charlie. At the last minute, approaching the till, I gave in to temptation and grabbed a croissant.

‘So,’ said Charlie, flaring her eyes across the table with a questioning smile. I had to admire her mascara. ‘You’d like to help?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I mean, I couldn’t do much, because of school, but I could manage a few hours a week. What sort of help does Beast need?’

‘Well, he does have a full-time PA,’ giggled Charlie. ‘That’s
moi
, obviously, although I’m not really paid – well, it’s peanuts, but of course it’s for charity, and it’s my gap year, and it’ll look great on my CV so . . . no worries.’

I was somehow already rather irritated with her and I had a feeling things could only get worse.

‘I got the impression that people were letting him down?’ I asked.

‘Well, there has been a bit of that,’ said Charlie. ‘Paolo – that’s your friend, isn’t it?’

‘Well, Matthew, actually, and he’s not really a friend,’ I explained hastily. ‘He wanted a life coach, once, ages ago and I – we – kind of gave him a couple of sessions.’

‘Oh! So it was your idea that he change his name to Paolo?’

‘No way!’ I tried to smile, although I was already clearly losing the conversation on points. ‘He was always going on about changing his name to Brad. I advised him not to.’ I pursed my lips. I had gone into headmistress mode. I do that sometimes – it’s a reaction to stress. ‘I was just trying to train him to shake hands and smile – and that was a mountain to climb. Oh, and I advised him to wear brown.’

‘Brown?’ exclaimed Charlie, raising a beautifully plucked eyebrow and sounding surprised in a way which seemed rather rude. ‘Why brown?’ She was questioning my style advice. I wanted to put her down. But I couldn’t be too prickly and defensive, because I needed her to open up to me about Beast.

‘Oh, I can’t remember what I said to Matthew,’ I said, trying for a glamorous, irresponsible grin. ‘I just used to say the first thing that came into my head. The whole thing was kind of a piss-take, anyway. His eyes are brown, as I recall. Or khaki, in fact. It’s not a colour one sees much on Planet Earth.’

‘I love brown eyes!’ sighed Charlie. ‘But grey-green ones are even better.’ I just knew she was thinking of Beast. Her eyes were blue with tiny black flecks, a bit like beautiful birds’ eggs. I envied her deeply and could only assume that Beast had noticed her eyes and been impressed.

‘Anyway . . . Matthew’s helping with publicity?’ I asked, wanting to steer the conversation away from grey-green eyes as a feeling of jealous weakness had come over me.

‘Yes, in theory, although every time we recruit somebody new to his team, somebody else seems to drop out.’

‘Maybe Matthew’s putting them off.’

‘That had occurred to us,’ said Charlie with a sigh. Then she gave me a cheeky little look. ‘I don’t think you made much progress with your life coaching, Zoe!’ She giggled. ‘Maybe Matthew should ask for his money back!’ Though this was obviously a joke, I was starting to want to kick her.

‘He never paid, in fact,’ I admitted, as if I didn’t care.

‘What? You didn’t invoice him?’ Charlie’s well-shaped eyebrows shot up. I was beginning to feel claustrophobic. I had to get rid of Matthew as a subject of conversation. He could only drag me down and make me seem like some sad trashy loser.

‘It was so informal . . .’ I drawled, staring out of the window at a toddler having a tantrum outside a newsagent. I wanted to have a tantrum myself. ‘Anyway . . . forget Matthew. What can I do to help?’

‘Oh, there are loads of things,’ said Charlie. ‘But nothing glamorous. It’s mostly leafleting, I’m afraid. We need an army of people just basically pavement-bashing, as soon as we get the posters and leaflets printed.’

‘When will that be?’

‘Well, I’ve busted a gut over the poster competition,’ Charlie said proudly. ‘When I get a bee in my bonnet about something, I really kick ass!’ For a moment a strange image flashed up in my mind, of bees wearing bonnets and kicking asses. ‘I’m just like that – people say I’m crazy, nobody really understands me, but I can’t help myself, that’s the way I am!’ Charlie smiled broadly. She was so up herself.

‘We’ve had loads of entries in the competition,’ she went on, ‘due largely to my mum who’s a primary school teacher. It’s terribly last-minute so a lot of schools just couldn’t participate. But we’ve already got enough entries to make it a proper competition and we’re drawing up a shortlist. We’ll be choosing the winner on Wednesday and with any luck we’ll be able to start leafleting the week after – if the printer doesn’t let us down.’

