Rebecca Rocks (4 page)

Anyway, Cass printed all the details of the camp so we could look at them together at leisure at school (well, at lunchtime). It looks brilliant. We’re going to have these workshops,
sometimes
just with us and our mentors, sometimes with the other bands, and then we’ll be given our own practice rooms and we can work on our own stuff there. And at the end of it we will all play a gig.

‘This is going to be the greatest summer ever,’ said Alice.

‘I wonder if we’ll have any time for our sweet-making
business
?’ said Cass.

‘We can do it at weekends,’ I said.

Alice looked a bit dubious.

‘I’m not sure the sweet thing is going to work,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s a great idea, but don’t you need a bit more
experience
?’

Honestly! She’s as bad as my mother.

‘We’re going to get some experience!’ said Cass.

‘Exactly!’ I said. ‘Come over to my house and we can give it a try.’

Alice can’t go on Saturday because she’s meeting Richard. I will have to beg my parents (or rather my mum, Dad isn’t back until Saturday) to let me leave my studies for a few hours. She’ll probably let me, though, because I have been working impressively hard over the last few weeks. I deserve an
afternoon
off.

My ‘Put Mrs Harrington in a Book’ plan has begun. And I think it might actually be working! I am a genius, if I say so myself.

‘So, Mum,’ I said this evening, while I was peeling potatoes
like the domestic servant I am (my parents would prefer it if I did nothing but study and peel vegetables. Though at least today as Dad is still away there were slightly fewer vegetables to peel than usual). ‘How’s the new grown-up book coming along?’

Mum is writing a new book for adults because she finished her second terrible book about a girl my age a few months ago. At least, I assume it’s terrible. I haven’t read it yet, but the last one was awful, AND it basically ruined my life for a while so I’m not looking forward to the second one, even though Mum says she’s learned her lesson and is going to make sure everyone knows that Ruthie Reilly in the book has nothing to do with either of the author’s children.

Anyway, Mum is taking a break from writing about
irritating
teenagers (thank GOD) and is returning to her usual sort of book about kindly mammies and middle-aged ladies finding love and setting up cafés in villages and stuff. Surely, I thought, there must be room for a Patricia Alexandra
Harrington
figure in there somewhere.

‘Oh, it’s early days, but it’s going okay,’ said Mum. She looked quite pleased to see me taking an interest in her books again. She used to like telling us about the plots and letting
us know how the writing was coming along, but after Rachel and I got so annoyed about Ruthie last year she has kept quite quiet about it. All I knew was that she’d started another book and that it was for grown-ups.

‘Do you know what it’s about yet?’ I said.

‘Yes, more or less,’ said Mum. ‘Careful with that potato peeler!’

‘I am being careful,’ I said. ‘So what’s it about? There are no fourteen-year-olds in it, are there? Or even fifteen-year-olds?’

Mum laughed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The only children in it are under ten. There is absolutely no chance anyone will mistake you for any of them.’

Well, I suppose that’s something, at least. Anyway, it turns out the new book is about a woman who moves to a little village (I have said this before, but I have no idea why my mother writes about little villages all the time, considering she’s from Phibsboro and has lived in north Dublin for her entire life) and opens a bakery and falls in love with a local farmer who supplies the bakery with eggs. It sounds dreadful, but all her books do, to be honest, and lots of people really do love them (though probably not as much as Mrs Harrington and Gerard do).

‘Does this woman have a name?’ I said hopefully.

‘Yes,’ said Mum. ‘Lily Fitzsimons. It’s perfect for her.’

Damn.

‘So are there any other main characters?’ I said. Surely there was someone who could be called Patricia Alexandra
Harrington
?

‘Well, there’s the farmer’s sister who tries to get them together,’ said Mum. ‘And I think I’m going to put in a local teacher whose kids go to the bakery after school …’

That was it! Or rather, her. How absolutely perfect.

‘What’s she called?’ I said.

‘She doesn’t have a name yet,’ said Mum. ‘She’s just a vague sort of character at the moment.’

‘What about …’ I pretended to think about it for a moment. ‘Patricia Alexandra Harrington?’

Mum laughed. ‘Wow, you’re very helpful all of a sudden! What brought this on?’

‘I’m just grateful you’re not writing another book about stupid Ruthie,’ I said.

‘Hmmm,’ said Mum. ‘Actually, that’s not a bad name. It might work.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll thank you in the
acknowledgements
if I go with it!’

I didn’t want to push it, but I think my scheme might have worked. I’m actually a bit surprised, to be honest. Surely it can’t be as easy as this? Maybe it can.

I feel a bit weird. Guess who I saw on my way home from school today?

John Kowalski.

It’s been ages and ages since I’ve seen him − not since we had our huge fight the day of the musical. So it took me by surprise. It was on Griffith Avenue, of course. I’d just said goodbye to Cass and was about to cross the road and go up Gracepark Road when I glanced around, and there he was, walking along with a strange girl. When I say strange, I mean that she was a stranger to me, not that she had, like, two heads or was wearing fake antlers, or anything. She looked totally normal. Anyway, he looked pretty surprised to see me too, but only for a second, and then his face returned to its usual haughty expression, and he said, ‘Oh, hello Rafferty.’

