Love Bomb (16 page)

‘Very warm,’ I say.

And that’s how I find myself watching
Bargain Hunt
with Poo. At first we don’t talk much, but when
Relocation, Relocation
comes on I’m forced to agree when she says that Suzie from Wimbledon is a ‘spoilt little cow’ and that she’s totally ‘perving over Phil’.

After lunch – cheese toasties – she says she’s going to let me rest. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asks.

‘Bit better,’ I say.

‘I might be able to help,’ she says. ‘I’m trained in Thai massage.’ She comes and perches on the edge of the sofa. ‘Tell me where it hurts.’

I think about Toby gazing at Pearl, the way their fingers brushed as he handed her the microphone. Without warning I see his naked chest with its four prominent hairs. I stare out of the window. Then, for some reason, I picture Kat and Bill sitting on the beach together, a barbecue glowing in the background.

‘It hurts here,’ I say to Poo, patting my chest. My heart thuds under my fingers. ‘It really aches.’

‘Shut your eyes,’ says Poo.

I do what I’m told and hear her moving around the room, adjusting the blinds. The sofa sinks down by my feet and then I feel cold air as she pulls the duvet back. She starts massaging the bottom of my feet. It should be horrible, but it makes me feel sleepy. ‘I want you to imagine you are standing at a gate,’ she says. Immediately I see a gate in front of me. It’s green, a bit like Nanna and Gramps’s gate. ‘You are stepping into a beautiful garden. You are surrounded by flowers and your feet tread on soft, cool grass. Shut the gate
behind you. Everything that is making you ache has to stay outside.’

Poo is a nutter
, I think to myself. My dad has managed to get himself a nutter girlfriend. But in my head I slam the gate shut on Pearl and Toby and turn into my amazing garden. Poo chatters on about the sun warming my face and pink blossom and birds singing, all the time massaging my feet in tiny circles. Her story ends with me lying in an imaginary hammock, drifting off to sleep … and I really am sleepy.

‘That was nice,’ I whisper. ‘Was that Thai massage?’

‘Not really – just some crazy stuff I made up,’ she says as she covers up my feet. ‘Thought you’d like it.’

Yep
, I think as she slips out of the room. Definitely a nutter. But kind of a nice nutter.

I spend Wednesday reading
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
and eating toast. Rue’s been given the day off.

That evening, I go back up to my room and get out Dennis and read through all of Mum’s letters and Bill’s poems, trying to work out how I could have got it so wrong about Toby. I take
The one where my heart was broken
out of the Puma box and hold it for a minute before resting it against Mum’s picture. Then I feel like listening to a bit of Bettye, so I put on Mum and Dad’s
song, but, to be honest, listening to someone sing about millions of kisses probably isn’t what I need to hear right now.

A
million
kisses? One was bad enough. The tears well up again and I pull Mr Smokey off my feet and hug him to me. He must be fed up with me snuffling into his fur, because he squirms out of my arms, walks along my bookcase then leaps on to my wardrobe. He sits up there and glares at me like I’m a stranger.

‘Sorry,’ I say to him. ‘It’s just I had a really bad first kiss.’

‘Miaow,’ he says.

‘Do you remember that time you’d been eating Rabbit Supermeat Whiskers and you accidentally put your tongue in my mouth? We were nuzzling and then you yawned?’ I pause, but he doesn’t reply. Like me, he’s probably tried to block out the memory. ‘Well,
that
was better than my kiss with Toby.’

I hear a knock at the door. ‘Come in,’ I say, lifting Mr Smokey off the wardrobe.

‘Who were you talking to?’

‘Bill!’ I say, turning round and clutching Mr Smokey to me. I haven’t changed out of my pyjamas for three days. ‘I was talking to Mr Smokey … the only man I trust in the whole world.’ I climb back into bed.

Bill’s wearing a grey T-shirt I’ve never seen before. I wonder if he bought it to impress Kat. He does look quite impressive in it.

‘Kat told me you were hiding in bed,’ he says, ‘so I thought I’d come and cheer you up.’

‘I only hid for a day.’

Bill stands awkwardly in the middle of the room and then sits on the end of my bed. ‘She told me what Toby did.’