‘Great,’ I nodded. ‘Beast seemed very stressed out about it.’

‘Yeah . . .’ A strange look came into Charlie’s eyes. ‘You know the amazing Beast, right? When did you meet?’ She seemed determined to interrogate me. Her eyes raced around my face for clues about my relationship with Beast.

‘Oh, ages ago,’ I said. ‘He was always a bit of a legend at school, you know. And my sister Tam – she’s at uni now – she knows him quite well. In fact he saved her life in Newquay last summer.’

‘What? Like, swimming?’ asked Charlie, her eyes huge with surprise.

‘No,’ I explained. ‘Tam had appendicitis and Beast was the only person who realised how ill she was. He rang the ambulance and went to hospital with her and everything.’

‘Oh my God, how amazing!’ exclaimed Charlie. ‘He is going to be a doctor, though, so no wonder he was on the ball. I think I might be a doctor myself. Or a physio. People have said I’ve got a healing presence. Apparently my aura is deep green.’

‘Really?’ I said, trying not to sound faintly disgusted.

‘Between you and me, I’m not sure Beast is completely committed to medicine as a career, though,’ said Charlie. ‘He was telling me the other day that he quite fancied something a bit more adventurous – zoology, maybe. He opens up to me for some reason – I get the feeling he hasn’t really got anybody to talk to. And I’m a good listener. Let me give you this little piece of advice, Zoe – it’s one of my grandma’s little sayings:
keep your ears open and your mouth shut
. She has a lot of insight and I seem to have inherited it.’

This advice was ironical, coming from a girl who apparently never stopped boasting about herself. I was furious that she’d implied Beast only confided in her, and felt jealous of all the long hours they were spending together in that office, whereas I had to plot and plan just to arrange a glimpse of him.

‘Well,’ I shrugged, ‘I don’t suppose Beast will have a career organising events. Although he is brilliant at it.’

‘Well . . . sort of!’ Charlie produced a kind of irritating giggle. ‘He’s so absent-minded and disorganised. If it wasn’t for me he’d have got into big trouble with the directors last week. He lost a report and forgot a meeting.’

‘Well, brilliant of you to rescue him,’ I said with deepest sarcasm, though trying to conceal it as genuine admiration.

‘Poor Beast,’ said Charlie, laughing to herself as if remembering the many scrapes she had rescued him from. ‘He is so lovely, though, bless him.’

I suddenly felt faint and bit into my croissant. One thousand croissant crumbs instantly got stuck to my three layers of lipgloss. I tried to capture them with my teeth in a series of lip-scraping forays which must have looked truly gross.

‘Tell me, Zoe,’ Charlie lowered her voice, ‘were Beast and your sister ever . . . an item?’

‘No,’ I said, flakily. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. He’s so mysterious. He’s a very private person.’ I wished she wouldn’t keep telling me things about Beast as if I didn’t know anything about him. I continued trying to harvest the croissant crumbs. ‘The fact is, I can’t quite make out if he’s got a girlfriend or not.’ She stared at me, blushing slightly and trying to make her curiosity look casual. ‘Has he?’

I finished chewing my mouthful of croissant. It seemed to have taken ten years. There were still flakes of pastry stuck to my lips. I must have looked like a snake shedding its skin. I tried to steer the flakes mouthwards with my little finger. My finger, too, became caked with lipgloss and croissant crumbs. Maybe it was a blessing I hadn’t seen Beast today after all.

‘My impression is,’ I said, giving in to a cruel impulse which nevertheless was fully justified, ‘that he has a different girlfriend every day of the week.’

Charlie looked crushed for a split second – a minor victory for me. What I’d said was a throwback to the old Beast. I hadn’t seen him with a girl recently, apart from her. But Charlie mustn’t know that.

‘Zoe, I need your advice.’ She lowered her voice and leaned in confidentially. I could smell her perfume. It was delicious and spicy. Her skin was flawless and a divine coffee colour. ‘The thing is,’ she whispered, ‘I think Beast really likes me, but he hasn’t actually said anything . . . and I have to admit, I really, really,
really
like him.’

I was almost physically sick at this news, even though I’d been half-expecting it.

‘Next time you see him,’ she went on, ‘would you mind just probing discreetly – because you’ve been friends for so long, you can do this without it seeming weird – just try and find out if he’s seeing anybody. And try and find out what he thinks about me. You know. Discreetly. If you wouldn’t mind?’ She reached across the table and gave my arm a desperate, grateful squeeze.

