About a Girl

  ‘And so, yes, I’m so sorry, Mr Bennett …’ I was finally close enough to hear Paige as she got to the end of her story, hands pressed against her chest, painfully earnest look on her face. ‘And Mr Bennett. It’s all just been such a terrible mix-up. Obviously we’ll be dealing with Miss Brookes when we return to England, but, really, I just wanted to reassure you both that Gloss had absolutely no idea about any of this and we will do whatever it takes to make things right.’

  ‘Well, well, well.’ Al stood up and gave me the biggest, sunniest grin I had ever seen. ‘You weren’t kidding when you said you weren’t who we thought you were.’

  I stood still at the top of the stairs, very, very aware that I was only wearing my knickers and a badly buttoned-up man’s shirt with last night’s make-up smeared all over my face. Kekipi gave me an elaborate wink, a silent clap, and then motioned for me to wipe the mascara smears away from under my eyes.

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’ I took a step forward and then froze, crossing my arms in front of me, feet rooted to the spot. Paige turned an icy glare my way and sat down at the table opposte Artie. He mostly looked confused. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  ‘You can say you’re sorry to our lawyers,’ Paige intoned without turning to look at me. ‘Or the police. I’m not sure exactly how this is going to work.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Sullivan.’ For some reason, Al seemed to think this was all terribly funny. He was actually laughing. ‘I don’t think there’s any need for that. Besides, I’m not entirely convinced our friend ? Tess, is it?’ I nodded and wished very hard for the earth to open and swallow me whole. ‘I’m not sure Tess has actually broken any laws. Besides, if I hadn’t made her acquaintance, I wouldn’t have been able to sit down with Mr Miller yesterday and do your interview in the first place.’

  ‘You … you did an interview?’ Paige’s head spun so quickly, her perfect blonde hair was just a blur. ‘With Nick?’

  ‘I left you so many voicemails for you to call me back.’ I couldn’t remember a time when I’d felt more frustrated with myself. ‘I emailed you.’

  ‘And we took new photos,’ he confirmed. ‘I think they probably turned out quite well, didn’t they, Tess?’

  ‘They did,’ I said quietly. ‘I can show you? They’re on my laptop. I already sent them to my agent. I thought you’d want to send them to Steph yourself.’

  She shook her head slowly, face like thunder.

  ‘I tried to call you loads of times, but you didn’t answer,’ I explained. ‘And then I couldn’t find you.’

  ‘And I couldn’t find you last night,’ she replied tartly. ‘But that’s because you were busy.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Artie finally found his voice to interrupt. ‘I think I’m missing something here. So?’

  ‘No.’ I took another tiny step forward. ‘I’m Tess. And again, really, really sorry.’

  ‘In all honesty, it doesn’t much matter to me,’ he replied. ‘I’d just like to know what is actually going in the magazine. My interview is running, yes? Father?’

  ‘Artie, I really want to make things right with us,’ Al said with a sigh, pouring a cup of coffee and beckoning me over to the table to sit beside him. I tiptoed over, careful not to flash my knickers, and sat down, keeping my knees firmly together. Paige looked livid. If her hair had been shorter, I was pretty sure we would have been able to see steam coming out of her ears. ‘I miss your mum and I miss you. But I had Mr Miller email me his interview with you, and, I won’t lie, son, it’s bloody awful. So, no, I don’t think they’re going to be using it.’

  The tension round the table could have been cut with a knife. Paige looked like she wanted to throttle me, Artie looked like he wanted to punch out his dad, and Kekipi looked as though he wanted to leap onto the nearest chair and burst into song. Keeping quiet in the corner was killing him.

  ‘You agreed that we would do this interview to announce your retirement from the company,’ Artie reminded his father, pulling on the end of his tie as his face grew redder and redder. ‘Are you telling me that’s no longer the case?’