‘What exactly did she tell you?’ If she told him about the four chest hairs or the disaster kiss, I will have to kill her.

‘About what happened in assembly,’ he says.

I groan and flop back. ‘So now everyone knows I was publicly dumped.’ Mr Smokey wriggles out of my arms and jumps back on the wardrobe.

‘I brought you this,’ he says, pulling Eric’s Shave a Sheep game out of his rucksack. He knows it’s my favourite Lego game.

‘That’s cool, Bill, but did Kat tell you I
fell over
… and basically Toby didn’t want me in the band because I’m so bad at
kissing
.’ Bill leans forward, rests his chin in his hands and stares at the wardrobe. I don’t blame him for not looking at me. I’m a disaster. ‘I’m never going back to school, Bill,’ I say. ‘I can’t.’

‘Betty,’ he says, not taking his eyes off the wardrobe, ‘
you
are
amazing
and Toby is just not. You’re a starry sky and he’s just someone gazing up at you.’

Kat’s right. Bill is the nicest boy in the world. Why couldn’t I have gone out with someone like him?

I sit on my bed and hug my knees. Bill turns and looks at me. I see his frown and his grey eyes that are exactly the same colour as a stormy sea. Then something happens. Something totally unexpected. For the first time in my life, I see how gorgeous Bill’s face is. Bill has a cutesome face! I’m so amazed my mouth falls open.

‘What?’ he says, staring at me.

I shut my mouth and blink a few times. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Just thinking about …’ I look around the room, ‘this.’ I pick up Mum’s letter from by my bed. ‘This is my
last one
.’

‘What do you mean?’

I tell Bill all about Mum’s letters, about how she hid them in the attic for me and what she put in them. I say that for the first time in my life I feel like I’ve got a mum, and I don’t want to lose her just when I’ve found her. It’s good to talk about the letters … and it stops me from staring at Bill’s face.

‘I’m scared of opening it,’ I say, holding it in my lap. ‘After this there’s nothing left.’

‘Do you want another quotation?’ Bill asks.

‘No way. I’m never ever going out with anyone ever again.’

‘It’s not about him,’ says Bill. ‘It’s about your mum.’ I pass him Dennis and a felt-tip pen. He starts to write. ‘This is Shakespeare and it’s from his most famous love sonnet: “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?”.’

‘Bill, I said no love!’

‘Wait,’ he says, and then he starts to write on a blank page. ‘This is what comes at the end of the poem: “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see; So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” ’ He looks at me. ‘You see, your mum’s letters mean you will always have her, and she will always have you. You’ve got her letters so she’s never going away.’

I look at Mum’s letter. I can’t say anything. I pick up her photo. Her face beams with life. I’ve always been
surrounded by pictures of Mum, but they didn’t make her real. Her letters have made her real.

‘Thanks, Bill,’ I say. ‘Your essay has been more helpful than you can imagine.’

He laughs and opens Shave a Sheep, shaking the Lego bricks over my feet. ‘I’m pleased I could be of assistance,’ he says, then passes me the dice. ‘Are we playing evil rules?’

‘No way,’ I say, looking down because Bill’s eyes are doing funny things to my tummy. ‘We’re playing anarchy rules.’

‘I’m going to whoop your ass, Betty,’ he says. ‘I taught Kat to play the other night and she beat me. I’m out for revenge on a girl.’

‘What?’

‘I taught Kat to play …’ He looks up. ‘She came round to borrow an old wetsuit.’

They’re sharing wetsuits? Why shouldn’t they share wetsuits? Or cuddles … or kisses?

‘Your go,’ I say, throwing the dice at him.

He catches it with one hand. ‘We watched
Labyrinth
,’ he adds.

What?
That is totally
our
film. It’s about a goblin king stealing a baby and we’ve watched it so many times together. I try to hide my jealousy.

‘That’s cool,’ I say.

It’s not cool. It’s the opposite of cool. I look at Bill through my fringe. He’s concentrating on making wool for his sheep.

And that’s the moment I realise I totally like Bill. And I mean
Flynn Rider
like. I fancy my best friend! He looks up at me. A burning blush creeps over my cheeks. In fact, so much blood is rushing to my face that I feel faint. Bill looks at me curiously. Nothing can hide my glowing cheeks … except for a cat jumping off a wardrobe and landing on my head!