I nodded, because it wasn’t possible to speak for a moment. And I shoved another massive helping of croissant into my mouth. It was either that or smash it in her face, which was, at this early stage in our relationship at least, maybe not such a good idea. However, I didn’t totally rule it out for later.

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11

After my ordeal with Charlie I had a couple of hours to kill before I was due to meet Chloe outside the town hall. Toby texted me to say he was around so we agreed to meet. I didn’t want to drift round town alone. I knew I would only torment myself with thoughts of Charlie and Beast. Deeply though I hated Charlie, I could see she was one hundred per cent gorgeous and if she was mad about Beast, he would clearly fall for her as soon as he could fit it into his busy schedule.

‘Hello, daaaarling!’ Toby whooped, flapping his hands about. ‘How about an early lunch? I’m on a 30,000-calories-a-day diet!’

‘No, Tobe! Bad dog!’ I growled playfully. I didn’t feel hungry at all. My croissant was lying evilly in my stomach like a crocodile at the bottom of a very foul swamp.

‘How about coming round my place tonight to watch some DVDs?’ asked Tobe.

‘Uhhh . . . well, Chloe was going to come round mine,’ I pondered. ‘Our parents are away. We were going to do our exercise video and stuff.’

‘Oh go on, Zoe! Ferg is coming! We’re getting an Indian takeaway! Put the diet on hold!’

‘I can’t start guzzling curries for a while, Tobe!’ I wailed, slapping my hips. ‘Look at my flab!’

‘Rubbish!’ retorted Toby. ‘You’ll fade away, you’re so tiny! Anyway, you don’t have to have the curry. You could just have the cucumber raita!’

‘We’ve got to stop talking about food all the time,’ I said sternly. ‘Come on! Let’s do two circuits of the park! We’ve got to shed our porky personas and become lithe and slinky!’ I kept thinking about Charlie and her speckly eyes and trim hips and fabulous mascara and tawny skin. She smelled of citrus and jasmine. I hadn’t got a hope.

‘What’s my worst feature?’ I asked Tobe, as we entered the park and headed for the bandstand.

‘Nothing, daaarrrling!’ he drawled. ‘You’re one hundred per cent perfect!’

‘Let’s walk faster, Tobe!’ I urged, although it was quite a struggle for me, because my jeans were so tight.

‘Can’t!’ puffed Tobe. ‘Let’s sit down!’

We arrived at the adventure playground. I know people our age aren’t supposed to go on the swings and stuff, but I’m always strangely tempted by the rope slide, and that’s for older kids anyway, and it only has a weight restriction of ‘under 120 kg’. It’s comforting to know that’s a category I can still squeeze into.

Toby lowered himself down on to the deck of a pirate-ship climbing frame, closed his eyes and took in some autumnal rays. I dropped my bag beside him, had a quick look to make sure nobody was about, then ran to the rope slide, grabbed the rope and launched myself down the wire with a massive leap. As the trees and grass flashed past, my tummy turned over in a very similar way to whenever I saw Beast.

‘Wheeeeeeeee!’ I yelled. Wow! I’ll never get too old for the rope slide. Even when I’m forty-two with my high-powered job in the City, I’ll still come home every weekend in order to go whizzing past the little kids.

As I jumped off at the other end and hastily pulled down my top to cover the dodgy hip area, Toby shouted something.

‘What?’ I called.

‘Your phone rang!’

Typical! My phone always yells if I leave it alone for a split second – a bit like a baby crying, I imagine. Presumably this was Chloe changing the time of our meeting or something. Maybe she was in town already. I rummaged for my phone in the hellish depths of my bag. Oh no! It was a voicemail from Beast!

‘Uhhh, Zoe,’ he said, ‘sorry to miss you when you called by the office this morning. Thanks for offering to help with Jailhouse Rock, that’s brilliant. I’ve got another meeting now – uh – I’ll have to switch my phone off, but I’ll ring you tonight and we can talk about it.’

Anguish at having missed Beast’s call flooded through me, rapidly followed by excited anticipation of talking to him tonight.

‘What’s wrong, sunshine?’ enquired Toby. He’d seen my face perform a thousand strange manoeuvres. I couldn’t call Beast back and leave a message, not with Toby watching and eavesdropping.

‘Oh, nothing, I just missed Beast,’ I said, trying for a light, unconcerned, throwaway tone.

‘Zoe?’ asked Toby softly. He can be very perceptive, for a boy. I looked up into his baby-blue eyes. ‘Are you . . . and Beast . . . an item?’ His eyes were dancing in a naughty teasing way.