  ‘I am still retiring,’ Al replied calmly. ‘The business is all yours. I made you a promise and I will never, ever go back on a promise to you. But I agreed to the interview because Dee-Dee asked me to do it. It was your idea to use it to announce my retirement. Not mine. However, it’s done. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Who’s Dee-Dee?’ I asked when Artie didn’t say anything in return.

  ‘Delia, my god-daughter,’ Al explained, not taking his eyes off his son. I was certain we were all a bit worried he might have a stroke. ‘She owns the magazine, um, Gloss.’

  ‘Oh.’ I stole a quick glance at Paige, who appeared to have gone catatonic. ‘Couldn’t put a good word in for me, could you?’

  ‘I certainly could.’ He laughed again and it was a reassuring, booming noise. ‘Much easier now I know your real name.’

  ‘If you’ll all excuse me.’ Artie pushed his chair away from the table and gave a curt nod. ‘I need to make a few calls. Father, I’ll speak to you later.’

  ‘We’re having dinner together, whether you like it or not,’ Al called after his retreating son. He turned back to us. ‘His mother would be furious if she could see us bickering like this.’

  ‘You’ll fix it, though?’ I picked up my coffee cup, eyes still trained on Paige, just in case she decided to jam a screwdriver in my neck.

  ‘I hope so,’ he said, picking up a piece of bread and cheese and putting the entire thing in his mouth, artfully avoiding dropping crumbs on the beard. ‘But I think we both know these things can be very complicated.’

  ‘I’m going to pack.’ Paige excused herself. ‘Thank you for being so understanding, Mr Bennett.’

  ‘Paige.’ I jumped up and grabbed hold of her hand. She snatched it back before I could get a good grip. ‘Just please let me explain.’

  ‘What’s to explain?’ she asked, and for the first time, she didn’t look angry, just really, really sad. ‘I trusted you. You lied to me. You’ve made me look stupid and it’s all worked out beautifully for you, hasn’t it?’

  I had nothing to say.

  ‘You must have learned more than you realized from living with your flatmate,’ she said, tears spilling over her cheeks. ‘You’re a natural, Tess.’

  Sniffing delicately, she jogged down the staircase and onto the beach. I stood there watching her go until she disappeared into her cottage. The slam of the door echoed all the way up to the veranda.

  ‘Oh. My.’ Kekipi declared as the silence became too much. ‘Tell me everything.’

  ‘Kekipi,’ Al said with a warning tone. ‘I don’t think this is the time.’

  ‘It’s absolutely the time – she’s leaving in an hour,’ he argued. ‘Vanessa, Tess. Whatever your name is. Details.’

  ‘I’m only doing the short version,’ I said, sinking back into my seat, face first into my cup of coffee. ‘And after this, I’m just not doing it ever again. So, I have this flatmate called Vanessa …’

  The short version of my story took almost twenty minutes with all of Kekipi’s questions and interruptions. To his credit, Al stayed quiet throughout, only adding the odd tut or sigh to show support. He really was the best stand-in dad a girl could ask for. If Artie decided he didn’t want him, I would totally sign him up.

  ‘But really, I never do things like this ? the Nick thing, the spur-of-the-moment thing, lying in general.’ I chewed on my bottom lip and tried to look as honest as possible. ‘When I was fourteen, me and my friend went to see The Exorcist, even though my mum said I couldn’t, and when we got back, I had to go and wake my mum up because I felt so guilty. I can’t lie. I can’t even tell people they look good in a pair of jeans if they make them look fat.’

  ‘But didn’t you say you work in advertising?’ Kekipi asked, pouring himself a very generous mimosa. ‘Isn’t that professional lying?’

  ‘Exactly, professional lying,’ I pointed out. ‘Completely different
kettle of fish.

  ‘I know you want us to tell you what a terrible person you are and lock you in the stocks at midday,’ Al said, stroking his chin through his beard and sniffing with contemplation. ‘But I’m not entirely convinced of that.’

  ‘Not following,’ I replied. ‘Paige is never going to forgive me for the Nick thing. Nick is never going to forgive me for any of it. And that’s before I even try to unravel the mess back home.’

