The Mag Hags (3 page)

The Askew mansion was Baywood's major landmark, sitting on top of the hill – you could see it from any part of the town. Adrian Askew, a self-made millionaire, was famous around town for his television commercials that featured his good self, beaming out of the box, all balding and handlebar moustached, urging kids to ‘Get A Wiggle On' and get on down to his Game On retail store. Even more devastating for Belle, at the end of every commercial her father would do a little dance and wiggle his hips like a hula dancer after drinking aRed Bull.

Adrian had made his fortune from selling discount computer games and consoles all around the world. But recently he had been developing a virtual reality machine with a Japanese company. ‘The Vultron' was apparently so lifelike, it was going to make every other games console obsolete. Every kid in school was desperate for an invitation to Belle's place since her father had talked up The Vultron on the six o'clock news. Suited and wired up, he had taken one giant step for mankind as he
virtually walked on the moon, in front of the television crew and every household in Baywood.

Despite her wealth and minor-celebrity dad, Belle didn't have any real friends. Her motto, since her mother had died when she was nine years old, was ‘Don't let them get close, and you'll never get hurt' and she had stuck to her guns. She was never unfriendly, but there was a coolness about Belle that made you feel you had just gone swimming in the ocean in the middle of winter and got out to find that some bugger had nicked your towel. So the girls were as surprised as Belle that she had invited them to her house.

Wanda arrived at the bus stop first – she hated to keep people waiting – followed by Cat, Belle, Maggie and, seconds before the bus arrived, Mand. The girls took their seats at the back where the atmosphere was decidedly chilly; there wasn't much to say, so the girls stuck to safe topics. Belle and Wanda discussed weather (‘Yes, it has been hot today. I can't believe Mand's in that big jumper!'), and Cat rabbitted on and on to Maggie about who would be taking who to the Year 10 formal at the end of the year (Emma O'Connor had already asked Che Bartlett, who had said yes, but he really wanted to take Sharon Bright, who didn't know that Che fancied her, so was considering going with Paul Patten).

Mand shoved her MP3 headphones in her ears and shut out the world, dreaming of escaping to the city,
where her sister Lottie lived in a terrace house with four other uni students. Lottie wasn't too keen on Mand visiting after the puking-in-the-pub incident, which broke Mand's heart. She idolised her older sister and felt completely rejected by her since she had left home.

After a twenty-minute journey, the girls got off the bus and headed towards the big black gates of the Askew mansion. Belle pushed the buzzer and spoke into it: ‘Hello, it's Belle.'

‘Would you like me to pick you up at the gate, Ms Askew?' said the voice crackling with static.

‘No thanks, we'll walk,' replied Belle.

Without a sound, the heavy wrought-iron gate with fancy swirling AA initials embossed into the grate, swung open and a long, tree-lined driveway stretched out in front of them.

‘Didn't know we were going for a hike,' said Mand as they set off down the drive, which was so long you couldn't even see the house. ‘Is this why your chauffeur usually picks you up from school?'

Belle ignored her and stomped ahead, the other girls following behind, accompanied by the sound of shoes crunching on the pebbles, sounding like the snap, crackle and pop of rice bubbles. Eventually the driveway led to a gigantic white mansion that resembled a huge white wedding cake. It spread skywards four levels and horizontally as far as the eye could see.

‘Whoa!' said Cat, her jaw dropping open. ‘That's twenty-five times the size of my place!'

‘Wow!' said Wanda. ‘It looks like a hotel!'

The front door opened and there stood Belle's housekeeper, Mrs Biggins, a woman of about fifty-five, with a huge bust that had made her look matronly from the age of twenty-two. Her husband, the browbeaten Mr Biggins, kept the gardens and the lawns but it was Mrs Biggins who was the boss. And she kept a tight rein on ‘her' house, as she called it.

‘Hello, Mrs Biggins,' said Belle. ‘These are the girls I'm going to be working with on that magazine project.'

‘I hope you're not going to be making a mess, Corabelle,' said Mrs Biggins, folding her arms across her chest. ‘I've had the cleaners in today.'

‘We'll be very tidy, we promise,' said Wanda, who had impeccable manners.

