Golden Girl (15 page)

‘What, like Spanish?’ she asked.

‘No,
oily
not
olé
.’

Alisha laughed. ‘Whatever.’

‘Is Shreya there with you?’ I asked.

Alisha was quiet a beat too long before she replied and my heart sank. ‘Yes. And Kunal and Prasad. Um. About Shreya. JJ’s . . . Hey, just a sec, the guys are back. Er . . . listen,
got to go. Meet us at the landing place for the Taj at . . . what time, JJ?’

‘Five,’ JJ’s voice called. ‘Are you talking to Pia?’

‘Yeah,’ I heard Alisha say.

‘Don’t let Jess know anything.’

Alisha’s phone suddenly clicked off.

Too late
, I thought as Pia glanced at me in sympathy.

‘I’m not going,’ I said later that afternoon when a taxi boat arrived at the hotel to take us over the lake.

Pia put her fingers into the L for loser sign and held it up to her forehead. ‘Planet Loserville, population: you. You can’t give in this easily. No. You have to dress in your most
lovely clothes, get out there and show JJ what he’s missing.’

I wish I had Pia’s attitude sometimes but I don’t and all I wanted to do was hide in our hotel room and listen to tragic songs about unrequited love while gazing wistfully out over
the lake. I can do the Queen of Tragedy act well if I try. Like some of the sad ladies in the Pre-Raphaelite paintings I’ve seen in books at Gran’s – the Lady of Shalott or
Ophelia. They adopt a noble, dignified pose that hides a broken heart – except in Ophelia’s case where it’s not so much dignified as floating dead in a river with soggy weeds in
her hair. I’m not that much of a headcase. And maybe tragedy queen is more of an English thing to do on a grey day. Here, the late afternoon sun was sparkling on the lake and I’d
already lost half the day being ill then tortured by sadistic masseuses. It seemed mad to be in such a glorious location and miss it because a boy was doing my head in.

I’d found my phone when we got back to the hotel and there were three messages from JJ on it. The last one said he needed to talk to me about Shreya. Well, I didn’t want to talk to
him about her. Pia was right. I shouldn’t give in to Loserville. Alisha had said that Kunal was with them. He liked me, he was fun and he wanted to see me. I’d show JJ that I
didn’t need him. Course I didn’t. I’d be the new Jess Hall. Independent. Irresistible. More ass-kicking Lara Croft than droopy ‘I give up on life’ Ophelia.

‘OK, I’ll come with you. I am so over JJ. And if Kunal is into me, I might just have a holiday romance after all.’ I said the words but Pia didn’t look convinced.

Neither was I.

‘There they are,’ said Pia, as our boat drew up at the jetty.

‘Don’t worry, I’ve seen them,’ I said, ‘though I can’t see JJ or Shreya.’ I’d spotted Alisha, Prasad and Kunal from halfway across the lake.
Standing by the shore, they looked like they’d stepped out of the pages of
Teen Vogue
, effortlessly glamorous with their glossy black hair, pale linen clothes and designer shades. I
fixed a smile on my face ready to be Miss Happy. I didn’t give a damn.

Pia sighed. ‘Relax, Jess.’

‘I am. Can’t you see I’m smiling?’

‘No, I can’t,’ said Pia. ‘You look like the Joker in
Batman
. Be yourself.
Relax
.’

‘If another person tells me to relax today, I may have to kill them,’ I said and mock throttled her. ‘I’m trying to do what that happy guru man said.
Make yourself
smile and a real smile will follow. Act happy and you will be happy.
’

Pia grimaced. ‘I think his philosophy may be flawed,’ she said, ‘if you also feel the need to strangle your best mate.’

‘Sorry, P. I wish I had a fairy godmother who would make Shreya just go away and everything all right with JJ, but that’s not going to happen, is it? He’s not even here with
the others.’

‘Pray to the great fairy godmother in the sky,’ said Pia. ‘Maybe she’ll rustle up a miracle. And why are we being so sexist? Why not a fairy godfather or godbrother
even?’

‘True. Or a guardian angel. I used to think I had one when I was little and she’d watch over me at night with her wings spread out over the top of the bed. I used to move over to
make room for her because I thought she might be tired standing there all night.’