  ‘If they’re real friends, they’ll forgive you,’ he argued. ‘And if they don’t, you have to accept that. As you get older, you’ll realize there isn’t enough time to waste regretting the things you’ve done. Apologize, explain, wait for them to come to you. You can’t rush forgiveness, but you can’t waste your life waiting for it either.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re being so understanding,’ I said. ‘I wish I didn’t have to leave.’

  ‘I’d tell you to stay, but I think you need to go back and work a few things out,’ Al replied. ‘And come back when you’ve worked out who you’re going to be next.’

  ‘I think I’d just like to go back to being Tess.’ I raked my hands through my hair, pulling it all over one shoulder and slowly working away at the tangles. ‘I wish I could just go back to how it was before.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Al smiled. ‘You weren’t any happier then than you are now.’

  ‘True,’ I admitted. ‘But things were a lot easier.’

  ‘Take a breath,’ Al advised. ‘Work out what you really want before you do anything. And not what you think you should want or what other people tell you to want. Really think about it, Tess. Now’s the time.’

  It seemed strange that someone should be telling me to think about myself after everything I’d done.

  ‘Sometimes we have to try on a few different personalities before we find ourselves,’ he said. ‘Admittedly, not everyone does it in such an extreme way as you, and they usually get it out of the way a couple of years after university, but still. I think you’ve probably learned something.’

  ‘Odds are good,’ I agreed. ‘Still trying to work out exactly what, though.’

  ‘You’ll get there,’ he said, cutting himself some more cheese. ‘You’ll get there.’

  Even after Al’s words of wisdom, I felt heavy and exhausted when I got back to the cottages. Kekipi had promised to ride with me to the airport, presumably just to squeeze out more information on the Nick front, but I wasn’t complaining – I was looking forward to the company. It would be nice to stock up on smiling faces while there was still one around. But before I could throw all my-slash-Vanessa’s things into my woefully empty suitcase, I had to talk to Nick. I said I’d be five minutes and I’d been ages. Who knew what kind of conclusions he’d come to in my absence.

  I pushed my hair into something approaching a reasonable shape, bit my lips and rubbed my cheeks, well aware that this entrance was about as far removed from my entrance at the waterfall last night as it was possible to be. Gone was the Valentino; gone were the eyelashes and the carefully combed-out curls. Gone was Vanessa. All that was left was Tess. I hoped she was enough.

  I knocked on the door and waited. Nothing. I knocked again, pre-flight and pre-fight anxiety building inside me. When he didn’t answer my third knock, I opened the door and let myself in. It’s what all the cool kids were doing, anyway.

  ‘Nick?’ I called quietly. The cottage was so still, even my softest voice sounded intrusive and rude. ‘Are you there?’

  It was a stupid question. He was gone. All of his things were gone. There wasn’t a single trace of him anywhere in the apartment. His pens, his notebooks, the stack of dog-eared paperbacks I’d knocked over by the couch last night. All gone. I wandered through the rooms, trying to find a memory that would convince me he had been there in the first place. I took a deep breath before opening the bedroom door, hoping I would walk in to find him sleeping, just too tired to hear me knocking. The bedroom was empty, the sheets stripped from the bed, screwed up in a ball and tossed in a corner of the bathroom. Wherever he was now, Nick Miller had left this place as a less-than-happy camper.

  Sinking onto the bare mattress, I ran my hand over the plush fabric and sniffed a little, feeling sorry for myself. It was my own fault, I knew that. I could have told him the truth before things got away from me. I could have told him the first night we were together. I could have told him over dinner at the waterfall. But by then it was too late. And before it was too late, it was too soon. He went from being an arsehole to being everything so quickly, I didn’t have time to catch myself. And now, here I was, sat on his bed, wearing his shirt, wondering where he had gone. Well, I couldn’t say he’d lied about being unreliable, I thought, lying back and imagining him there beside me.

