Girls, Muddy, Moody Yet Magnificent (16 page)

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31

On the way down to town I grabbed my trusty moby. I wasn’t going to text Chloe: she had to make the first move. Instead I whizzed off a text to Toby proposing an evening strolling around, maybe checking out the beaches and, of course, the beach bars. Tobe and Ferg must be quite fragrant by now.

His reply came back right away.
GUESS WHAT! WE PULLED AT THE LAUNDERETTE! GOING OFF TO A PARTY WITH A COUPLE OF FIT GIRLS! DON’T WAIT UP!

Although I was pleased for the guys, I was a tad annoyed that they hadn’t waited till tomorrow to pull their girls. Maybe I’d have to text Chloe after all. I thought it would be more diplomatic not to mention the row. I could give her hell about that later.

HOW IS YR EVENING SHAPING UP? TAM’S STILL OUT OF IT SO I’M FANCY-FREE. LOVE, Z X.

I walked on down into town, waiting for her reply. The evening was hotting up nicely. Music throbbed from open doorways. There was the smell of pasties and chips in the air, the scream of seagulls overhead (angling for the chips and pasties) and gangs of boys and girls parading up and down wearing every outrageous fashion known to man, and then some.

Everybody was eyeballing each other, and several guys even seemed to be staring at me as they passed, attracted no doubt – or possibly amused – by my moody eyeshadow and grim goddess pout. I ignored them. I tried to look like somebody who was going somewhere intensely cool and wonderful, not a sad loser who couldn’t even get her own sister out of bed to keep her company. I kept checking my mobile but there was no message from Chloe. Maybe she’d lost her phone again.

It was one of those gloriously long sunny evenings, and a few clouds hanging above the western horizon were glowing with orange light, reflected on the sea. I suddenly decided it would be great to go down on the beach and just walk about for a bit – get the wind in my hair and the sand in my toes. I walked down over a little grassy hillside where old people were sitting on benches together sharing sandwiches, and a woman who looked a bit like Chloe’s mum was exercising her two brown spaniels. It made me feel a bit sad and lonely for some reason.

Down on the beach, though, I began to feel better. It was the same beach where we’d been earlier – the one by the harbour. There were gangs of guys playing some kind of game, and a few little kids who had been allowed to stay up late, still running about with their buckets and spades.

The beach was backed by rocky cliffs, and there was the amazing little island joined to the mainland by a hair-raising suspension bridge, like one of those rope bridges in the Amazon rainforest or something. I walked along, staring across at the island, so I didn’t really notice where I was going.

‘Hey, Zoe!’ came a call. I looked around eagerly. Maybe Tobe and Ferg were down here – having a beach party. Oh no! It was Donut Higgs! Donut is Beast’s sidekick, and he’s famous for his hideous pimply turnip-like face and gross leering chat-up style. Last I’d heard, he’d been in Africa. Maybe the giraffes had kicked him out.

‘Oh, hi, Donut,’ I said, sounding massively underwhelmed to see him, and already desperate to escape. ‘How was the safari? Did you see any elephants?’

‘Man, it wuz elephants wall to wall.’ Donut grinned. I noticed he’d lost quite a bit of weight and was deeply tanned. But he still had a mountain to climb in order to register even one star on the International Sex Appeal register. ‘Great to see you, Zoe. Didn’t know you wuz comin’ to Newquay.’

‘Oh.’ I sighed, trying to sound bored. ‘Everybody’s here.’

‘Where are you stayin’?’ leered Donut. He’s always trying to corner me and hunt me down. But I was fairly sure he would never find Haddock Hall, and if he did, that Lord Haddock would never let him in.

‘Haddon House B&B,’ I told him. ‘A dive up at the top of the town. We call it Haddock Hall because it smells like rotten fish.’

‘Who’s
we
?’ asked Donut. He’s always so nosey. ‘Who’s the lucky guy?’

‘There is no lucky guy,’ I informed him crisply. ‘It’s just me, my sister, Tam, and Chloe.’ I had to find a way out of this conversation before he hit on me.

‘We’re at Emerald Flash Surf Lodge,’ said Donut proudly.

‘Sounds cool,’ I acknowledged, glancing at my watch as a sign I was going somewhere and was already late.

‘How’s your little mate, then – uh, Chloe?’

