Leap of Faith (2 page)

Cameron managed to wave at me before he attached himself to Megs’ face. They got down to some seriously squelchy snogging. I hope I don’t sound like I’m gargling with yoghurt when I kiss.

‘Lot of couples at the moment,’ Westy said. He was watching Megs and Cam like they were fish in a tank. Snoggy fish. ‘You ever think about getting another boyfriend, Faith?’

I didn’t want to tell Westy that actually I’ve got a thing for Ethan so I just said, ‘I’m happy as I am for now.’

Westy looked thoughtful. ‘So . . . you’re not seeing anyone at the moment?’

‘Nope.’ Now that I’d started thinking about Ethan I couldn’t stop. I wondered if he was out with Dawn. ‘Anybody else coming round?’ I asked Westy in a very laid-back and casual way.

‘I rang everybody,’ Westy said. ‘Lily didn’t answer her phone.’

‘She’s gone to see Arif,’ I said. ‘She’s spent most of the holidays on the train going to visit him. It’s a miracle she hasn’t ended up in Edinburgh.’

‘That is lucky,’ he sucked his teeth like a disapproving old man. Compared to Lily, Westy seems quite sane and stable. ‘And Angharad is at the library.’

I nodded. I’ve long suspected that, unlike the rest of us, Angharad doesn’t watch TV or sleep, she just fuels up at libraries and museums.

‘Eliot says he’s got homework to do.’

We both pulled a face.

‘But Ethan said he’d come.’

‘Oh.’ I wasn’t sure what I thought about that. I hadn’t seen him since I had a ringside seat for his big kiss with Dawn.

Megs opened one eye, mid-snog, to exchange a look with me. While I admire her multi-tasking, it was fairly disgusting. Still it was quite a sympathetic one-eyed, mid-slurp look, so I’ll forgive her.

Westy got tired of watching Megs and Cam and decided to show me his collection of fake body parts. He particularly enjoyed modelling some massive fake ears with droopy lobes. ‘I look just like my Grandad,’ he said. ‘Do you want to see my severed head?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll go and get it. My mum’s a bit funny about me leaving it lying around. Once, she dialled two nines before she realised it was Reginald.’

‘Reginald?’

‘Yeah, that’s his name.’

So he’d just scooted upstairs to fetch his rubber head friend when the doorbell rang. Megs had the good grace to stop chomping at Cameron to say, ‘I’ll get it.’

I shook my hair back and tried to look like I didn’t fancy anyone. Or if I did that it was someone very charismatic and rich who fancied me right back.

I heard the door open.

‘Oh,’ Megs said really loudly. ‘Hi
Ethan
, and this must be your friend
Dawn
.’

I think this was Megs’s subtle attempt to give me time to prepare for the fact that Ethan had brought his new girlfriend along. I don’t know what she thought I was going to do in the seven seconds I had before they appeared in the room. Climb out the cat flap? I mean I may have exited through a kitchen window once before, but if your so-called friends barricade you in the kitchen at a party when you’ve drunk too much Sprite, there’s either the sink or the back garden. Anyway, I wasn’t sure what the cat flap / kitchen window situation was so instead I just sat there.

I wanted to give the impression that I really didn’t care, that I was totally relaxed and completely cool with everything. I leant back and lowered my eyelids. Just as the sitting room door was opening Cameron nudged me, ‘Are you nodding off?’

I jerked forward in what I can only hope was an attractive fashion.

Ethan and Dawn were right there in front of me.

Holding hands.

Looking attractive and happy.

Honestly, some people have got no idea of the polite way to behave when they’re a guest in someone’s house.

‘Hi Faith,’ Ethan said. ‘You know Dawn, right?’

I smiled. ‘Hey, Dawn.’ I had to concentrate quite hard to not call her Yawn or Spawn or any of the other hilarious names I’ve thought of for her. ‘I’ve seen you around. You were at the club night at our school, weren’t you?’

She smiled back. Hers was the proper kind that you actually mean. ‘Yeah, and I kind of gate-crashed your birthday party a bit! Hope you didn’t mind.’

‘No, course not.’ For once I was grateful that my runaway mouth was saying the exact opposite to what I was thinking. I wondered if it was at my party that Dawn and Ethan started getting friendly.

Ethan turned round. ‘And you know Cam.’

Cam grinned.

‘And you may remember Megan from such events as The Party We Just Talked About and the whole Opening The Door Thing.’