‘There's afternoon tea in the dining room,' said Mrs Biggins. ‘But please be careful, I don't want to find crumbs all over the floor.'

The girls trooped inside, being sure to wipe their shoes on the doormat rather than face the wrath of neat-freak Biggins. Everything in Belle's house gleamed. It looked more like a five-star hotel than a house, with its shiny wooden floorboards, delicate vases filled with freshly cut dahlias, plump white lounges, colourful paintings and
exquisitely carved Indian statues. Despite its beauty, there was a certain coldness to the place, like nobody actually lived here.

The girls wandered in stunned silence through the house as Belle led them to a huge dining room. In the middle of the room sat a grand dining table that could seat sixteen. A crystal chandelier was suspended from the ceiling, throwing speckles of rainbow-coloured light onto the pure white walls. Maggie thought about how long those white walls would remain white in her house, with her three sisters and little brother Billy, who was like a two-year-old human tornado.

The girls pulled out the heavy wooden dining chairs, careful not to scrape the floorboards, which were so shiny you could actually see your knickers reflected in them. Belle served the girls lemon poppyseed cake and ginger ale that she poured from a crystal jug.

Maggie noticed a rather beautiful painting of a radiant auburn-haired woman who had more than a passing resemblance to Belle, but even more surprising was the signature at the bottom:
Corabelle
. Maggie assumed it must have been somebody else; it was too professional to have been painted by a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl.

Just as they had finished their cake, a tall woman with long golden hair and wearing the tiniest pink frilly bikini poked her head around the door.

‘Hello, Belle,' she said, her pink lipstick dewy and shiny.

‘Reanne.' Belle's mouth puckered as though she had just eaten something distasteful. ‘Been sitting around the pool all day again?'

‘Aren't you going to introduce me to your … friends?' said Reanne, ignoring the question and walking in and plonking herself on the edge of the dining table.

‘This is my magazine group – Wanda, Mand, Cat and Maggie,' said Belle. ‘And this is my father's, um, girlfriend Reanne.'

‘Fiancée actually, soon to be Corabelle's stepmother.' Reanne stuck out her ring finger where a huge diamond glittered and sparkled. ‘I've been so stressed today. Your father's taking me out to dinner tonight with some important clients and I've had to spend the entire day getting ready. I can't tell you the hell I've been through. I had to buy a new dress, not to mention matching bag and shoes, get my nails and hair done, as well as my bikini line. Have you ever had your bikini line done? It kills –'

‘Please, no, Reanne,' said Belle, rolling her eyes. ‘We're actually pretty busy ourselves – unlike some, we've got serious work to do.'

‘Don't have a cow,' said Reanne, stomping off in a strop, the suntan oil from her thighs leaving a greasy stain on the mahogany table.

Once Reanne had left the room, the girls started laughing.

‘That's going to be your stepmother?' said Mand. ‘How old is she? She's probably only just out of puberty!'

‘She's actually twenty-eight,' replied Belle. ‘She's only been seeing my dad for eleven months and begged him to marry her. She says that otherwise people will think she's only after him for his money. It wouldn't be so bad, but she's as vacuous as an aeroplane sick bag.'

Belle wanted her father to be happy, she really did, but she couldn't help but question what he was doing with a woman half his age who never asked one question about anyone or anything. It was me, me, me, and me, oh yeah and me, and have I told you about me?

Belle's dad had met Reanne Rowles at a fashion show called ‘Bikini Jam', put on as a fundraiser for the Baywood Surf Life Saving Club. Adrian had sponsored the event and Reanne was one of the bikini models. From their first date, they had been inseparable or, more accurately thought Belle, Reanne had dug her claws into Adrian like a tiger into a zebra after a kill. Now Belle hardly got to spend any time with her father. He always invited her along to their dinners but the thought of having to listen to Reanne blather for hours and hours about her favourite subject – herself – made Belle decline every invitation.

‘She talks so much she makes my ears bleed,' Belle told the girls. ‘When she moves in, it's going to be a nightmare.
It's bad enough now, I never get to hang out with my dad by myself.'