‘Oh, she’s just had her heart broken, so she’s gone a bit crazed and weird. But she’s not quite so far off the rails as when your mate Beast dumped her.’

Donut looked surprised. ‘Beast never dumped her.’ He shook his head. ‘He never rated her.’ He grinned. ‘Ironical, ennit? The girl he really fancied wuz . . . Ow!’ A beachball sailed down from the sky and hit Donut squarely on the head. He grabbed it, looked around, saw some kids sniggering, and then gave the ball a massive rugby punt that sent it soaring way out into the sea. Then he rubbed his head. ‘Few more brain cells gone. Still, it wuzn’t my brains you wuz mad about, wuz it? It wuz my five-star body, yeah?’ He pulled up his T-shirt to reveal his six-pack with the most disgusting leering grin.

I reeled from this double blow: Donut trying to hit on me again, despite my obvious loathing, and the infuriating hint that Beast had actually been mad about some other girl when he’d swept Chloe off her feet. How typical! Donut’s stupid gossip infuriated me. So Beast fancied someone else? Well, what a surprise
that
was!

‘Hi, Zoe.’ The voice was quiet, in my ear. I turned: it was Beast. He’d arrived without us noticing.

My stomach lurched in panic and I felt suddenly faint. His gang of friends – presumably the rugby club – were all messing about and laughing in the surf, about twenty metres away. I had to get away.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked. I tried to look cool and relaxed, although my heart had started to thud so hard, I was sure he could see the violent pulse in my neck. It was my most embarrassed moment ever.

‘I’ll go and get that beer,’ said Donut, and strolled off. For once I wished he’d stayed. I just couldn’t look Beast in the eye. I was blinded by the memory of our last meeting. I didn’t care about his entrepreneurial skills, his wretched rock concert for charity, or any of that: I just hated him more than ever.

‘Oh, I’m fine,’ I said, my heart hammering and my skeleton melting in the awful heat of an endless boiling blush of rage. ‘How are you?’

‘Great!’ said Beast. ‘Uhhh, yeah.’ He looked out to sea for a moment, frowned slightly, and then turned back to me. ‘Uhhh . . . We’re having the running-backwards championships. We’re going to do a barbecue on the beach later. You’re welcome to stay if you like. There’s some other girls coming. But the guys are going to do the cooking, and that’s a promise.’

‘Oh, thanks, but it’s OK,’ I said hastily.
Other girls coming – of course! His harem, as usual!
Hideous and totally random jealous thoughts scorched through my brain. ‘I’m on my way to a party, actually, with Toby and Fergus and some other people,’ I told him haughtily.

I half expected Beast to ask me where the party was, and all that, or whether Chloe was going too, or whatever, but he looked past me, grinning at his mates, who were staging another running-backwards race. I watched, too, for a minute. It was hilarious. The guys kept colliding with one another and falling in a heap. But I felt so stressed out, I couldn’t even smile.

‘Well . . .’ He shrugged and gave a kind of awkward grin. ‘Uhhh . . . I’d better be going. If you change your mind about our barbecue, just come on down to the beach around ten thirty. We’ll be going back into town for a few beers first, then we’ll be firing up the old logs around ten. Bring your mates if you like.’

‘Hmm, well, I’m not sure I can make it, sorry.’

‘OK, cool,’ said Beast. ‘Well, have a great evening.’

And he turned away. I was a bit surprised. Somehow I’d expected him to go on talking. In the past, whenever I’d met him, he’d gone on and on about one thing or another, and it had been hard to escape, but he seemed different now. I suppose he thought I hated him, because of that devastating put-down I’d dished out when he’d asked me out.

I did hate him, of course. Although he seemed a bit less annoying tonight, and that running-backwards stuff was hilarious, and the thought of their barbecue on the beach was really nice. If only I hadn’t had to pretend I was going to the party. But no way was I going to hang around and spend time with Beast Hawkins, especially now he clearly had so little to say to me. Thank goodness.

And anyway, I’d told him I wouldn’t go out with him if he was the last man left alive. So I had to keep up the ferocity of my disdain.

I headed for the harbour side of the beach, where there were rocky steps up to the road. Behind me I kept hearing great waves of laughter breaking out. I was so tempted to turn around and have another little look at the running-backwards races, but I was determined to show no interest, in case Beast was watching. Although I had a feeling that, in his present mood, his eyes would so
not
be following me across the beach and into the distance. He had been kind of offhand. If he ever had felt anything special for me, it had clearly evaporated. I sighed – with relief.

