Kisses for Lula (17 page)

I stared blankly at my computer, wondering about Mum’s plans. On the screen in front of me was the uni home page, with the different faculties all listed down the left-hand side.
Hmm
, I thought.
Sophie does drama club here, doesn’t she?

Even though they’re at school, not university, the Hambledon pupils using the uni drama department have, like,
headshots
, and
portfolios
, and
CVs
and things. And because their classes are held here on campus, maybe . . . Clicking on Drama, I moved quickly through the different menus.

And there she was, along with a load of people from all the schools in Hambledon, including Barbie from PSG, and – wait for it! – Vincent Harrow, son of Harry Harrow, the developer who wanted to ride roughshod over Coven’s Quarter. I looked at the photo of Vincent. It didn’t take a genius to suss that Sophie would fall for this guy:

1. He was strangely attractive.

2. He was as goth as you could get without facial piercings.

And if he needed to get something sorted for his dad, then there was a motive, and opportunity, for document
snatching. Who could tell me if Vince and Soph were an item?

I logged out and grabbed my bag to hare off to the 300s on the second floor in search of Arns.

‘Er, Tallulah?’ came a voice from behind me.

Stinky Mike.

I forced a smile.

‘Yes, Mike?’

‘Could I have a quick word? I see you’re on your way –’

‘Sure,’ I said quickly.

‘I was just wondering. I feel so’ – he shifted from foot to foot – ‘
helpless
about the missing documents. I thought maybe we could help your mother find them?’

I blinked in disbelief. ‘Uh,
how
?’ I asked, on the brink of downright rudeness.

His eyes narrowed, and I smiled hurriedly. ‘I was just wondering about Sophie,’ he murmured. ‘Could she have mistakenly filed something from your mother’s office maybe? You know her better than most. She’s in some of your classes at school, isn’t she?’

I was thrown. Was Mike really trying to be helpful, or just pointing a finger? ‘I don’t know her that well,’ I replied grudgingly. ‘It
would
be good to know who she’s very friendly with.’

‘It would,’ Mike agreed.

We looked each other in the eye.

‘Look,’ Mike sighed. (Yowzer. That blast of breath was not pleasant. We’re talking a garlic salami with fishpaste combo.) ‘If those documents don’t come to light soon, I’m going to be in just as much of a tight spot as your mother – you know, as I’m second in command.’ He looked out at me from under his wiry eyebrows with a yellow-toothed grimace. ‘Can you find out anything about Sophie?’

‘The security footage will confirm everything, though, won’t it?’ I suggested mildly.

Mike didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Sure it will,’ he said. ‘But further proof would be good.’

‘I’ll make a few calls,’ I replied.

(I’ve ALWAYS wanted to say that for real!)

It was all quiet in the 300s when I finally got up there. I checked every stack, but Arns was nowhere to be found. I texted Alex instead. My watch said three p.m. Two hours till home time. Trapped here until then. I ground my teeth in frustration, and unscrewed my pot of VapoRub. Right. I’d have to go and slump in the 600s. Stare at my lardy navel for a while. Put some VapoRub on it. Maybe go and see if Jessica Hartley and Jason Ferman were still snogging down in the 000s. Or, seeing as they were staying clear, photocopy my nostrils. Hey, that could be fun. Maybe I’d do that first.

In the end I checked on the snoggers before I went
anywhere else. I wanted to research head angles. My hopes for the date with Ben were high.

Jason and Jessica were thankfully still at it when I got there, but all I could see was the back of Jessica’s head. I was about to creep down the next stack to get a profile look at them between shelves when I saw where Jason’s hand was.

Yikes!

I bolted.

Wasn’t that, like, tenth base?

In my headlong flight from perversion in the book stacks I ran smack bang into a hard and bony ribcage.

‘Wheck!’ I yelped.

‘Erghupf!’ said Arns, winded.

‘What the frik are you doing?’ I hissed. ‘We’ve got to get out of here!’

‘Jessica Hartley and Jason Ferman?’ he croaked.

‘You don’t want to know!’

I hustled down to the photocopy room and Arns limped behind, wheezing and cursing all the way.

