Diary of a Crush: Kiss and Make Up (21 page)

I dived into my tent and started shoving things into my backpack. I could hear a muted conversation going on outside but I ignored it. And I could see someone Darby-shaped waiting for me outside, so I carefully and quietly pulled up the pegs from the back of the tent and squeezed myself and my backpack (which were roughly the same size) out of the gap I’d made and sloped off before anyone could realise that I’d gone.

Forget what I said earlier about not crying ’cause as I walked towards the side road that led off the festival site I was crying like I’d never cried before. It always amazes me how you can cry in public and people look at you in a horrified way but never actually ask you what the matter is. All those hippies were meant to be into peace and love but they obviously weren’t into spreading it around. I was clutching my stomach and staggering under the weight of my backpack, all the while bawling my eyes out and not one person asked me if I was OK. Though I’d have probably told them to piss off if they had. But that’s neither here nor there.

Once I’d left the site and started walking in what I hoped was the right direction for the nearest town, I had to sit down on a grass verge because I was crying so much that I was starting to get hysterical. My breath was coming and going in strange airless little gasps and my whole body felt floppy. I was also worried that I had internal bleeding from where Veronique had punched me; it certainly hurt enough. I entertained myself with fantasies that a farmer would find me dead by the side of the road and they’d have to put my name out over the radio in Florida so the ’rents could come home and bury me and Veronique would be found guilty of my murder and get sent to prison and become someone’s bitch. Then I cried even harder.

Pull yourself together, Edie, I thought sternly. Deep breaths and focus. I managed to stop crying and do something useful like put my trainers on and then I hoisted my backpack onto my shoulders and began walking again.

I didn’t know what I was hoping to achieve by taking off. All I knew was that I had to get home. Everything was ruined between me and Dylan – there didn’t seem to be any way that he’d want to be with me now. He probably thought I was the biggest skank this side of skanktown and, besides, Veronique was definitely going to kill me if she ever saw me again. As for Carter, if I didn’t see that Grade-One git for another millennium it would be too soon.

It was starting to get dark and I’d been walking for over an hour but the fields seemed to stretch out forever with no sign of civilisation in sight.

I contemplated hitch-hiking, just for a moment, but knowing my luck I’d have got picked up by some cold-eyed, cold-hearted serial killer and I had enough problems already. I walked on a bit more and was beginning to panic when I heard a car coming up behind me. I moved nearer to the hedge but it was slowing down. I turned around and raised my arm to shield my eyes from the glare of the headlights when I realised that it was the café van. My heart dipped. Dylan had come to find me! But it was Carter impatiently winding down the window and telling me to get in.

‘Piss off,’ I squealed and carried on trudging along the hedgerow. Carter drove alongside me.

‘Get in, Edie,’ he said tersely. ‘It’s dark and you shouldn’t be out on your own.’

‘Like you care,’ I sniped. ‘It’s a bit too late for the concerned boyfriend act.’

‘If you don’t get in the sodding van I’m going to put you in,’ he threatened, his voice simmering with barely-controlled rage.

It was either carry on walking, even though I was hopelessly lost, or get in the van with a vindictive ex-boyfriend. There didn’t seem to be a lesser of the two evils option. With a bad-tempered sigh I eased off my backpack and threw it in the van, only narrowly avoiding his head, and then climbed in after it. Carter reached over and slammed the door shut before turning the key in the ignition.

‘I’ve got better things to do with my time than drive around looking for silly little girls,’ he began savagely.

‘You have no right to start picking fights with me,’ I turned on him angrily. ‘I don’t want to talk to you, just drive me to the nearest station.’

‘The nearest station is ten miles in the opposite direction,’ Carter pointed out. ‘I’m driving back to the site.’

‘I’m not going.’

‘Tough.’

I fumbled with the door-lock. ‘If you don’t drive me to the nearest station then I’m getting out now,’ I told him, I was way beyond reason. ‘Even if I have to jump out of a moving vehicle.’

‘OK,’ said Carter with a sigh like he was the most long-suffering person to ever exist. ‘Look, I can’t turn the van round, I’ll carry on driving until we find a lay-by and then I—’

‘Fine,’ I hissed. ‘And don’t talk to me.’

We drove in silence. I hugged my backpack to my chest and stared out of the window at the black hedges that sped past. Of course, I couldn’t keep quiet for more than five seconds.