Megs gave her a pretty chilly nod. She was being offish for my sake. She’s a good friend.

‘And I’m Westy,’ said Westy, coming back into the room. He stuck out his hand but there was a rubber head on it. Everyone looked at the head.

‘And this is Reginald,’ Westy said.

‘That’s a nice head,’ Dawn said.

Westy beamed at her.

The happy couple sat down on the sofa. ‘Cam is Megan’s boyfriend,’ Ethan explained to Dawn.

‘That’s what Megs’s Grammy calls me. Isn’t it Megs? She can’t remember my name so she says “Megan’s young man! Wash those cups up! Megan’s boy! Are you going to help your girlfriend on with her coat, or did your mother never teach you manners?”’

‘It’ll make things easier when Megan replaces you,’ Ethan said.

We all laughed, except Cam who punched Ethan on the arm.

‘You do get introduced like that a lot though, don’t you Cam?’ I said. ‘To Megs’s millions of cousins and when we go to parties and that. Are you tired of being defined in terms of Megan? Do you feel like footballers’ girlfriends do – like you’ve got no identity of your own? Like you’re just “Megan’s boyfriend”?’

Cameron stared at me, then looked at Megan. ‘But I am her boyfriend.’

‘Yeah, but Megs is the more famous one of you two isn’t she? People know who Megs is. Do you feel diminished?’

Cameron pulled a face. ‘Well, I didn’t used to.’

Dawn laughed. ‘Maybe you should ask Megan for an allowance, Cam. You know, to spend on diamonds and high heels.’

Ethan smiled at her. I started wishing I’d crawled out of the cat flap when I had the chance.

‘I don’t wear girls’ shoes!’ Cam was getting a bit worked up.

Megs patted him on the knee. ‘They’re taking the micky.’

‘Yeah, well . . .’ Cam scowled. ‘Westy dressed up like a girl in drama once!’

Westy nodded Reginald in agreement. ‘I’m quite good at plaits,’ he said proudly.

The conversation ground to a halt there and we all stared at each other.

‘So you’ll be able to get in some drum practice while your parents are away,’ Ethan said to Westy.

‘Yep, I’ve been working on a new song. It’s called “Killer Custard Cream”.’

‘Sounds good. Dawn plays the drums.’

‘Cool,’ I said. The fact that I meant it made me feel a bit droopy. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear any more of Dawn’s accomplishments so I said, ‘Can we have a cup of tea, Westy?’

‘Yeah, course.’ He got up.

‘I’ll help you,’ I said.

The kitchen was very untidy. Every surface was covered with used plates and cups. Dirty saucepans and a frying pan were stacked on the cooker.

‘You need to do a bit of washing up,’ I said.

‘Yep, I don’t think anyone’s done it since my parents left.’

‘When did they leave?’

Westy squinted a bit. ‘It’s Saturday today, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. So how long have they been gone?’

‘About an hour and a half.’

‘What on earth? How have you managed to make all this mess in that time?’

‘It was my brother’s idea. A load of his mates turned up and he said we should have a fry up.’

‘Let’s have a cup of tea and then maybe I can help you sort it out.’

It was a job to get the kettle under the tap because the sink was so full of plates but I managed to fill it.

‘Cups . . . cups . . .’ Westy said. He looked helplessly around the kitchen and started yanking open cupboard doors.

‘Doesn’t have to be bone china,’ I said. ‘Anything will do.’

He opened a drawer. ‘I can offer you a ladle or an egg cup.’

He was starting to pink up with embarrassment, so I said, ‘Let’s just rinse a few of these out, shall we?’

But the group of mugs on the counter were full of some sort of tar like substance and several of them had what looked like fish scales floating in them. So I emptied out the sink and gave them a proper scrub.

Eventually we had six cups of tea to take back to the sitting room.

‘You took your time,’ Megs said. ‘What were you two doing out there?’

Dawn looked from me to Westy.

Westy turned pink. I attempted to discretely strangle Megan with her own legs. There was a bit of a tussle and Megs said, ‘Cam! Do something!’

Cam blinked in surprise. I’m not sure he’d noticed that Megs and I were wrestling. ‘Stop cuddling my girlfriend, Faith.’

I gave her one last Chinese burn and let her go. But only because my tea was getting cold.

Cam seemed worn out by his misguided attempts to please Megs. He flopped back in his chair and said, ‘I’m hungry. Westy, can I have something to eat?’

‘Sure. Help yourself.’