‘Oh, stop it!’ I commanded as we burst into the copy room. ‘Pull yourself together.’

He fell gratefully into one of those plastic bucket-shaped seats on spindly metal legs and it collapsed predictably to one side, leaving him sprawled on the ground.

I laughed.

Correction.

I
howled
. Until tears ran.

‘You are not normal,’ muttered Arns.

I staggered over to help him up and he ankle-tapped me just as I bent over to grab his outstretched hand. I went down hard, but skilfully got his shoulder blade with my killer right elbow.

‘AAAAAAAAAA!’ he yelled.

That just finished me. I was laughing so much I couldn’t breathe and he was swearing, trying to get up from under me. I bet we would have come to blows if Tweedy Mabel hadn’t tottered in.

‘Well!’ she huffed. ‘Goodness me!’

I couldn’t speak.

‘Mabel!’ shouted Arns. ‘Thank God! Please get her off me!’

So not fair!

Mabel turned tweeded tail and ran.

‘Arns,’ I said, getting to my feet hurriedly, and straightening my clothes. ‘Have you ever seen Sophie Wenger hanging out with Vincent Harrow?’

‘Not since Debra Hansen’s birthday party.’

‘Oh yes?’ I sat down carefully in the bucket chair. It held.

‘A scary selection of those drama-club girls were trying to get Vinnie to do a strip tease –’

‘No way!’

‘Indeed way. You need to get out more, Lula. Even I know about this. Your friend Alex was very disapproving.’

‘I had the pox. Didn’t go anywhere that weekend.’

‘You didn’t miss much. Debra’s parents came home just as those girls threw Vinnie in the pool. He was really peed off. Mascara and eyeliner everywhere.’

‘Very goth.’

‘Wet goth. Bad hair.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘I believe Sophie grabbed Harrow Jr’s nipples through the wet T-shirt at one point.’

‘Ew.’

‘What’s relevant?’

‘Hm?’

‘Why are you asking about the drama clubbers?’

‘Vinnie
Harrow
?’

‘Duh.’ Arnold slapped his forehead. ‘Harrow Construction. Who would know for sure whether Sophie and Vincent are on speaking terms?’

‘Alex,’ I said. ‘I’ve already texted her.’

Arnold nodded and pulled out his phone. He probably had a hundred unread texts from Mona. I checked my watch: 3.25 p.m. So much time to kill. And I couldn’t very well copy nostrils with Arnold around. I went back to worrying about my chances with Ben Latter and whether I’d better reconsider The List.

‘How old do you think Billy Diggle is?’ I asked him suddenly.

Arns looked taken aback. He shoved his phone in his jeans pocket and stared at me blankly.

‘Is he too young to have kissed anyone yet?’ I persisted.

A familiar noise filled the room.

‘I think that’s your Mona Phona ringing,’ I said.

Arnold took the call while I tried to remember which year Billy had started at secondary school. Oh, frik.
Had
he started at secondary school?

Arns hung up with a smile. ‘She loves me,’ he sighed blissfully.

‘Please, please, boil your head,’ I begged.

I checked my watch again, sighed, got up from the chair and photocopied my nostrils. I had no dignity left, after all.

When Arns’s phone buzzed with, like, the billionth text of the day, I headed down to the staffroom. In the back of my mind was a persistent niggle about whether Mum had got anything out of Personnel, but somehow I just wanted the whole issue to go away. I suddenly had an urge for some quiet time and packed up to leave.

Back at the homestead I pulled myself over the back gate and went straight to the cellar doors. The key turned noiselessly. I pushed in through the right-side door and
stretched in a tentative hand to find the light switch.

A blaze of light and there he was. Oscar. 1971 Morris Minor Traveller. Beeyoodiful. My pride and joy. I felt a rush of gladness and pulled the door closed behind me. There was something calming about being down here just beneath the house. The creaking planks overhead were the floorboards of the rooms above, the walls around me part of the solid foundations of our home. Dust and grit were thick on the ground, but that didn’t matter too much in the world of motor mechanics, unless you were in the habit of dropping spark plugs. Most of Oscar’s engine block was on a small workbench to the right of him, waiting for the gasket I couldn’t find or afford, but I stepped round that and slid into the front seat. I breathed in happily, a smell of wood polish and old leather still lingering inside, and promptly sneezed so hard I was glad my nostrils had been photocopied in case reconstructive surgery was necessary. ‘Bless me,’ I moaned quietly, wiping my eyes.