As I climbed the steps I noticed a sign:
DANGER FALLING CLIFFS KEEP AWAY
. It made me feel a bit depressed, somehow. A pang of loneliness went through me. It was such a shame I’d had to turn my back on a really fun evening, but I just felt I had to keep my distance from Beast. Even when he was being really kind of polite and normal, like he’d been just now, I always had the feeling that he was, well, dangerous.

And even though Tam enjoyed his company, and Jess and Fred had said he was a legend, and Dave Cheng obviously rated him, Oliver clearly loathed him. Beast was a mystery . . . But so was Oliver. It was all so confusing. I decided I must stop thinking about it. It was making me feel tired, and the stone staircase seemed endless.

‘Hey! Zoe!’ came a voice from above. I looked up – and there, on his own, leaning on a railing and looking down at me, was Oliver.
Oliver!
My heart practically flew right out of my mouth like some kind of demented frisbee.

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32

A thousand thoughts raced through my head. So this was what it was all about: all that suffering; the endless bus journey; the grumps of Tam; the temper tantrums of Chloe; the vile fog; the stinky B&B; the inconvenient disappearance of Tobe and Ferg; the awkward reappearance of Beast. All that awful stuff had just been Fate’s way of making me suffer so that I would totally deserve this magnificent treat.

Despite the swelling orchestras surging with heroic background music in my head, despite the temporary absence of my heart, which had gone spinning round the entire bay, I had to look nonchalant and cool. Even though my heart and my head had started, in some subtle kind of way, to disagree about Oliver, my tummy still turned somersaults at the sight of him.

My brain reminded me about all that stuff between him and the rugby team. I realised that everybody behind me on the beach must hate Oliver, and I wondered how he’d felt, looking down on them and being an outsider. Weirdly, it gave him a kind of glamour, though, and I couldn’t help responding. I wished he hadn’t left the farm in the lurch and made Martin shout about how unreliable he was.

‘Oh, hi, Holiver!’ I said. I hoped he wouldn’t notice I’d called him Holiver. ‘How’s it going?’

I climbed the remaining stairs which separated us, which meant that instead of gazing up at him from far below, like one of the damned in hell might perhaps gaze at an angel, I managed to reach the same level. Although as I’m about five six and he’s about six two, I shall always, in a physical sense, have to look up to him. Oliver looked surprised to see me.

‘Oh yeah!’ he said. ‘You did say you were coming to Newquay, didn’t you?’ So he’d forgotten. I couldn’t help feeling slightly shocked. Had he never listened to anything I’d said?

‘I don’t remember!’ I grinned, valiantly recovering, and trying to look wacky-but-relaxed, adorable-but- unattainable, blonde-but-somehow-brunette. ‘Anyway, here I am! And here you are! Amazing! How were the pigs?’

Oliver shuddered. Perhaps it was my manner, which, God knows, was cheesy enough to make me shudder at myself. Or perhaps the pigs had been slightly less wonderful than expected.

‘God!’ he said. ‘Don’t even go there.’

There was a horrid pause, during which I tried and failed to think of a single word in English.

‘I was – on my way to the cybercafe . . .’ Oliver murmured, gazing at the horizon. ‘I just stopped off to look at the sunset.’ He had stopped off to look at the sunset! How sensitive was that? Forget rugby. You could wait all your life to meet a guy who would take time off to look at the sunset. And here he was – in front of me.

‘Oh, great idea!’ I chirruped. ‘I should check my emails, too.’

‘It’s up here,’ he said. We turned our backs on the beach and started walking up the narrow lane that led up from the harbour area to the ordinary streets where the shops were.

‘How are things at the farm?’ asked Oliver.

‘OK, though Martin went off on one when he heard you weren’t coming any more,’ I said. ‘He was . . . uh – a bit stressed out about it.’

‘Oh God,’ sighed Oliver. ‘Another reference gone west! Oh, well.’ He shrugged.

‘Sarah spoke up for you,’ I told him. ‘She said you were sensitive and charming.’

‘Middle-aged women seem to take to me for some reason,’ said Oliver. ‘It’s such a pain.’ This was rather a weird thing to say about somebody who had stuck up for you. I couldn’t think of an appropriate reply.

