Cathy Hopkins - [Mates, Dates 05] (4 page)

I tore a sheet of
paper out of my notepad and sat on the bed. Right, I thought. Nice things to do
when you’re single. A list:

1)
Eat
chocolate
.

Good idea. In fact,
I’ll get some right now.

I took a quick break
from the list to go and raid the cupboard downstairs. Only organic in this
house of course, but Green & Black’s is pretty good.

2)
Shop
.

Got no money, so cross
that out for the time being.

3)
Movies
.

I could go on my own,
but as I discovered yesterday, all that’s on at the moment are romances. Or
boy’s films, and I’m not in the mood for watching people blow each other up in
space.

4)
Little
treats, like a manicure, pedicure or facial
.

That’s a good idea, I
decided. I’ll have a beauty day.

I spent the next few
hours pampering myself. I painted my nails with my strawberry-scented glitter
polish. I did a papaya facial. I took a long foamy soak with passion fruit bath
gel and exfoliated my whole body, including elbows and knees, with citrus and
ginger exfoliator. Then I washed my hair with Mum’s apple shampoo, rinsed with
fresh lemon and then conditioned with peach afterwash.

Then I was done.
Beautified. I smelled like a fruit bowl. Now what? It was one o’clock and the
day was starting to feel
very
long.

Life is what you make
it, I thought. Clearly I needed a hobby.

I went down into the
kitchen where Mum and Dad were preparing Sunday lunch.

‘I need a hobby,’ I
said. ‘Any suggestions?’

‘But you have your
sewing,’ said Mum. ‘All those T-shirts you’re making.’

I nodded. ‘Suppose,
but they don’t take long to make.’ It’s true I do like sewing, as ultimately I
want to be a fashion designer, but I wanted to try something new.

‘You could walk the dogs
more often,’ said Dad, gesturing towards the garden where Lai was having a
pre-lunch cavort with Ben and Jerry, our two golden Labradors.

‘Could,’ I said. ‘But
I can’t manage both of them on my own.’

‘Get some goldfish,’
said Dad. ‘I’ll get you a tank.’

‘Um, no thanks,’ I
said, sensing he wasn’t taking this very seriously. I remembered last time we
had fish. No one ever wanted to change the water, so they only lasted a few
weeks.

‘Take up jogging,’
said Steve, coming in from the living room.

‘Ever seen a happy
jogger?’ I asked. I certainly hadn’t. Loads of people do it and they all look
miserable, red in the face, puffing, but with a determined look in their eyes.
Not my idea of fun.

‘Well, there’s all
sorts of exercise you could do,’ said Mum.‘Cycling, swimming, dancing, skating,
judo, rowing, aerobics…’

It was beginning to
sound like the extra curricula classes at school. I pulled a face.

‘Well, I don’t know
Lucy,’ said Mum. ‘What do you
want
to do?’

‘Something new,’ I
said. ‘Something I can do on my own.’

‘Ah, is this our new
independent Lucy?’ said Dad. ‘You could come with me the week after next. I’ve
been invited to a workshop in Devon. It’s run by a friend of mine. I’m sure
she’d be glad to have you along as well. You wouldn’t be on your own, but it
might do you some good.’

‘What sort of
workshop?’

‘It’s a kind of
rejuvenation workshop. Yoga, self-help classes, therapy, learn to de-stress,
getting to the root of problems.’

‘Sounds like Izzie’s
sort of thing, not mine,’ I said. Izzie was well into anything new age. If ever
any of us caught a bug or fell ill, she always had an explanation for it. Like
when Nesta got a sore throat, Izzie asked her what wasn’t she saying that was
blocking her throat. And when TJ hurt her knee, Izzie said that it was because
she wasn’t willing to bend. It was hilarious, though, when her mum got a boil
on her bum and Izzie told her that it was because she was sitting on her anger.
Literally, we all thought. There might be some truth in it, but personally I’m
all for taking someone a bunch of daffodils when they’re ill and giving some
good old-fashioned sympathy.

