Live and Fabulous! (32 page)

“You're the most important thing in my whole world, you annoying, stubborn woman. You are my world!”

I raise my nose primly in the air, sneering slightly at him. “Skateboarding is your world, Jimi!” I mouth furiously.

Ha! That shut him up!

“I've sold my skateboard, Ronnie,” replies Jimi.

“You've ... you've what?” I gasp.

“Sold it,” he mumbles. “I've sold Bess.”

That totally floors me.

“I got a hundred pounds for her. Then I hitched here with an old bloke in a Volkswagen, bought a ticket off a scalper and started searching for you. But the campsite was bigger than I thought.”

“Where have you been sleeping?” I say, trying to sound like I don't care.

“In the back of Tyrone Tiller's van,” says Jimi, “with five other skaters.”

Jimi looks at me sadly. “But I got up every day at dawn to search for you.”

“Oh,” I say, letting out a small sheepish smile. That is one of the sweetest things I've ever heard. Darn him.

“Well, you've found me now,” I say in a small voice. I twinkle my hand at him. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Jimi replies, doing this daft wave and scrunched-up face he always does whenever I turn up to meet him. It always makes me pee laughing.

“I love you, Ronnie,” he suddenly blurts out.

“Oh, shut up, ”
I say, shaking my head.

“I do!” he says, looking rather hurt. “Look, I know I don't often say it ...”

“You've never said it,” I say. “Not once.”

“Haven't I? But I thought you knew that I ...
gnnngnn!
Well, I'm saying it now,” says Jimi.
“I love you.”

I gaze at him, really, really wanting to believe him. He really is so gorgeous and funny and lovable.

“Look, this is stupid,” says Jimi. “I know you're one of the beautiful people now, but can't you come out of your little VIP enclosure for a while and talk to me properly? We could go for a walk on Briggin Hill. It's amazing up there when all the bonfires are blazing.”

I ponder that for a moment. It couldn't hurt, could it? Just one little walk?

“Okay,” I say frostily. “But don't get your hopes up, Jimi. I'm not promising you anything.”

“So what does everyone fancy singing?” asks Fleur Swan, drumming her fingers excitedly on the Mini Cooper's dashboard as Daphne Swan indicates left, heading out of Astlebury's main gates into the narrow country lanes through Marmaduke Orchards.

“Haven't we sung enough this weekend?” giggles Claude.

“No!” hoots Fleur. “And today I really feel like it! Hey, what about ‘You Canny Kick Yer Granny Off the Bus!' ”

“No!” I groan from the backseat. “Anything but that one!”

“ ‘Jimmy Crack Corn'?” suggests Fleur. “ ‘Five Hundred Green Bottles'?”

“ ‘Alice the Camel'!” shouts Claude. “We used to sing that one on the way to Brownie camp!”

“Yeah! But we'll only do twenty verses!” says Fleur. “‘Cos after that, y'know, it gets a bit repetitive.”

Oh, dear.

Everyone in the Mini Cooper is in thoroughly jubilant spirits.

After an epic Damon and Claudette farewell scene, involving fervent sobbing and promises to call, text and e-mail each other the very second they reach home, if not before, Daphne and I finally forced Claudette Cassiera into the Mini. Meanwhile, Damon, who hasn't really mastered playing things cool, was hugging the side of the Mini, quacking stuff like, “I can't believe you're leaving me!”

Claude, who was equally distraught, was pushing her face against the window, moaning, “I'll ring you later! I miss you already!”

“Oh, pur-lease!” sighed Fleur, rolling her eyes and climbing into the front seat.

Obviously, I'd packed all of Fleur's clothes and makeup for her, as she was too busy speaking on her mobile phone to journalists from both
Shout!
and
Scream!
magazines.

“I can't tell you journalists everything you need to know!” Fleur was telling one of them as she sat on a tree stump watching me wrestle her damp sleeping bag into Daphne's trunk. “I need to retain a little part of my privacy, y'know, just to remain grounded.”

“Hmmmph,”
said Daphne, rolling her eyes.

“And just for the record,” Fleur bleated starrily, “I am not dating Spike's brother Caleb Saunders! We are simply
just good friends.
I did sit with him at the after-show party last night, but it was purely platonic. Put that in your newspaper, if you will, please!”

“Platonic snogging?” remarked Claude dryly. “Whatever next?”

“Of course, you do realize,” I groan as we descend the access road to the motorway, “that we've broken every single rule, without exception, on that behavioral contract we signed. That's pretty bad, isn't it?”

We'd have probably got away with losing Daphne, forgetting to call, talking to weirdos, canoodling and hanging out with hedonists, but there's not much we can do about the photographs plastered all over the
Daily Mirror
of the LBD draped around Spike Saunders, sipping flutes of chilled Cristal in the VIP enclosure.

I had only one glass! And it was a celebration, after all! (It tasted a bit like fizzy feet, if you ask me.)

Fleur thinks for a while, counting off all the rules on her fingers, “Champagne? Snogging? Weirdos? Hey, wow! You're right, Ron,” she says, bristling with pride. “Ooh, I'm rather proud of myself. Lifetime best!”

just then Fleur's mobile rings once more and she starts giving yet another interview about how, single-handedly, she saved Astlebury with her wit, guile and lightning brains.