‘Do you still believe in guardian angels?’

I shook my head. ‘If I have one, these days she has a bad case of PMT.’

Pia laughed. ‘Fairies and angels aside, let’s make the best of it. We’re in this great place, we look good and the night is young.’

We did look good. Pia had on a bright turquoise halterneck dress that suited her perfectly and I’d made a big effort with my appearance and put on a sweet pink and primrose floral dress.
I’d blowdried my hair until it shone. My plan was that JJ would be bowled over and as jealous as hell when he saw me flirting with Kunal.

Small setback in the plan, though. No JJ.

Alisha spotted our boat arriving and waved. I waved back and we soon joined her, Vanya and the handsome brothers on the shore.

‘How are you feeling?’ asked Kunal, his face full of concern.

‘Happy. Oh so happy,’ I said and gave him a big smile.

He and Pia looked at me as if I was mad.

‘It’s the drugs they gave her,’ said Pia and pointed at her head as if to say I’d lost the plot. ‘Where are JJ and the teen queen?’

Alisha looked down at her feet and wouldn’t look me in the eye. ‘Um. Not supposed to say.’ She glanced up, shrugged and put her hand on my arm. ‘You’ll find out
later.’

‘Why shouldn’t she know? I’m sure Shreya said something about wanting to show him the Monsoon Palace,’ Kunal said, and pointed to a castle in the distance, on top of a
hill on the other side of the lake.

‘A beautiful place to watch the sunset,’ said Prasad. ‘It was built to watch the monsoon clouds and the views from up there are spectacular.’

‘It looks so romantic,’ said Pia, then clapped her hand to her mouth. She realised that was the last thing I’d want to hear when JJ was off there with Shreya. ‘I mean, I
thought he wanted us to meet him here.’

‘He did. He does,’ said Alisha.

Prasad shook his head. ‘Sadly he hasn’t been getting much say about anything today. Shreya sure is one control freak. And JJ’s been acting oddly all day, don’t you think?
All twitchy and looking at his watch the whole time.’

Alisha pulled me aside. ‘Sorry, Jess, I tried to find out more but the only time I got him alone was for a few minutes, and when I asked him what was going on, he tapped his nose like he
had some great secret. If Shreya is that secret, I am so going to kill him. But I wouldn’t be too worried. They will be chaperoned. Shreya always has to have someone with her, just like we
do.’

Prasad pointed back up to the mountains. ‘The palace was used as a hunting lodge by the royal family in the past.’

‘Perfect,’ I said.
The perfect place for Shreya the man-hunter to take her latest prey
.

Kunal took my hand. ‘But tonight is your night, Jess. To make up for upset.’ He rubbed his stomach and flashed me a smile. ‘What would you like to do?’

Push Shreya into the lake
came to mind but I quickly deleted the thought. ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I, we, don’t know the area. Maybe you could tell
us?’

‘Town is still very busy with all the visitors and holy men from the festival,’ said Prasad.

‘I’m guru-ed out,’ said Alisha. ‘So let’s pass on town.’

Kunal shot his brother a look. ‘What do you girls do when you’re at home? To chill out?’

‘Have sleepovers. Watch DVDs. Get takeaways. The usual stuff,’ said Pia.

‘Sounds perfect,’ said Kunal. ‘Come back to our place and we’ll hang out. We can get something from the hotel kitchen then watch some TV.’

Pia pulled me aside. ‘Hey, I’m starting to feel like a gooseberry here, you know. You and Kunal, Alisha and Prasad. Do you want me to split?’

‘No way. It’s not Kunal and me,’ I said. ‘He’s a laugh, yes, but I’m not going to get involved with him.’ I linked arms with her and pulled her back
towards the others.

We travelled in two taxis to the brothers’ family home in the grounds of their hotel on the other side of the lake. Vanya went in one with Prasad and Alisha, even though Alisha tried her
hardest to persuade him that he wasn’t needed. He wasn’t having any of it and got into the back of the car and sat between her and Prasad. Poor Alisha. She’d finally met a boy she
liked and now couldn’t get any time alone with him. I knew exactly how
that
felt. Pia, Kunal and I travelled in the other car with Kunal in the middle. His thigh pressed gently against
mine as we set off. I moved away and squidged up towards the door and stared out of the window at the passing scenery. My plan had been to flirt with Kunal if JJ had been around to witness it, but
in his absence I didn’t want Kunal getting any ideas.

