Secrets at St Jude's: New Girl (16 page)

On the other side of the café she could hear her friends laughing and joking with Dermot and she wished she was with them, rather than stuck at this table on her own, posing, posing and posing as she 175

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waited for Jason to walk through the door. But then, if he
did
walk through the door, she wanted him to sit with her, not just join in the group.

Despite Penny’s horrible claims, Jason had emailed Amy the day after the ball. Although he’d sounded casual, hadn’t he just been disguising the fact that he was really keen to see her again? Amy felt sure this was the case. She believed that she could understand the real Jason: the person behind the handsome, cool and swaggering façade.

Might be at the Arts Café later. Can you come round?

Might be fun to see you and your friends. J.

That’s what he’d written.
Can you come round?
He’d definitely wanted her to be here. It hadn’t felt like such an exaggeration to tell the dorm she had a date with him.

‘So how old are you anyway?’ Niffy was asking Dermot, who had returned to their table even though there were no empty cups to clear away, because he was enjoying the few moments of banter he could snatch with them during his busy shift.

‘If you’ve just done your Highers,’ Niffy went on,

‘you must be older than you look.’

‘Or a precocious genius,’ Dermot reminded her.

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‘How old are you?’ he countered. ‘And since you’re not drinking Irish coffees tonight, you can be honest with me.’

‘You first!’ Gina insisted. ‘How old are you?’

‘I’m sixteen, but I’m going to be seventeen next month.’ He knew, as soon as he’d said it, just how embarrassing that sounded.

‘Ooooh,’ Niffy teased. ‘I’m fifteen, Gina’s fifteen . . .

Maybe Dermot wants to send us a birthday card.’

‘No! You want us to send you a card next month!’

Gina teased.

‘Never mind, never mind.’ Dermot was blushing.

‘I’d better pick up your empties and be getting on.’ He looked around the table for an empty mug, but there still wasn’t one.

‘Leave mine alone.’ Gina slapped his hand gently.

‘I’m still drinking!’

‘Look! Violence! The girl is attacking me!’ Dermot joked. ‘I have witnesses.’

‘Nah,’ Niffy assured him. ‘We’re on her side.’

‘Oh, the dorm girls stick together, no matter what, do they?’ Dermot asked. ‘By the way, does your dorm have a name?’

Niffy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Well, they have names, don’t they? Dorms? Pink 177

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dorm? Dewdrop dorm? That kind of thing?’ He was trying hard to keep a straight face.

‘If we tell you, we’ll have to kill you,’ Gina replied.

Dermot leaned across the table: his arm was almost touching Gina’s and suddenly she felt all the hairs stand on end, from her wrist right up to the nape of her neck.

‘Go on,’ he insisted. ‘Your secret is safe with me.’

‘We can’t tell you,’ Gina said.

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ll laugh.’

‘I will not,’ he insisted.

‘Will too!’

‘Bet you a fiver I won’t.’

‘We’re in Daffodil dorm,’ Gina said, spilling the beans, sure it was worth five pounds.

Dermot paused, seemed to struggle with his mouth for a moment, then, turning abruptly on his heels, said, ‘OK, I have to go now – catch you later.’

‘Look!’ Niffy spluttered coffee. ‘I don’t believe it!

Lover boy is here!

All four turned their heads to see Jason coming into the café with Angus and Charlie in tow behind him.

‘Aha, not quite the romantic-table-for-two scenario 178

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our golden girl had planned then,’ Niffy said, raising an eyebrow.

Amy’s head hadn’t turned. If she had spotted Jason coming in, then she wasn’t letting on. She was busy posing with her
Vogue
as if her life depended on it.

Niffy gave a wave and the three boys headed over in her direction.

‘Amy is over there,’ Niffy told Jason as soon as he was within earshot. ‘I think she wanted some quiet time with you.’

When this brought loud guffaws from Charlie and Angus, Jason pulled up a chair and said, ‘Tell her to come and join us.’

Gina got up to oblige and also to make sure that Charlie didn’t even consider sitting next to her.