‘No, of course not!’ I retorted, too hastily, blushing. ‘I’m just annoyed I missed him twice today.’

Toby stared at me. He wasn’t convinced. I saved Beast’s message so I could secretly listen to it over and over again a hundred times, then I turned away from Toby and headed for the aviary. I wanted to hide my face in case Toby spotted more telltale signs, so I pretended to have a sudden interest in birds . . . I stared at the mynah birds and parrots, though in a funny way I didn’t register what I was seeing. The thought of Beast blotted everything else out. Toby arrived at my side.

‘You’ve got a thing about Beast!’ he grinned tauntingly. There was a mischievous glint in his eyes which frankly terrified me because Motormouth Toby’s the biggest gossip in school. I could see he was already planning to broadcast it to the world first thing on Monday morning. In fact, why wait till then? He’d probably send a group email round his contact list, which included famous gossips in five continents.

‘No, I have
not
got a thing about Beast!’ I tried one more time to deny it. But my hands were trembling, my cheeks were bright scarlet and I could feel my neck throbbing visibly as my poor little heart tried to cope with the stress.

‘Yes, you have!’ Toby’s face broke into a broad, teasing smile. He looked like a cat that has just discovered a prize salmon in a deserted kitchen. ‘So when did all this happen? I thought you hated him?! Amazing!’

‘Toby.’ Hastily I abandoned my attempt to bluff it out. ‘I want you to swear on the sacred name of Princess Diana that you will never ever whisper a word of this to anybody.’ Princess Diana is Toby’s most sacred icon. He has huge photos of her on his wall.

‘So it’s true then?’ grinned Toby, looking triumphant and not at all sacred.

‘I’ll tell you the details if you swear not to breathe a word of this to anybody,’ I said. ‘
Particularly
Chloe. I will literally kill you seven different ways if you mention it to her. But seriously, don’t mention it to anybody at all. I know you. You sing like a goddam canary.’

‘OK, OK,’ said Toby eagerly. ‘I swear I won’t utter a single peep!’

‘On the sacred name . . . ?’

‘On the sacred name of Princess Diana,’ he said, in a special royal and sacred voice, with his hand on his heart.

‘
Hello!
’ came a voice from nearby. I jumped – had somebody crept up on us and heard the lot? Oh no – phew! It was only a mynah bird. The birds in the aviary seemed to be eavesdropping. But even if Toby managed to control himself, there was no guarantee that the mynah birds wouldn’t confide the saucy details to anyone who passed by their cage:
Hello! Guess what! Zoe’s got a thing about Beast! He’s a pretty boy!

‘How did it start?’ Toby asked, his whole porky little body vibrating with curiosity.

‘Nothing’s going on,’ I replied bleakly.

‘But you
lurve
him!’

‘Well, I like him, anyway,’ I admitted edgily. ‘But it’s purely a one-way street.’

‘So why did he call just now?’

‘To give me some orders about leaflets, I assume,’ I said, shrugging. ‘I went round to the office this morning to offer to help. He wasn’t there so I had coffee with his gorgeous PA. So that’s how I came to miss him twice.’

‘Are you helping with Jailhouse Rock, then?’ asked Tobe. ‘Me and Ferg are going to as well. So we’ll have a ringside seat if anything happens on the
lurve
front.’

‘It’s the PA you want to watch,’ I grumbled. ‘She looks like a freakin’ angel.’

‘Who wants an angel?’ giggled Toby. ‘Give me a cute little devil any day!’

‘Don’t tell Chloe any of this.’ My spine went cold at the thought of Toby gossiping away for England. ‘And
please
don’t tell her I’m helping with Jailhouse Rock, either.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because she had a thing about Beast once and sent him nuisance love texts.’

Toby’s eyes grew huge. Another salmon for Pussy! Oh God! What had I done? What a terrible, terrible thing to say! How could I have let that slip? I was a monster of indiscretion! I deserved to have my tongue cut out and made into pies, like somebody in a fairytale.

‘Chloe sent Beast nuisance love texts?!’ he drooled.

‘No, no, I didn’t mean that! I mean, it was nothing, it was over ages ago, just don’t ever mention that to anybody – forget I said it!’ I warned sharply. ‘Chloe would be mortified and she would literally kill me. If you ever so much as hint it to her I will cut you out of my will, and you and I will be finished for ever!’

‘OK, no need to go ballistic,’ grinned Tobe. ‘I’m the soul of discretion, you know that.’