‘Why?’ I finally asked. ‘Why did you do it?’

Carter threw me a strangely amused look.

‘Do what?’ he enquired silkily.

‘All of it,’ I replied. ‘Pretend that you liked me. Make passes at Poppy and Grace, which, by the way, was incredibly cruel of you and just this side of legal. Play twisted little mind games to try and get me into bed. Why?’

And Carter instead of coming up with one of his clever, little excuses began to laugh; a nasty, mocking laugh that seemed to echo around me.

‘You’re so naïve, Edie,’ he eventually said. ‘You think there always has to be a reason for the things people do. Maybe I did it because I’m not a very nice person.’

‘No, that’s not it,’ I argued. ‘Admit at least that you’ve done everything you can to keep me and Dylan apart so he can babysit Veronique which means you don’t have to.’

‘OK, I’ll give you that,’ said Carter evenly. ‘Some people would call her high maintenance when she’s actually just a mad cow but the rest of it, Edie, was fun. And getting to wrestle you out of your clothes, that was the most fun of all.’

My head was going to explode. Carter seemed to have turned into a Bond villain.

I opened my mouth to speak but Carter interrupted me. ‘No, before you ask, I didn’t have a traumatic childhood. I just like playing games with people. I mean, I always hope someone will be clever enough to see through me but you’re all so bloody stupid.’

‘Why did you come to find me?’ I said.

‘Where’s the devoted Dylan, you mean?’ Carter smirked. ‘While everyone was running around and falling over each other to try and find you, I thought I’d get to you first but you’re being no fun, Edie. You’re not playing any more, are you?’

I snorted. ‘Sorry, Carter, but I’m finding it hard to see the funny in this situation.’

Carter started laughing again. ‘Do you know what particularly tickled me about the whole thing?’ he asked me.

‘I’m sure you’re going to fill me in on the details.’

‘You and Dylan are meant for each other,’ he informed me, his smile oozing malevolence. ‘You’re like, “Ooooh, no, Dylan we mustn’t, our love is so tortured, we’re like Manchester’s answer to Romeo And Juliet.”’

‘I do
not
talk like that…’

‘The pair of you are pathetic. If you loved each other, really loved each other, you wouldn’t get distracted by idiotic ideas about principles and doing the right thing.’

His words were like little arrows stabbing me. He was right. I was pathetic. I’d been so busy trying to find reasons to stay with Carter that I’d completely ignored the obvious stuff, like that he was a twisted bastard and if I’d wanted Dylan, I should have just reached out and taken him.

‘Oh, are you going to cry now, Edie?’ Carter wanted to know with mock concern. ‘Word of advice, sweetheart, it doesn’t have any effect on me, it never did.’

Just then I saw a road sign that said ‘Manor Park Hotel 50 Yards’.

‘Turn in here,’ I demanded. Carter ignored me and I did something I’d only seen in really bad action movies, I wrenched the steering wheel sharply to the left. Carter pushed me away with one hand.

‘Are you trying to get us killed, you stupid bitch?’ he roared.

‘If you don’t pull in now, I’m jumping out,’ I warned him.

Carter swore under his breath and started to back the van down the lane and into the hotel driveway.

The Manor Park Hotel could have come straight out of a BBC costume drama. There were turrets, leaded windows and probably a few peacocks strutting about the place.

‘Oh yeah, this looks like a nice little B and B,’ Carter commented sarcastically as I opened the door.

It was obviously way too expensive to stay there but I figured that they’d let me phone for a cab or something. I trudged towards the main entrance where a uniformed flunky was holding the door open for me. Carter came up behind me and grabbed my arm.

‘Come on Edie, stop being such a drama queen,’ he said lightly. ‘Get back in the van and I’ll drive you into town…’

‘Go away,’ I hissed but he wedged his hand into my armpit and tried to pull me away. ‘If you don’t stop I’m going to start screaming at the top of my voice,’ I promised. Carter glanced at my don’t-mess-with-me expression and then at the doorman who was giving him a very suspicious look.

‘OK, dear,’ he said, saccharine sweetly. ‘If this is where you want to stay, you know I can’t refuse you anything.’

I don’t know what I expected once we got inside the foyer. Lots of posh people dripping in diamonds probably but instead there were lots of cute boys and cool girls. Kind of how I’d imagined the backstage enclosure of the main stage to be, if I’d actually been able to get backstage. But now wasn’t the time to start wondering if that really was Professor Green.