As she explained Jason’s request to a distressed Amy, she couldn’t help saying, ‘I know he’s good-looking, but – I’m sorry, Amy – he just acts like a complete dickhead . . . some of the time,’ she added quickly, as if that made it any better.

Amy just glared at her, then picked up her bag and headed over to the crowded table.

‘Hi, Amy,’ was all Jason could manage; he gave a little wave. A wave!

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Amy chose a seat as far away from him as possible and tried not to let anyone see that she was blushing to the roots of her carefully styled hair and frantically squeezing back the tears forming in her eyes.

Her date was now a group event, the boys all going on about the party Charlie was hosting in his parents’

house the following weekend (were they going to come, because he’d invited ‘almost every other girl in their year’ and, by the way, why hadn’t they come to his house for tea the day after the ball?).

‘Maybe you’d like to ask Min?’ Gina snorted. ‘If she was here she’d explain it to you.’

‘Erm . . .’ Charlie at least looked embarrassed.

‘You’ll have to work very hard to get us to forgive you for that,’ Niffy said. ‘For a start we want proper invitations. You know – something embossed with your coat of arms,’ she teased, ‘for the mantelpiece:
Charlie Fotheringham is at home
. No point having a party if you’re not going to do it properly.’

‘You think so?’ Charlie seemed to be taking her seriously. ‘That’s a good idea. Invitations! I hadn’t thought of that. Might be a good way of keeping out the crashers. Can’t have the people’s place getting trashed, you know. There are some good pieces in there.’

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Pieces?
Gina wondered what he could mean. Pieces of furniture? Works of art?

Dermot was obviously
delighted
to see three St Lennox boys move in on the dorm girls he was so interested in. He banged mugs down so hard and so rudely that coffee slopped onto the table.

‘Clean that up!’ Charlie barked at him.

Dermot reappeared with a wet dishcloth, which he lobbed at Charlie, saying, ‘You wanted a cloth?’

‘How dare you!’ Charlie caught the wet cloth, sending a splatter of water into his face and over his clothes. ‘That’s it! Where’s your boss? I’m going to get you fired.’

Dermot, suppressing a smile, turned and left the table as both Gina and Niffy tried to calm Charlie down.

‘Look, I’m sure he didn’t mean it,’ Gina insisted.

‘Please, don’t make a big deal out of it.’

‘For God’s sake, let’s drink up and get out of here,’ Charlie said, wiping himself down with a couple of paper napkins. ‘My brother’s got a flat round the corner – we could go there,’ he added. ‘It’s Saturday night: he’s usually got something going on.’

‘Good idea,’ said Jason, uncrossing his long legs.

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Which meant that Amy immediately said, ‘Yeah, why not?’

Which meant that Niffy and Gina would have to tag along too.

Just twenty-five minutes in Charlie’s big brother Hoagie’s flat was enough to convince the girls that it was time to go.

No amount of Georgian splendour (cornicing, ancient floorboards, graceful windows) could make up for the obvious student squalor (days worth of unwashed dishes, grubby clothes on the floor, over-flowing ashtrays, and empty wine bottles in every corner). Gina had never seen anything like it. Her friends in LA all still lived with their parents, who tended to have maids. Her mouth hung open in astonishment and she refused to even sit down in case she caught something.

Hoagie, a great shambling bloke in a holey jumper, was watching a DVD with friends and didn’t seem very pleased to see Charlie with two boys and three girls in tow.

Angus made an effort to jolly everyone along:

‘Hoagie, love what you’ve done with the place! It’s sort of wrecked Budapest nightclub meets nineteen 182

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nineties grunge.’

An attempt at tea was made, but as no one could find any clean mugs or any milk – or, in fact, any tea bags – it had to be abandoned.

‘If you want booze, you’ll have to go and get your own,’ Hoagie shouted at them from the sitting room.

‘You know what? I think we should leave. Amy?’

Gina’s sharp tone of voice made it clear that they were going, even if Amy had managed to wheedle herself a chair next to Jason’s.

Not that Jason had noticed. He was too busy going through Hoagie’s CD collection. He’d offered to put on some music but fifteen minutes later he still couldn’t decide which album would least offend his complicated sense of cool.