‘How many
psychotherapists does it take to change a light bulb?’ asked Mum.

‘Dunno,’ we said.

‘One,’ she said,
grinning. ‘But only if it really wants to change.’

Dad laughed out loud.
I suppose that’s an in-joke for people that work in counselling and therapy…
and their husbands.

‘How many Spanish
people does it take to change a light bulb?’ asked Dad.

‘How many?’ said Mum.

‘Juan.’

‘Want to know the very
first light bulb joke?’ asked Steve.

Mum nodded. Typical, I
thought. Trust Steve to know the original joke. He’s a mine of useless
information from reading all his books. Though I suppose he would be a good
person for ‘Phone a Friend’ if you were on
Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire
.

‘How many Chinese
people does it take to change a light bulb?’ he asked.

‘How many?’

‘Millions. Because
Confucius say, many hands make light work.’

Steve, Mum and Dad
fell about laughing.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘we were
discussing a hobby for me. Not telling light bulb jokes. I’ve got six weeks and
nothing
to do.’

‘Oh, poor Lucy,’ said
Mum. ‘Now let’s think. There must be something for you.’

‘Loads of things,’
said Steve. ‘Read, learn to cook…’

‘Excellent,’ said Mum.
‘In fact, you were going to cook for us one night.’

‘Garden,’ said Dad.
‘Those beds outside need a turn over and the weeds need pulling out.’

‘Learn a language,’
said Steve.

‘Learn to play an
instrument,’ said Dad. ‘Violin or piano. I could teach you guitar.’

‘Take up photography,’
said Steve.

‘That’s
your
hobby,’ I said.

‘Trainspotting,’ said
Lai, coming in from the garden. ‘Stamp-collecting. Are we playing a game? Who
can name the most daft hobbies?’

‘Something like that,’
I said, as visions of me in an anorak, watching trains or digging up worms in
the garden filled my head.

Luckily, I was saved
from any more of my family’s brilliant suggestions by the phone ringing. It was
Nesta.

‘Help,’ I said. ‘My
family want me to take up gardening.’

‘I have a better
idea,’ said Nesta. ‘I’ve been thinking. There are plenty more fish in the sea
besides my ratfink brother. I’ve been talking to Izzie about it and we have a
new mission.’

‘Which is?’

‘Mission Matchmake.
Lucy,
we
are going to find
you
a boy. And not just any boy.
The perfect boy.’

Even though I’d
dismissed that from my list earlier that morning, somehow it seemed a more
appealing alternative to stamp-collecting or taking up knitting.

‘You’re on,’ I said.

C h a p t e r
 
4

Mission
Matchmake

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Nesta called first
thing the next day.

‘Mission
Numero
Uno
. Place: Hollywood Bowl,’ she said, going into sergeant-major mode. ‘Outside
Cafe Original. Time: three o’clock.’

‘Do we need to
synchronise our watches?’ I asked.

‘Yes, good idea,’ she
replied, not realising that I was joking. ‘See, the plan is to catch the boys
either going in to the movies or coming out, so we need to find out the times
of the films. Coming out is probably better as they’ll hang out for a while
afterwards and give us time to assess the situation and the talent.’

‘Yes sir,’ I said.

Just for a joke, I
wore my combat trousers and khaki

T-shirt, but Nesta didn’t
pick up on it when I arrived at the cinema.

TJ did, though, and
laughed. ‘Ready to do battle, Lucy?’ she asked.

‘Private Lucy
reporting for duty,’ I said, saluting. ‘Has anyone brought binoculars?’

‘Or camouflage gear,’
laughed Izzie, getting into it. ‘We could smear our faces with mud then hide in
the bushes with a bit of tree stuck on our heads.’

Nesta tossed her hair.
‘You may laugh, but coming here is a good strategy. See, look — there are loads
of boys around.’