‘What was that?’ I heard just above me.

I jumped so high my right knee whacked the bottom of the steering wheel. Ffff!

‘Cellar door is probably open downstairs,’ said Mum. ‘Tallulah has been a bit scatty lately.’

I was about to yell up to them in outraged denial when Dad said, ‘Not scatty enough not to notice how terrible I’m feeling. Or what’s really going on.’

I kept quiet. Really going on? Okay, what
was
really going on?

‘You’re doing fine, Spenser. Just keep it together. Please. I don’t want the girls getting hurt by any of this.’

The hairs on my forearms prickled up and slowly my whole body went cold. My nose itched again, but the next sneeze vanished when I blinked hard and angrily.

‘I don’t think I can do it, Anne.’

There was a scuffle sound, like Mum suddenly moving a little away, and that must have been right because her next words were muffled and quavery. ‘Don’t you dare, Spenser. After everything we’ve been through . . . You just fix this, you hear? Fix it! Our girls . . . They’re so impressionable now. Teenagers – and little Blue! Who knows –’

More scuffling.

Dad saying, ‘Now, Anne, come on. I don’t –’

I didn’t hear the next bit, until Mum started raising her voice. ‘. . . all under pressure. Don’t even think . . . what’s with . . . Freya?’

Dad muttered something back. I couldn’t hear Mum’s reply, but my heart flashed hard and cold as stone at my father’s next words:

‘I can’t be there for you, Anne.’ Steps away. ‘. . . so sorry.’

Mum: ‘I understand, Spenser.’

What?

WHAT?

She shouldn’t be
understanding
him. She should be beating him into a pulp, pips and all.

How
could he betray her?

How
could he blithely shrug off any responsibility to support us?

How
could this man, so unfeeling, so offhand, be my
dad
?

Suddenly the cellar didn’t feel cosy and secret and refuge-like at all. I felt as if I were trapped in an igloo miles beneath the surface of the earth, desperate to get out. But there was no way I could leave now. Not until Mum and Dad had moved away, further into the house, and I could exit through the back and come in through the front, like I wish I had in the first place.

I hugged my arms to my body and curled low over Oscar’s wide wooden steering wheel, tears splashing on to the polished walnut and spattering the embroidered hearts on my jeans till they turned so dark and soggy you couldn’t see them at all.

Chapter Fifteen

My self-piteous, shambling arrival at the front door an hour later coincided with Pen’s high-on-life version.

She batted my tremulous key away with her own steadily aimed one, and slammed into the house in record time.

‘Hello, losers!’ she yelled as she shrugged off her jacket and dropped her bag to the floor.

‘Find anything to wear this morning?’ I asked when she sashayed to the kitchen in my low-rise jeans and skinny-me shirt, adorned with tiny pearl beads and flowers that
I
had personally sewn on.

She turned in the doorway and lowered her left lid in a sultry wink. ‘Thanks, darlin’,’ she drawled, rolling a shoulder and glancing down at her ensemble. ‘Angus came back from the city this morning. He said I’m the best thing he’s seen all week. I might get you to do me some more of these funky vintage pieces.’

I dropped my bag with a deadpan expression and stomped menacingly towards her.

‘Take my clothes off now,’ I growled.

‘Ooooh, I’m soooo scared,’ wailed Pen, and she
disappeared into the kitchen.

Now, do not underestimate me, dear reader. Most would have sprinted after her and ripped the clothing from her thankless form, but not I. Oh no ho ho. I slipped into Pen’s bedroom and quietly removed her mobile from her bag. If my failing parents would not take a firm hand, then it was up to me to Instil Discipline. No sister of mine would run rampant about the place, not on my watch. Nuh-uh.
Bring it on, Pen, for I am ready
.