No doubt about it, the view was beautiful with the sun setting over the hills. Udaipur was the city of romance and JJ was up a mountain with another girl. We hadn’t had five minutes alone
together since our first morning here and it was getting more and more unlikely that we ever would, now that Shreya had got her hooks into him.

As we drove on, my thoughts turned to home. I wondered what Dad and Charlie were doing. I had so much to tell them and thought about how I’d describe it all. My Tweety Pie ringtone going
off in the middle of the movie shoot, getting the Rajasthan rumbles, then being slapped about by the masseuses and almost flying off the couch into the flowerbeds. Mum would have laughed until
she’d cried.

Part of me still thinks about telling her stuff, even though it’s over a year since she died. Sometimes I catch myself reaching for my phone and thinking,
must tell Mum that
, or
I wonder what Mum will say about this
, then I have to remind myself that she isn’t here. I miss her so much and wished I could call her and tell her all about JJ and what was going on
out here. She’d have known how best to deal with it. I remember what she said when she was told that her cancer was terminal and there was nothing more the doctors could do to save her; when
she found out that her whole life was not working out as planned. ‘You have to be like a tree,’ she said, a few days after the news had sunk in, ‘it bends in the wind. Resist and
stand too stiff and it will break you. The only way to be is to bend with it.’ She was still mobile then and started messing about, dancing like a tree in the kitchen, waving her arms around.
She acted really daft sometimes.

My eyes filled with sudden tears. Just when I think I’m over crying about her, the loss of her springs out like a tiger from the bushes and catches me by surprise. She’d been amazing
right up until the end. She’d had so many plans. So many things she’d wanted to do but had to let them all go when her life took such an unexpected turn. ‘I’m going to make
the most of every day, every hour,’ she said after she’d shed her angry tears, ‘and in that time, I’m going to do my best to find some happiness in this strange situation
I’ve been thrust into.’

That’s what I have to do
, I decided, although what was happening to me wasn’t frightening or sad, like it had been for her. She wouldn’t want me to be miserable just
because things weren’t going the way I wanted.
Let go
, I told myself.
I’m still in this glorious location. Having the trip of a lifetime. I’m with mates. OK, so maybe
things haven’t worked out with JJ but, just like Mum, I’m going to do my best to find some happiness here. Not the happy-clappy guru’s way by laughing like a mad girl, but by
being grounded and making the best of things. And like a blooming tree, I’m going to bend in the wind of change.

Prasad and Kunal lived with their parents in a spacious bungalow. Unlike the heritage hotels, this place looked like something from a futuristic movie, with spotless black
marble floors in the high-ceilinged central reception area where the restaurants were and honey-coloured guest bungalows with verandas dotted around the grounds. We had a fun evening with the boys
and they really made us laugh.

‘We’re going to have an Eeenglish,’ said Prasad, putting on a strong Indian accent.

‘Make mine really bland,’ said Kunal, joining in with his brother in his exaggerated accent. ‘Go strong on the ketchup. I can take it.’

Pia and I cracked up. I knew the comedy sketch that they were quoting. I’d seen it on telly back home; it was a skit about a group of English-born Indians parodying us Brits when we order
an Indian takeaway and compete as to who can take the spiciest.

Our supper wasn’t bland at all. The hotel had an Italian chef so we had pasta. It was delicious and actually a nice change from the spicy food we’d been eating for the last few
days.

After supper, Kunal showed us his collection of DVDs. He had a wall full of English and American sitcoms.

‘
Fawlty Towers
is my favourite. And my dad’s. He roars with laughter at Basil Fawlty,’ he said as we settled down to watch an episode.

After the meal and DVD, Pia talked about Henry and how she missed him. Prasad insisted that she Skype him from the super-duper computer in their business centre as it had a huge screen, so they
disappeared off with Alisha. Vanya had gone to have supper in the hotel restaurant so that left Kunal and me alone.