“So then I turned to my friend Ronnie,” Fleur brags, “and I said, hey, we know someone who can play all the new Spike Saunders songs, don't we?”

I can't help but chuckle.

In the driver's seat, Daphne Swan seems soporifically smug, but of course, her farewell to Rex was far from final too.

“We've decided to put school on hold for another year and go off traveling again,” coos Daphne dreamily. “You see, Rex has heard about this patch of rain forest in Guatemala that's being depleted at the rate of ten square hectares a month. We're going to fly out and help the indigenous people save it.”

Ahh! Paddy will be thrilled,
I think, resting my exhausted head against the back window.

I'm trying to make sense of the last few crazy days, but too many wild and crazy images are cluttering my brain. I'm remembering Joel, gallantly helping me with our numerous bags and boxes to the Mini before tucking his phone number into the back pocket of my denims. “Look, Ronnie,” he said, “I know your head's a bit mixed up about that, y'know, Jimi guy ... but if you ever, like, wanted to see me, just pick up the phone and give me a call. I'm two hours away. I'll jump in the car and drive across. Just say the word.”

Then I think about me and Jimi last night, walking up over Briggin Hill, with a cacophony of fireworks exploding overhead and a huge smiling full moon above us. Thousands of festivalgoers were flocking all around us, enjoying their last night of Astlebury craziness as Jimi jabbered on, ten to the dozen, trying to prove that he'd learned a lesson by messing up so badly. And that he knew he'd been a flaky buttmunch, but that he was determined to change things, and think more about how I feel about stuff. He said he wanted to change, he wanted to be the best boyfriend in the world ever.

But people never really change, do they?

Then I think about Mum, Dad and Seth and realize that I'm actually absolutely dying to see them. I'm actually craving my dad's terrible jokes and my mum nagging me about the mess in my room. I'm dying to give Seth a cuddle, then have a long bath with tons of bubbles and a night in a real bed, under my squashy duck-feather duvet.

It's nice to get away for a while,
I think to myself,
but sometimes it's even nicer to go home.

As I fall through the doors of the Fantastic Voyage, a massive cheer erupts. Somehow, Dad's amassed all of the pub's regulars: Toothless Bert, Travis the Aussie bartender, Muriel from the kitchen and various other social misfits who call our pub a second home. Good old Dad is boring them all senseless with tales about his wonderful, hyper-intelligent, superstar daughter. Even better, behind the cash register, ripped from this morning's
Daily Mirror,
is a photo of the LBD cuddling Spike Saunders, hiding the old one of me, aged six, dressed as a sunflower. Good fortune really is abundant at the moment!

“Hurray! The wanderer returns!” laughs Dad, giving me a stubbly smackroonie on the cheek. “Y'know, I couldn't keep those media hounds at bay much longer!”

“What d'you mean?” I say.

“That Fun Time Frankie from Wicked FM's breakfast show wants you to do a phone interview at six forty-five tomorrow morning!” Dad says.

“Oh, and the
Local Daily Mercury
wants you to write some sort of piece about live music.”

Me? A music journalist? Wow!

“Y'know, I'm thinking of giving up this pub game and beginning work as your agent,” Dad says as I look around the pub for the character most conspicuous by her absence.

“Hey, what have you done with my mother?” I say.

“Who? Oh ... right, your mother,” says Dad, wincing slightly. “Now, that will be that very poorly lady over there in the corner ... but go easy on her, Ronnie ... she's a bit delicate today.”

Over on the sofas, my green-gilled mother is sipping water, bravely managing a smile and a small wave at me.

“Hey, Mum!” I yell. “I'm home!”

“I can see. It's my famous daughter! The one off the television!” she whispers, giving me a cuddle. “Do me a favor, though, Ronnie, eh? Stop shouting, will you?”

“Are you sick?” I ask.

“Self-inflicted, Ronnie. Give her no sympathy,” butts in Dad, plonking down beside us, clutching my beautiful little mushed-banana-covered brother. “And don't even ask how Paddy Swan is,” he mutters under his breath.

“Mother? What
exactly
is up with you?” I say.

“Something I ate,” moans Mum. “Ghanaian food clearly doesn't agree with me.”

“Ghanaian food?” I frown. “What have you been up to?”

“Oh, right,” begins Mum sheepishly. “Well, since you girls were all away, Paddy Swan decided to have a little, er, gathering. Y'know, just to console ourselves, as we were bereft of our teenagers for the weekend.”

“Your mother was especially distraught,” says Dad, fake-solemnly.

“A gathering? What sort of a gathering?” I say, suddenly recalling Paddy's “letting off some steam” comment from weeks ago.

Mum opens her mouth to explain, but she simply burps, then grimaces, clutching her head in her hands.

“It started off as just Paddy's James Bond Society cronies,” Dad says. “They were all around at Disraeli Road, playing roulette and drinking martinis ...”

“But then your aunty Susan offered to baby-sit Seth, so we went along too,” mumbles Mum. “You know, just to be sociable.”

“And then Gloria popped by on her way home from evensong and she brought a dozen of the Ghanaian Methodists with her,” says Dad. “And Lord, do they like to let their hair down!”

“Gloria Cassiera?!” I say, shaking my head.

“I blame Gloria!” groans Mum. “She was the ringleader! And once that Pastor Jones fella got control of the barbecue and that woman Winnie with the hat started mixing rum punch, well, it all went downhill from there ...”