‘Beast Hawkins is here,’ I said. It just popped into my head.

‘Thanks for warning me,’ said Oliver. ‘I suppose the Antelopes are going to be trashing every bar in town.’ He sounded rather tired and glum.

‘It must be awful for you, not being in the team.’ I just kind of experimentally floated this comment, to see his reaction. I was so confused about how and why Oliver had left the Antelopes.

‘Well, I didn’t have any say in it,’ said Oliver. ‘If Beast doesn’t like you, you’re history, man.’ I was rather annoyed that he had called me man. I didn’t mind when Donut called me man – in fact that was reassuring – but in Oliver it was unforgivable. Had he not realised that I was a girl? I’d once worn three lipsticks simultaneously in his honour, dammit!

It was interesting, however, that he’d stuck to his story about being sacked by Beast.

At this point we reached the cybercafe and entered it. ‘Fancy a coffee?’ he asked. I nodded. We were going to have a coffee together. This was nearly a date!

‘Cheers, thanks, yeah, whatever,’ I said, trying to sound like a Jane Austen heroine but somehow failing to achieve elegance.

‘How do you like it, white?’ asked Oliver.

‘Yes, please.’

‘Sugar?’

‘No thanks.’

Oliver turned to the girl behind the counter. I hated her already. She was looking at him with passionate longing. OK, he’d only been in the joint ten seconds. But it takes less than that for a shameless hussy to fasten her famished eyes on a love god.

Outwardly I was trying to look cool. But inwardly I was kind of praying. I wasn’t praying for Oliver to suddenly fall for me, exactly, like I would have been a few weeks ago. I was praying that he would reveal a kind of secret loveliness of character that would put all the disturbing things I’d heard about him into perspective. I was praying that he’d say something like,
I’ve been a bit of an idiot this summer – it’s because my dad lost his job and my mum’s been suffering from depression. But they’ve bounced back now, so I’m going to get my act together.

I tried to stop my mind from racing through all these scenarios. I tried to just relax and be happy that we were here. Although Oliver was still a mystery to me, he was at least buying me coffee in a cute cafe by the sea. He turned to me. Our eyes met.

‘Uhhh . . . sorry, but I’ve run out of change,’ he said with an embarrassed wince. ‘You couldn’t – errrr, you wouldn’t mind paying for them, would you?’

‘Of course not!’ I grabbed my purse and did the honours, though I felt a bit surprised that somebody as grown-up as Oliver didn’t have enough in his wallet for a cup of coffee.

There were some little tables in the front part of the cybercafe. All the PCs were in the back, and they were all being used, so we kind of had to sit down at a table together and wait for one to become available. It was as if we were really out on a date.

As I was trying to cram my massive thighs under the table, my knee hit a table leg and a bit of our coffee slopped into our saucers.

‘Oh God!’ I gasped. ‘Sorry! I’m such a clumsy oaf!’ Oliver mopped up the spilled coffee with a paper napkin. I wished he hadn’t done it. Though it did give me a chance to admire his long, sensitive fingers.

‘So, how were the pigs?’ I asked, then suddenly realised I’d asked that already. ‘I mean,
really
,’ I added, trying for playfulness but achieving only insanity. ‘What was the best thing about them? I love pigs.’

‘The best thing?’ Oliver stirred his coffee thoughtfully. ‘I’m not sure . . .’

Another horrible silence opened up, like a gigantic crack across the cafe. Oliver looked moodily out of the window. I was sitting with my back to the door, so I just looked at the wall behind his head. No way was he going to look at me less than I was going to look at him. He wanted to be kind of absent-minded? I would be nonchalant as hell. I even twisted round in my chair. I planned to get my knees out and point them in the direction of north. This would, I was sure, bring him to his senses and remind him how much he secretly adored me. I moved my knees north. They struck the table leg again, spilling more coffee.

‘Hey!’ he said, as if awakened suddenly by somebody not very pleasant. ‘Have you got restless leg syndrome?’

‘Ha ha!’ I tried for a merry laugh, but it came out as a strangled cry of pain. ‘Restless leg syndrome is my main hobby these days.’ I had no idea what I was talking about, and nor did he.

There was another silence which lasted five thousand years.