  I just wished I could say I hadn’t lied at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The living room was exactly how I’d left it. The remote control sat on the arm of the chair, the curtains were half drawn, and an empty coffee mug was gathering dust to the left of my foot as I sat, coat still on, hunched up in the middle of the settee. My suitcase, once again hastily packed with Vanessa’s things, was parked by the door, and the entire place was silent and still. Through my overtired, jet-lagged fug, I heard doors slamming and horns blowing outside, people shouting in harsh London accents, buses roaring down the main road and splashing in the rain. Because, of course, it was raining. Staring straight ahead out of the window and onto the chimney pots of my neighbours, I curled my hands back into the sleeves of my coat. It felt like I’d never been away.

  All the way home, I’d tried to think about what Al had said – how I needed to work out what my next move was, who I wanted to be – but I couldn’t move on with myself until I’d fixed everything with everyone else. First, though, right now, I needed to sleep. I tried to summon the energy to take off my coat and drag myself into my bedroom, but it was too hard. I’d checked the devil’s daughter’s room ? nothing had moved in there either, so it looked as though she was still away on her own adventure. There was always the slim chance she’d seen the error of her ways and gone off to become a nun or a Tibetan monk or something. A girl could dream.

  ‘I could just sleep here,’ I whispered, sliding sideways onto the settee until I was completely horizontal, feet still on the floor. ‘Vanessa isn’t here. She won’t know.’

  As my eyes slid shut and I used up my last drop of energy to haul my legs up onto the settee, I heard a rattle at the door. A key in the lock.

  Fuck.

  It was too late to make a run for my bedroom ? there was no way I could get past her in time. I could roll myself into the bathroom and lock the door, but then she’d know I was home for sure. Maybe if I just lay very still on the settee she’d think I was dead already and leave me out for the Alsatians.

  ‘Tess? Are you in there? I can’t get the fucking key to work.’

  Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it wasn’t Vanessa. It was Amy. It was wonderful, foul-mouthed, fantabulous Amy. I’d taken my phone out to call her a thousand times after leaving the cottage – on the way to the airport, during the interminable three-hour wait in the departure lounge and every two minutes on the cab ride back to the flat. But I hadn’t a clue what to say.

  ‘Just push it harder,’ I said as loudly as I could manage, face first in the cushion. ‘It gets stuck when it rains.’ Well, that was something.

  ‘It gets stuck when it’s sunny, it gets stuck when it snows – it’s a piece of shit,’ she shouted. I heard something hard strike something heavy and then a very small person clatter through a doorway and onto the floor. ‘But it doesn’t like being kicked, do you, you bastard?’

  I loved that she talked to my door. I loved that she was sprawled across my living-room floor with a Tesco bag in her hand, effing and blinding at an inanimate object.

  ‘So you’re back then?’ she said, dusting off her skinny jeans and leaping on top of me. ‘I have missed you, you daft mare.’

  ‘I though
t you hated me?’ I tried to find the energy to roll over and hug her, but it wasn’t so easy when she had me pinned. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You don’t get rid of me that easily, Brookes.’ Amy wrapped her arms round the back of my neck, contorted herself into a horizontal piggyback and started dry-humping my legs. If we had been naked and covered in jelly, there would probably have been some money to be made. ‘I lost my temper. I’m the one who’s sorry. Anyway, you’re back! It doesn’t matter!’

  ‘I’m back,’ I repeated, once again freaking out at the overwhelming feeling that I’d never been away. ‘And you’re OK?’

  ‘It was weird that everything happened while you were away,’ she said, shuffling over until we were comfortably spooning. ‘It was like, if you’d been here, we would have gone out and I would have got drunk and you would have been dead sensible, given me a lecture and sorted me out.’

  ‘You’re making me sound like a right barrel of laughs,’ I interrupted. ‘I’m not your mum.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean it in a bad way,’ she said, slapping me round the back of the head. I shut up. ‘I meant you would have made it better in a Tess way, so I wouldn’t really have had to work anything out on my own. But because you weren’t here, I did. And, yeah, I think it’s OK.’