Nesta was right. It
was a good place to start, as Hollywood Bowl is a popular haunt for most North
London teenagers. Apart from the cinema, there’s a bowling alley, a pool, and a
variety of assorted cafes all built in a square around the car park. Today, as
always, there were groups of teens hanging out in the sunshine in front of the
cinema.

‘Looks like we’re not
the only ones on the pull,’ said Izzie, watching the groups of teens all eyeing
each other up.

‘I am
not
on
the pull,’ I said. ‘It sounds desperate when you put it like that. I don’t want
a boy just for the sake of it.’

‘Course you don’t,’
said Izzie. ‘We’re only looking.’

‘How about we say that
we’re doing research?’ said TJ.

‘I saw some girls
doing it on one of those “How to get a date” programmes on telly. The presenter
said that a good way to meet boys was to pretend that you’re doing a survey and
ask them a list of questions. It’s one way of getting talking to them.’

‘That would be a
laugh,’ I said. ‘Anyone got any paper?’

The girls all shook
their heads.

‘I think we’d need a
bit more than paper if anyone was to take us seriously,’ said Nesta, looking at
what we all had on. Izzie was wearing a T-shirt and denim mini, TJ and Nesta
had shorts and T-shirts on and I was in my combats. ‘Not exactly dressed like
professionals, are we?’

‘We’ll do that another
day,’ I said to TJ. ‘And we’ll dress the part.’

‘Now, let’s see who’s
here. Don’t look as though you’re looking,’ said Nesta, casually glancing round
the car park. ‘We don’t want to be too obvious.’

‘So how am I supposed to
check the talent?’ I asked.

Nesta turned her back
away from the groups of boys then got her mirror out of her bag. ‘Like this,’
she said. ‘See, it looks like I’m checking my hair or something but actually
I’m looking behind me.’

Izzie and I got our
mirrors out and lined up with Nesta to try out her technique. TJ shared mine
with me and I couldn’t stop laughing as we watched the people behind us.

Nesta sighed. ‘I give
up,’ she said. ‘You lot are just a wind-up.’

‘Sorry, Nesta,’ I
said, putting away my mirror. ‘I do appreciate this, honest I do. And I get
what you’re saying — look kind of casually.’

I glanced at the boys,
then over to the left, like I was looking for someone in the distance, then
back at the boys, then over at the cinema.

‘Perfect,’ said Nesta.
‘That’s the way to do it. Now, check out left, by the pillar, jeans, black
T-shirt. Guy with blond spiky hair.’

‘Not my type,’ I said.
‘Too… um, too hair-gelly.’

‘OK, left, dark,
French crop. Wearing all black.’

‘Yee-uck,’ I said,
looking over at the boy. ‘Do me a favour. He’s picking his nose.’

‘OK, I got one,’ said
TJ. ‘Behind spiky boy, dark.’

‘Where?… Oh yeah,’ I
said, catching sight of him. ‘Yeah, he’s a possibility.’

‘He’s checking you
out, Lucy,’ said Izzie.

I glanced over.
‘Ohmigod, he’s looking at me. I think he knows we’re talking about him.
Ohmigod
,
he’s coming over.’

‘Excellent,’ said
Nesta. ‘Now play it cool, look away, don’t let him know you’ve noticed him.’

Of course I went
bright red. A dead giveaway, if ever there was one.

The boy came straight
up to me. ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Can I talk to you a minute?’

I glanced at the
girls, who were all grinning like idiots and giving me the thumbs-up behind his
back. I couldn’t believe it. Success so fast. And he was cute. Very cute, like
Enrique Iglesias.

He led me behind the
pillar and looked deeply into my eyes.

‘That girl you’re
with…’ he began.

He didn’t have to
finish. I knew what he was going to say immediately. It’s not the first time
this has happened. Boys always fancy Nesta. And no wonder, she is stunning and
a half.

‘The dark one?’ I
asked.

‘Yeah. Has she got a
boyfriend?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘In
fact, all those girls I’m with have got boyfriends.’

He looked
disappointed. Not as disappointed as I was, though. He didn’t even bother to
ask if I was attached.