‘So how were the pigs –
really
?’ I persisted. Oh my God! I’d said it again! I hadn’t meant to say it, but it seemed my brain could only repeat things. I stole a glance at Oliver’s handsome face. It was, as usual, thoughtful, aristocratic, with very long eyelashes veiling his dark grey eyes.

‘To be honest,’ he sighed, ‘I didn’t go to the pig farm. I just told Martin that because I needed some . . . you know, space. I don’t think I’m going to be a vet, actually.’

‘Oh, really?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you like animals, then?’

‘It’s not a question of liking animals,’ said Oliver, a bit irritably. ‘It’s just . . . they don’t do it for me, you know. I think I might become a pathologist.’

‘What’s a pathologist?’ I didn’t like the sound of it. ‘Would you have to mess with dead bodies?’

‘Yeah, but it’s to do with disease, kind of . . . diagnosing it,’ said Oliver. ‘Laboratory work.’ Suddenly he leant back, and did a huge yawn. God, I was boring. Although he was also clearly bored by his future career. ‘I might specialise in haematology,’ he added. ‘I’m quite interested in blood.’

Oh my God! Oliver was a vampire! I’d always thought he looked a bit gothic, and now he was telling me he’d rather mess around with dead bodies and blood than tickle adorable living pigs and treat them when they got their piggy flus and stuff.

‘Sorry,’ he smiled a thin, synthetic smile, ‘I’m shattered. We were up most of the night in a bar.’

WE???
That short word, in all its terrible bold and italic, entered my heart like an enormous spear hurled by a very brawny man in supernatural tartan rags. We? We
who
?
Who
we
?
I could not bear to mention the word ‘we’. I would never use it again, even when wanting to visit the lavatory. I would loftily and elegantly ignore it. I would pretend it didn’t exist as a word.

Heroically pulling the spear out of my heart, I decided that I, too, would have elegant fatigue. I leant back. I yawned. I stretched. And disastrously, as my mouth was wide open, from nowhere, my throat made a
wurricle
,
wurricle
,
wurricle
sound like rain running down a drainpipe.

‘Whoops, sorry,’ I said, with a revolting lack of style. ‘Excuse me! So – which bars do you recommend?’

At this point my mobile rang. It was Chloe. Normally I would have felt nothing but hatred if Chloe had called while I was on a date with Oliver. But it had become clear that we weren’t on a date: we were waiting for a free computer.

‘Chloe!’ I cried cheerily. ‘What’s the . . .’

‘Come quick! Come quick!’ she yelled. ‘There’s a fight!’

‘Where are you?’ I demanded, heart lurching in panic.

‘I dunno,’ she gasped. ‘It’s got a silver door . . .’ and the phone went dead.

‘Oh my God!’ I gasped. Oliver seemed to cringe slightly. ‘Chloe’s in trouble! She says there’s a fight! In a place with a silver door!’ I stood up, panicking desperately and feeling totally helpless.

‘A silver door?’ He frowned, and shrugged. ‘Sounds a bit . . . Harry Potter.’ How could he make a joke about it at a time like this? He was so clearly not going to get up, no matter how desperately I yearned for him to help.

‘Do you know a place with a silver door?’ I asked the girl behind the bar. She shrugged. She was blatantly waiting for me to go, so she could have Oliver to herself. At this point his phone rang. He fumbled with it like a man half asleep.

‘Hullo?’ he said. ‘No, I’ll be back soon . . . I’m just going to check my email . . . I’ll be back in a minute . . . Just bumped into a friend . . .’

An overwhelming feeling of nausea flooded over me. ‘I have to go and rescue Chloe,’ I said, helplessly and hopelessly, sounding like a rosy-cheeked heroic nerd in a children’s book. Oliver didn’t move. He just sat there, kind of shrugging tragically as if none of this was his fault. He clearly wasn’t interested in Chloe’s dilemma unless she was a microbe on a slab.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, finishing his coffee. ‘I’ll have to go – Morgan’s just woken up. Good luck and stuff . . .’

‘See you!’ I hissed, and whirled out into the night. Tears burst from my cheeks as I legged it up the road towards the town centre. Oliver was not alone in Newquay! He was with a horrible Morgan! And together they formed a vile and disgusting WE! And all he could offer me in this, my hour of need, was ‘good luck and stuff’.
And I’d even had to pay for his goddam coffee!