I had been going to walk on, but he stopped. And I felt it
was too rude to just march past so I stopped too. Really I am too polite for my own good sometimes.

‘Hi John,’ I said. I waited for him to introduce the girl, but he didn’t so I looked at her and said, ‘Hi, I’m Rebecca.’

She looked a bit shy and nervous and said, ‘Um, I’m Aoife.’

I assume she is his new girlfriend because she was gazing at him in a rather adoring way. I noticed they weren’t holding hands, but then I remembered John’s stupid rule about not showing any sort of human affection in public. And how he didn’t want to call me his girlfriend because he hated being ‘tied down with labels’. I hope for her sake that Aoife doesn’t mind all that nonsense because I certainly did.

‘So, Rafferty,’ said John, and I have to admit that when he looked at me in that sort of amused, sort of arrogant way and called me by my surname I did feel a bit funny for a minute. It reminded me how I really did like him for a while back then, despite everything. And by everything I mean him being a selfish, snobby, cigarette-smelling fool. ‘What are you up to these days? I hope you’re not frittering away your time with nonsense.’

And now I remembered why I broke up with him.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m getting ready for an amazing summer
music camp. Me and Cass and Alice are doing it with the band. Richard’s doing it too. It’s going to be brilliant.’

John looked slightly taken aback for a minute.

‘Oh, right,’ he said. Then he said, ‘I’ll be concentrating on my writing, of course. Maybe doing a bit of acting. Expanding my creative horizons.’

‘What about you?’ I said to Aoife. She looked taken aback too.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll be writing too. John’s been really encouraging my poetry. He thinks if I work hard I could be a really serious writer.’

‘Yes,’ said John. ‘Aoife’s really getting to understand great literature. Neither of us have any time for frivolous fluff.’

Good grief. He hasn’t changed a bit. Well, all I can say is that I hope Aoife is actually writing stuff she likes, and that if she isn’t she’ll see the light and not let John show off and boss her about all the time, like he tried to do with me. I really did have a narrow escape.

But I didn’t say this to Aoife, of course. I just said, ‘Oh, cool. Anyway, I’d better go …’

‘See you around, Rafferty,’ said John in a grand voice. Aoife gave me a shy sort of half-wave, and they were off down the
other end of Gracepark Road. And that was that. I walked home feeling very odd. Not in a ‘Oh, I wish I was still going out with him’ way, because I certainly do not. In fact, I’m relieved that I’m not still going out with him, because he is terrible. I suppose Cass is right. Maybe you do feel funny about your exes for ages afterwards. Even if you would rather get sick than ever go out with them again.

Dad is coming home tomorrow. I hate to admit it but I have quite missed him. I’ve texted him asking him to get me one of those lovely lipsticks like Rachel’s one for my very own.

Today Cass and I began our new lives as amazing
sweet-makers
. It was a bit of a rocky start, of course, but I’m sure we’ll get better soon. We weren’t helped by my mother acting like we were eight years old. She kept hovering over us and going on about how boiling sugar was really dangerous and that we weren’t to touch it − as if we would, we’re not mad. Eventually I had to tell her that if she actually wanted us to have a hideous accident the best way to make this happen was
to stand right next to us and keep distracting us by going on about the dangers of cookery. So she went to the other end of the kitchen and looked at us nervously.

Of course, she needn’t have worried. We were fine. The
trickiest
bit was after the fudge had boiled and we had to stir it really hard for about ten minutes. It turns out that, even with all my drumming and Cass’s keyboard playing, we have very feeble wrists. And stirring fudge is really hard work. Eventually we had to give in and ask my mum if she’d take a turn, but she was going out to collect my dad from the airport so she couldn’t.

‘I was only waiting until you’d got past the dangerous
boiling
sugar stage,’ she said. ‘I’m running late already. Your dad’s flight is due in a few minutes.’

So we had to keep beating it ourselves.

‘I think my wrist is going to fall off,’ I said after we’d had a few turns each.

‘Well, if Alice was here there’d be three of us and it would be easier,’ said Cass, taking the wooden spoon. ‘We could take shorter turns.’ She stirred and stirred until she was red in the face. Then she dropped the spoon in the bowl, exhausted.

‘Has it been ten minutes yet?’ she said.

I looked at my watch.

‘More or less,’ I said.

So we left it to set, as the instructions advised.

‘You know,’ said Cass, as we drank some refreshing
lemonade
while the fudge did its thing, ‘if this all works out, we might even get our own cookery show on telly. Teenage cooks! Who are also in a band! I think it could work.’

‘Ooh, and we could play a song in each episode,’ I said. ‘That could be our gimmick.’

‘What are you blathering on about?’ said Rachel,
wandering
into the kitchen.

‘Our plans to be celebrity-cooks-slash-rock-goddesses,’ said Cass.