In the taxi home, Amy couldn’t stop reliving every moment of the evening, casting Jason in as flattering a light as possible. ‘He wants to see me next weekend,’

she told her friends. ‘Asked if we were going to Charlie’s . . .’

The other girls were not convinced

‘But did he snog you goodbye?’ Niffy wanted to know. ‘Because if he did, I would take that as 183

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a sign that he’s definitely interested.’

‘Well . . . erm . . . we kissed on the cheeks, but that’s because he’s actually quite shy. I think that’s why he brought his friends along and didn’t want to sit with me at the other table.’

Gina and Niffy exchanged doubtful glances. Then Niffy announced out of the blue that she thought Angus was ‘completely hilarious’, which earned her a round of whistles and cheers.

‘I don’t fancy him!’ she insisted loudly, but there was much teasing and in-depth discussion about the suitability of Angus as a boyfriend, and when Gina and Niffy walked into the boarding-house sitting room to sign in, Mrs Knebworth’s first question took them completely by surprise.

‘How was the film?’ she asked, causing the two girls to look at each other in panic.

‘Oh . . . we really enjoyed it, didn’t we?’ Niffy answered first, managing to sound casual, but looking desperately at Gina in the hope that she could remember something about the film they’d agreed to pretend to go and see.

‘It wasn’t bad. Quite cheesy,’ Gina ventured, but suspected she’d sounded too nervous. Why hadn’t Min gone with them tonight? She was the one who could 184

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be relied upon to prime them all with reviews and plot details.

‘Anyway’ – Niffy attempted a hurried getaway – ‘we should be—’

But the Neb cut across her with a clear and unmistakable: ‘So what did you go and see?’ She took her eyes off the television screen so the girls had her full unwanted attention.

Suddenly Gina remembered the title of one of the films Min had recommended . . .
China . . . China
Something . . .

‘
China Doll
,’ she blurted out, almost certain that this was the name of the film.

‘Oh yes, with . . . umm . . . what’s her name?’ Mrs Knebworth’s head bent slightly to one side, as if this was the most interesting conversation she’d had all day.

Suddenly Gina was suspicious. Was this just chit-chat, or was the Neb trying to test them?

She realized she was going to have to answer because Niffy’s face looked completely blank.

‘Oh . . . I can never remember her name . . .’ Gina began. ‘Reese Witherspoon?’ She couldn’t help crossing her fingers behind her back because she had no idea who the heroine was or if
China Doll
was even 185

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actually a movie. ‘It was fun,’ she added, with something that was supposed to look like a casual shrug.

‘I’m absolutely bushed!’ Niffy exclaimed with an exaggerated yawn, trying to get them out of there as quickly as possible.

‘And where’s Amy?’ the Neb asked next.

‘She’s just gone to the pantry to put the kettle on –

shall we sign her in too? Or do you want her to come in?’

‘Oh, just sign her in and head up to bed.’ The Neb turned her eyes back to the screen. ‘I believe you.’ A little smile flashed across her face.

As soon as Mrs Knebworth heard Gina and Niffy’s footsteps receding along the corridor, she pushed herself up out of her chair and headed in the direction of the pantry.

This was a little place off the dining room stocked with tea bags, instant coffee, hot chocolate powder, water and fruit, where the girls were allowed to go and make themselves a drink or grab a snack in between official meal times.

‘Oh, hello, Mrs Knebworth,’ Amy greeted her. ‘The kettle’s just boiled – do you want me to make you a tea?’

‘Yes, that would be kind,’ said the Neb. ‘So, another 186

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trip to the cinema?’ she went on. ‘And what did you and the girls go to tonight?’

‘Oh . . .’ Amy hesitated. She’d been so wrapped up in preparing for a close encounter of the Jason kind that she had barely listened to Min’s read-through of the film reviews. ‘Oh, erm . . . didn’t they say? You know what my memory’s like.’ She tried to sound jokey and tapped at the side of her head.

‘No.’ Mrs Knebworth’s little eyes were peering out at Amy from her pale and pudgy face.