Not with Carter still clutching my wrist in a death grip. I marched over to the reception desk to ask about ordering a cab. Before I could get the words out of my mouth, the receptionist greeted me with a warm smile. That was the first weird thing ’cause I didn’t look like one of the Manor Park Hotel’s regular guests or a rock star. I looked like an eighteen-year-old girl who’d been roughing it for three days. The second weird thing was when she opened her mouth.

‘Hello, are you from EMI?’ she enquired.

‘Er, no,’ I muttered.

‘How much are your rooms?’ Carter asked curtly.

She gave him a moderately filthy look and turned back to me with an apologetic smile. ‘We’re practically fully booked,’ she explained. ‘We’ve got a lot of music industry guests here for the festival.’

OK, I had been planning to get the number of a cab company but now I came to think of it the Manor Park Hotel could offer me something a whole lot better. Revenge. I bit my lip hard and tried to will my tear ducts to work as the receptionist looked at her computer screen.

‘I’ve only got the honeymoon suite available,’ she was saying. ‘That would be four hundred and fifty pounds for one night, breakfast included.’

Carter made the universal ‘pffft’ noise for ‘no bloody way’. ‘Yeah right, Edie. Come on—’

I burst into loud and noisy sobs. ‘Put it on your credit card,’ I wept loudly as people turned to look at us. ‘It’s the least you could do after the terrible way you’ve treated me.’

Carter shifted uncomfortably; his face flushing. ‘Stop it, Edie. You’re making a scene.’

I cried harder. ‘You tried to sleep with all my friends and now you won’t even pay for a hotel room for me.’

I glanced at the receptionist from under my lashes and she gave me an almost imperceptible wink before turning to glare at Carter.

‘OK, OK,’ he snapped, fumbling in his pocket for his wallet and slapping his credit card down on the desk. ‘I’ll take the room, will you stop bawling now?’

The minute I saw her swipe his card through the till I turned off the tears and raised my eyebrows at Carter. ‘Tell her to add another hundred pounds to the total for extras,’ I demanded. ‘I’m hungry and I need to make a transatlantic phone call.’

Carter gave me a look of utter loathing but did what I said. I waited for the receptionist to hand me the room key and then picked up my backpack and headed in the direction of the bar. Diet Coke first, getting rid of Carter second.

I stood next to Kate Nash as I waited to get served and tried to act nonchalantly as some of the people whose CDs I actually owned gave me strange looks. It’s not every day you get to throw a full volume hissy fit in front of the cast of TOWIE – but I think I taught them a thing or two. I found an empty chair among a group of what looked like American rappers (I figured there was safety in numbers) and sat down to sip at my drink and decide what to do next.

But Carter was already perching himself on the edge of my chair and slinging an arm round my shoulders.

‘I seem to have spent all day chasing after you,’ he remarked breezily. ‘You want me to push off, don’t you?’

‘You guessed it,’ I said.

‘I must say I was impressed by your little scene at reception,’ he continued. ‘Didn’t know you had it in you. Makes me wonder what I’ve been missing out on.’

‘What are you wittering on about now?’ I said wearily.

‘You,’ husked Carter. ‘All that passion, Edie, not to mention the deviousness. Maybe I was wrong about you. You’re a girl after my own heart.’

‘You wish,’ I said. ‘God, can you say
delusional
?’

‘But you have to admit, Edie,’ said Carter pretending he hadn’t heard me. ‘I nearly had you. Five more minutes in that tent and you wouldn’t have had your precious virginity any more.’

‘And then Poppy came along to save me from a fate worse than death,’ I reminded him. ‘Yeah, Carter, I fell for all your clever little schemes, your status as an evil mastermind is in no doubt. Now can you just sod off?’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Carter insisted, pulling me towards him. ‘I’ve just paid five hundred and fifty pounds for the dubious pleasure of your company.’

I tried to break free of his hold but it was impossible. ‘Do you really think I’m going to go upstairs with you and have sex?’ I asked him incredulously. ‘It’s not going to happen. And anyway I’ve got the key.’

Carter was just about to come out with some more twisted reasoning that didn’t in any way resemble our earth logic when a big American guy who was sitting near me and had been listening to our exchange with undisguised interest nudged me. I looked up expectantly waiting for the ‘Is this guy bothering you?’ line but instead he said, ‘Honey, I think your phone’s ringing.’