Cam went to the kitchen and we talked about going back to school. Dawn said her school is really strict. I told her that if their head evil dictator ever needs replacing they could have Miss Ramsbottom for no charge.

Cam reappeared eating cereal out of a teapot with a medicine spoon.

‘If we’re going to get to the cinema in time we should probably leave now,’ Ethan said to Dawn.

I decided to study Reginald’s alarming eyebrows as a distraction.

‘It was nice to meet you all,’ Dawn said. And off they went. Holding hands again in a totally unnecessary fashion.

I exhaled.

Westy came back from seeing them out. ‘What did you think of Dawn?’ he asked.

Megs screwed up her nose in an unimpressed fashion.

Cam shrugged.

‘Yeah,’ said Westy. ‘She was a bit quiet. I like my girls loud.’

‘They’d have to be loud to get a word in edgeways,’ Cam said.

But the horrible truth about Dawn is that she is not an awful person. She wasn’t a bit unpleasant. She didn’t even smell bad.

She and Ethan will probably have dark-haired, twinkly-eyed, delightfully sarcastic children together.

SUNDAY 22ND APRIL

School starts again tomorrow. Seriously. Again. It just keeps coming round. I complained about this to Mum.

‘It’s like the circle of life, isn’t it?’ she said.

This is typical of my mother’s misguided hippy nonsense.

‘It’s not at all like the circle of life,’ I said. ‘They’re completely different things. The circle of life is one lion dying and another lion becoming king.’ I poked her to make sure she was listening. ‘The circle of life is what you say to old people to try and make them feel better about their imminent death. It’s got nothing to do with school. School is more like that big round rock in Indiana Jones, the one that chases you out whichever way you turn and won’t go away.’

‘I wish you’d view your education as an opportunity rather than a punishment.’

‘And I wish that the royal family would reveal that they’d just discovered an evil chamber maid switched me with your real daughter at birth. You’ve got to manage your expectations, Mum.’

Then she threatened to manage me by cutting off my pocket money so I gave up on trying to explain the drudgery of my life to her.

MONDAY 23RD APRIL

There is no doubt that school is a criminal waste of my time and talent, and the teachers are clearly sadists who have failed at real life and have returned to the comforting environment of their youth, (which smells of gym mats and school dinners and sweaty changing rooms and Icky Vicky Blundell’s insect repellent perfume) so they can boss about poor defenceless teenagers in order to pretend that they are in control of something.

Still, it is quite a nice place for a chat with your friends.

In between the suffering and the mental torture and all that.

LATER

Speaking of suffering and torture I bumped into Icky on my way to registration. I say bumped into, but actually she crossed three lanes of fast moving girl-traffic in order to deliberately crash into me.

‘Hold on, Vicky,’ I said. ‘I appreciate you’re desperate to smother me in affection, but if you really want a cuddle, you’re going to have to get in line behind my family, friends and several dozen fit boys.’

‘Yeah, right,’ she sneered. ‘As if you could get someone hot anywhere near you. Finn legged it as soon as he could, didn’t he?’

‘Actually, I think you’ll find that I ended that relationship.’

She gave me a sceptical look. I showed what a noble person I am by refraining from walloping her.

‘Can’t handle the truth, can you?’ she said screwing up her evil button nose. ‘Don’t worry I’ve told everyone for you. Everybody in this school and at Radcliffe knows that Finn dumped you because you smell of rotten fish.’

What a cow. I split up with Finn weeks ago, but Icky obviously can’t deal with the fact that an attractive boy really liked me, so she carries on spreading her horrible lies. I held my punching arm tight to my side.

‘Ah,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘Poor little Vicky, my pity for you is so strong that I am going to let you in on something special. Really, your mother should have shared this with you, but I imagine it’s hard for her to look at your spiteful monkey face without weeping, as she realises that her hopes of having a daughter who isn’t filled with hate and rage and bad taste in cheap jewellery are dead now. But I’ll tell you the secret . . .’

I leaned in close and even though Icky was glowering at me she couldn’t help instinctively moving a little nearer.

‘If you’re constantly thinking you can smell rotten fish,’ I whispered. ‘Then it’s time to have a bath.’

And I sped off before she started shooting out shrill squeals like a very angry firework.

I arrived at our tutor room hoping for a more relaxing chat, but what I got was Lily saying, ‘They’re not going to run out of Marmite, are they?’

And I realised that what I’d missed over Easter was a daily dose of Lily silliness.