‘What's she doing with your dad anyway,' said Mand. ‘He's old enough to be her –'

‘It's pretty obvious, isn't it?' interrupted Maggie. ‘So Reanne, what first attracted you to the millionaire Adrian Askew?'

The girls cracked up laughing, partly out of surprise that Maggie could be so funny. Belle laughed so much she had bubbles from the ginger ale coming out of her nose. Maggie was chuffed. She had made a joke, even if she had nicked it from an English TV show.

‘It's true. I'm sure she's only after him for his money,' said Belle, once she had stopped hyperventilating. ‘I don't trust her. She's so fake, she even calls him, “Ade-Poo”. She says, “Ade-Poo, Ree Ree needs a cuddle from her Poo-Poo.” My father has been reduced to a bowel movement!'

‘I've never liked any of my mother's boyfriends,' admitted Mand, aware that everyone in town knew about the hairless stripper episode. ‘Before Kane, she went out with a really hairy guy and used to call him “Hairy Bear”. His back was so hairy you could have woven a carpet big enough for this whole house. I'd be like, “Mum, I know they're both mammals, but why are you dating a bear, not a human?”'

‘You think that's bad,' said Wanda. ‘My parents have
been together for twenty-two years and still think they're love-struck teenagers. Rather than get a life, it's get a room! They're always snogging all over the house, it's disgusting.'

‘I think that's sweet,' said Cat. ‘Makes me believe that love can last forever.'

‘Love only exists in the minds of the deluded,' said Belle glibly. ‘Now, are we going to get on with this magazine or what?'

While it was good news that the girls were finally talking to each other, they were still at an impasse on what the magazine was to be about. Maybe because it was her house, or maybe it was because she had inherited a naturally bossy streak from her father, Belle took over.

‘Bone says we have to talk directly to our peers,' she said. ‘What do you think that means exactly?'

‘I suppose,' began Maggie hesitantly, ‘it means the magazine isn't actually about us. It's for girls like us and that means all of us. So if we're all contributing then, of course, we'll be talking directly to our peers.' She was on a roll now, and the others stared at her in shock – they'd never heard so many words come out of her mouth at once. ‘It's like Bone said, “Use each other's strengths.” So let's use the fact that we are dissimilar, and have different tastes in practically everything, and then surely we'll be talking directly to our peers – and that means all of them.'

‘You're right,' said Wanda, impressed. ‘So what are girls like us into?'

‘Well I'm not into all the fluffy commercialism we're spoonfed – you know, own this, buy that or look like me and you'll be happy,' said Mand. ‘Because we're teenagers all we're supposed to care about is shopping, celebrities and make-up. Meanwhile, the planet burns up and so does our future. And we're supposed to go down the shopping centre and not notice. And if we do, we're freaks.' She glared at Cat, who rolled her eyeballs.

‘But I read magazines to escape from reality,' said Cat. ‘I don't need to be reminded that the world sucks the big one. I can forget all the doom and gloom, tune out. I like to be entertained, not preached to.'

‘I love the whole look of them, the way they're designed, the way they feel,' said Belle, who saw the world in pictures rather than words.

‘And I love fashion, being able to express who I am through what I wear, not conforming to what someone else perceives as style,' said Wanda, more animated than the others had seen her before. ‘What about you, Maggie, what do you like?'

‘Newspapers. I like reading about what's going on in the world, trying to work out what makes people tick. Why humans do such crazy stuff.'

‘I reckon Maggie's right – if we have a combination of
everything we're interested in, we could make it work,' said Wanda.

The other girls agreed, shocked that they could come to a consensus about anything.

‘Okay, next on the list, we've got to come up with some keywords that encapsulate what the magazine is about,' said Belle. ‘Shall we give it a try?'

The girls dug deep into their schoolbags and fished out notepads from dark recesses that contained everything from squashed sandwiches, to unravelling tampons, a tube of dried-out mascara and mouldy wet swimmers. They started scribbling away and the only sound in the room was the tick-tocking of the grandfather clock as the girls' brains went into overdrive.

‘Okay, who wants to go first?' said Belle after ten minutes.

When none of the girls responded, Belle pointed to Cat and told her to get on with it.