Whatever Love Is (3 page)

‘I’d die to be in your shoes,’ her friend Lulu had said a few weeks back when Frankie had shown her the gold embossed invitation card to the party. ‘Since my father
dragged us to this backwater, I haven’t been to one decent party.’

‘Nick’s will be one of those pretentious affairs where everyone nibbles on canapés and bares their teeth in silly grins till the photographer from
Tatler
leaves and
then gets hammered on champagne cocktails and whatever else they happen to have to hand.’

‘Sounds good to me!’ Lulu laughed. ‘Take photos, yeah? I want a snog by snog account of the evening!’

‘Even if I go – which I won’t – snogging won’t feature,’ Frankie retorted. ‘I’ll only know a handful of people anyway.’

‘Francesca Price!’ Lulu exclaimed. ‘Who said you had to
know
someone to snog them? And you have to go. The only way I get a full-on social life these days is by proxy.
You owe it to me as my best mate.’

It never failed to surprise Frankie that someone like Lulu – feisty, rebellious and a pain in the neck of practically every tutor at Thornton College – should want to be friends with
her, but ever since she had arrived just weeks after Frankie, she had latched onto her and pretty much ignored everyone else.

‘Anyway, forget parties,’ Lulu had continued. ‘You have to promise me one thing, right?’

‘What’s that?’

‘You’ll come to all the best gigs at M-Brace? Is it really as great as everyone says it is?’

‘I’ve never been,’ Frankie admitted.

‘You’ve never
been
?
’
Lulu gasped. ‘You live practically next door to one of the best music festivals in the whole country and you haven’t been?
What’s that all about?’

‘It only happens every other year and last time I was down visiting Mum. Mind you, I don’t think my uncle would have been too keen on my being there, judging by the way he yelled at
the others for going,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t approve of the festival – says it’s a blot on the landscape and ruins the environment.’

‘Well, we’re going whether he likes it or not,’ Lulu said firmly. ‘It’s the only upside of moving here. And while you’re at it, you can make sure you drag
that cousin of yours along.’

‘Ned?’ Frankie felt herself bristle inwardly.

‘No, silly, the other one – James. OMG, that guy is so fit!’

Frankie giggled. ‘You fancy him!’

‘Too right,’ Lulu said. ‘Has he got a girlfriend at the moment?’

‘That’s like asking whether a leopard has spots,’ Frankie replied. ‘He changes them more often than most people change their socks.’

‘Great!’ Lulu laughed. ‘That means he hasn’t found the right girl yet. But then again, he hasn’t met me!’

Recalling that conversation now, Frankie couldn’t help smiling and feeling more than a little envious of her friend’s confident, anything-goes nature.

‘Hey look, it smiles!’ Jemma teased. ‘So the thought of Nick’s party isn’t so horrendous after all?’

‘I don’t know, I —’

‘Honestly, you’re hopeless!’ Mia sighed. ‘I just don’t get why Ned kept on at me to check you’d be there. You’re a right party pooper!’

‘Ned?’ To her annoyance, the word came out as a squeak. ‘But he’s in Wales.’

‘Yes, well, I guess even
he
isn’t so saintly that he’d miss out on the kind of party the Rushworths throw just to camp with a load of kids from some inner-city sink
estate,’ Mia said, zapping the sound on the TV. ‘He’s done some sort of swap and he’s leaving early. He’ll be home tomorrow.’

Frankie fought to keep her face expressionless. Ned was the opposite of his twin, Mia; he detested flashy parties as much as Frankie did and no way would he cut short his placement with Kids Out
There, or KOT, the charity that was his passion – unless . . .

If he was coming back early, it could surely only mean one thing: he had missed her as much as she had missed him.

‘OK, I’ll go,’ she murmured. ‘I guess it would be rude not to.’

CHAPTER 2

‘She regarded her cousin as
an example of everything good and great.’

(Jane Austen,
Mansfield Park
)

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Congratulations!

Dear Frankie,

Congratulations!

I am delighted to inform you that your short story
Look Again
has been selected by our panel of judges as the winning entry in our Writers of Tomorrow competition. The judges found
your story both imaginative and moving and were particularly impressed by your use of metaphor and irony. As you know, the prize consists of £250 plus free entry for the duration of the
M-Brace festival at the end of the month. I would be most grateful if you could telephone me as soon as possible to arrange a time to visit our offices and be photographed receiving your
prize.

Once again, congratulations.

Belinda Painter

Editor, Nene Chronicle

Frankie couldn’t stop smiling as she printed off the email. She put it into the box on the top of her wardrobe, along with her private journals and the collection
of photographs which her brother William had emailed from the cruise liner
Sea Siren
, on which he was now, as he proudly told her, photographer’s assistant to the assistant
photographer. It had been a photograph taken with a disposable camera that had won William Best Photo (Portrait) Under Ten in a schools’ competition years before and set him on course for
what he hoped would be a successful career as a professional photographer. And at last, Frankie felt as if she was finally on the way to fulfilling her dream of being a bestselling author too.

Of course, she admitted to herself, it wasn’t just the fact of winning the prize that made her feel as if she was suddenly capable of conquering the universe, it was knowing that Ned was
coming home because he wanted to be with her at Nick’s party. In many ways, that mattered more than all the writing prizes in the world.

‘
Ned
.’ She whispered the word into the silence of the room – the same room where he had found her sobbing her heart out a few days after arriving at Park House. She had
been angry and mortified – angry that he had burst into the room unannounced, and mortified that this gorgeous eighteen-year-old guy, his white tennis shorts revealing legs to die for, should
find her wailing like some stupid kid.