‘Best cat ever,’ I whisper into Mr Smokey’s fluffy tummy.

*

When Bill has gone – I beat him three times – confusing boy-thoughts ping pong around in my head. Seeing Bill has done something to the ache. It’s still there, but it’s definitely losing its power. I feel much more like me.

In fact, I feel so much like me that I decide to do some Epic Silent Dancing. It’s a good way to celebrate the discovery that Toby hasn’t completely broken my heart.

I put my headphones on and find ‘I Like to Move It’. I turn the volume up loud and – after checking there are no gaps in the curtains – I press ‘play’.

At first I just stand there. Then my hands start Doing the Sprinkler, and my hips join in with a bit of thrusting … and then I just can’t stop myself. I Moonwalk towards Mr Smokey, do some Hammer Time and end up Kung Fu Fighting Toby’s imaginary face. At the end of the song, I realise I’m smiling so I Epic Silent Dance all over again.

Then, because I’m still smiling and because Betty is
back, I realise I can read Mum’s last letter and it will all be OK.

I pull off my headphones and pick up
The one where my heart was broken
. I drop down on my bed, heart thudding from the dancing, pyjamas all sweaty, and I start to read.

Dear Plumface,

So, here’s how it happened. You remember my Werther’s Originals kiss with Carlo? If not, you’d better open ‘The one where I have my first kiss’, because this is the sequel.

Read it? Good.

The day after the kiss, Carlo and I arranged to go on a secret walk. I barely slept that night. We met at the pier, really early, and wandered along the seafront and up on to the Downs. As soon as we got into the countryside, Carlo held my hand. It was even better than I had imagined it would be. Eventually,
we climbed down a ladder to this secret bit of beach that you can only get to when the tide is out. We lay on the rocks, the sun warming our faces and talked for hours.

Then we had the picnic I’d brought. I can still remember what I grabbed before I left the house: cheese sandwiches, banana milk, one packet of Monster Munch crisps and half an Easter egg. When the tide was lapping at the bottom of our rock, we climbed back up the ladder. Carlo pulled me up the last few steps.

It was the perfect first date.

Because I was sure that’s what it was: our first date. Carlo never said anything, like, ‘I love you. Will you go out with me?’ I guessed that was because Eleanor was our friend and he knew he had to split up with her.

But as we left the countryside and started to walk along roads, past cars and people, I realised
something had changed. Carlo let go of my hand and moved further away from me. Then, when I fell off the kerb, he didn’t laugh. Usually he laughed all the time, especially if I did something silly.

‘So …’ I said when we got to my road.

‘So,’ he said, looking just over my shoulder. ‘See you at college?’

All evening, I tried to explain away his behaviour. I knew it must be hard for him. He’d been Eleanor’s boyfriend for so long – he wouldn’t want to upset her. Although, really, she wasn’t the world’s greatest person. When our class were filling shoeboxes up with Christmas presents for children in orphanages, she said she didn’t see the point of doing it ‘for Romanian kids’.

After a night of worrying, I went to college and I found Carlo and Eleanor hugging outside the main entrance. Not in an ‘it’s over’ type of way, more in an
‘I totally love you, let me press into your entire body’ type of way. Carlo looked across at me. He was sending me a message.

That’s when my heart was broken. I was sure he had chosen Eleanor over me because something about me wasn’t right. I just wasn’t good enough for him. I spent hours trying to work out what it was. Maybe I wasn’t pretty enough, or clever enough … had I said something stupid? It was only years later that I realised that I’d got it all wrong: it was Carlo who wasn’t good enough for me.

Now, Betty, I have to confess something. ‘The one where I fall in love’ … isn’t an entirely truthful title. I should have called it ‘The one where I
thought
I’d fallen in love’ … You see, sometimes, when you think you’ve fallen in love, you haven’t, not really. It’s only when you truly fall in love that you know what love is. I didn’t want to put that in the letter because you might have thought I was being patronising,
a bit, ‘Cheer up, love, there are plenty more fish in the sea’.