‘Oh sorry, I forgot this was your room now!’ he had gasped, his face flushing. ‘It used to be — Hey, I thought I was the only one who was having a bad day!’

He had squatted down beside her. ‘Here – this usually helps. Sorry, I’ve eaten half of it.’ He’d thrust the squashed remains of a bar of chocolate into her hand.
‘I guess it must be hard for you, landing here amongst a load of strangers,’ he continued, as Frankie struggled to stem her tears. ‘I know what I felt like my first term at
boarding school, but at least my brother was there. Though come to think of it, that wasn’t much help considering he was permanently in trouble and everyone expected me to be a rebel
too!’

She rubbed her eyes and glared at him as he burst out laughing. ‘What’s so funny? You think I’m a baby, right?’

‘No,’ he assured her, struggling to suppress his laughter. ‘It’s just that you’ve now got chocolate all round your eyes! You look like a panda.’

He glanced round her room and snatched a tissue from a box on the dressing table, which he rubbed ineffectually at her eyes.

His fingers touched her cheek and that was the moment when something happened to her heart that she had never experienced before.

‘You miss your mum, is that it?’ he asked in a gentle tone.

‘I miss my brother more,’ she admitted. ‘He’s just got a job on a cruise ship and I promised I’d text him but I’ve run out of credit.’

‘Use mine for now,’ he said, tossing his phone into her lap. And just two days later, her uncle had presented her with a brand new phone and promised to pay the bill for as long as
her brother was away. She knew that Ned was behind the gift – just as, over the next few weeks, it was Ned who helped her get to grips with the piles of homework from her new school and Ned
who alerted his father to the fact that Frankie was the only girl in the class who didn’t have her own laptop. He was the one person she could be herself with, the one person who never made
her feel small or inferior.

A lot had happened since then but her love for Ned had never wavered. All she needed now was for him to stop thinking of her as some sort of proxy kid sister.

She was about to dial the editor’s number when her phone rang and her friend Poppy’s name flashed up.

‘Hi, Poppy, you OK?’ Frankie asked.

‘I am so
not
OK as to be KO’d!’ Poppy retorted. ‘Thanks to my parents, my entire life is in pieces!’

Frankie flopped down onto her bed, kicked off her flip-flops and suppressed a smile. If anyone knew how to make a drama out of a crisis it was Poppy Grant.

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘You won’t believe this – Boring Basil’s kids are coming to stay.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Is that ALL? My stepfather’s kids are like the most spoilt, up themselves, pretentious —’

‘OK, OK, I get the message,’ Frankie chipped in, ‘but surely it’s not as bad as all that?’

‘Not so bad? It’s dire,’ Poppy ranted on. ‘They’ve had this massive falling out with their mother because she’s just shacked up with some guy they don’t
approve of. Mind you, it is the third time this has happened since she split from my stepdad, so you can see their point. Anyway, they’re coming to us tomorrow for the
whole summer
– can you believe it?
Tomorrow
, and my mother’s only just told me. And guess what? My stepdad’s only gone and given them the granny flat which, if you remember, he promised
to me!’

The two Drs Grant, as everyone in the village called them (Poppy’s mum being the local GP and her stepfather a research scientist working for one of the big pharmaceutical companies) lived
at The Old Parsonage, a large, if somewhat dilapidated Queen Anne house on the other side of the village. Until the previous year, the top floor, once the preserve of servants and governesses, had
been lived in by Poppy’s grandmother, a feisty woman who had dropped dead at Royal Ascot, due largely to the cumulative effects of a lifetime drinking Martinis and the surge of excitement
caused by having just won a sizeable amount of money on a horse coincidentally called Hurry Off.

‘I’d got it all worked out,’ Poppy went on. ‘I was going to go all retro and paint the walls orange with a black ceiling and . . . Oh, it’s so unfair. Just because
their lives are a mess, why do they have to come and ruin mine?’

For a moment, Frankie said nothing. She had yet to meet Henry and Alice but she suddenly felt sorry for them. She knew only too well what it was like for your life to be a mess, and also to know
that despite all the polite welcomes and rehearsed phrases, the people who had to put you up often wanted you anywhere but in their home.

‘So anyway,’ Poppy went on, ‘see you at Nick’s on Saturday, yeah? It should be a blast. Have you got your eye on anyone?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A guy, silly. Someone you’d like to pull?’

‘No one,’ Frankie replied, blushing a little as Ned’s face flashed across her mind.

‘That’s good, because my mother’s wangled it with Nick’s mum to get Henry and Alice invited – so if you’re up for grabs, I’ll shove Henry in your
direction.’

‘No way! I thought you said he was a pretentious —’

‘He’s not that bad,’ Poppy reasoned. ‘And let’s face it, there’s no one in your life right now, so you might as well spend the evening with him.’ She
giggled. ‘Besides, I really fancy Charlie Maddox and no way do I want Henry hanging around, cramping my style. He thinks he’s God’s gift to the female sex.’

Frankie was about to protest when the huge antique gong that Tina kept in the hallway and used as a means of summoning all her various offspring reverberated through the house. Her children told
her that it was totally over the top, and ridiculously
Downton Abbey,
but she insisted that shouting to them when she wanted them was not only very common but also bad for her sensitive
throat. Tina had a variety of sensitivities and allergies, none of which stopped her from doing what she wanted, but any one of which could be rustled up at a moment’s notice if the demands
made on her were not to her liking. Since it wasn’t lunch or suppertime, Frankie thought something big must have happened.