Secrets at St Jude's: New Girl (19 page)

But Gina was embarrassed to find herself blushing because, creep or not, her skin still crackled and tingled at the thought of him.

‘It wasn’t Gina’s fault!’ Niffy had waded into the argument.

This only made Amy even more furious. ‘Don’t you say anything! Don’t make it worse! How dare you be on her side!’ Then she’d flung herself dramatically onto her bed, pulled her duvet over her head and begun to sob.

Partly to get away from the dorm and Amy’s sobbing, and partly because she was so grateful for Niffy’s support, Gina had recklessly decided to join 212

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her on the night-time escape from the boarding house.

They’d both pulled on jeans, boots and tops, then snuck as quietly as possible down the fire escape.

It was close to one o’clock in the morning, and they’d jogged for twenty minutes through sleepy streets until they reached the imposing row of townhouses. It wasn’t hard to pick out number 15 – blazing with light and noise – where Charlie was ‘at home’ for friends.

The girls hadn’t even had to ring the bell; they’d just walked in through the open double door, past the soaring spiral staircase, and wandered through the three enormous ground-floor rooms of Charlie’s family home.

Gina had never been in a house like this. Well, not a genuine one – some mock Californian versions maybe – but this place! Even with teenagers lounging on sofas, leaning against walls and sprawled across the floor, the house was breathtaking. Cornicing decorated the high ceilings like icing, brooding oil paintings of stags and ancestors loomed down from the dark walls, and everywhere Gina looked there was ornate antique stuff: Chinese vases, carved mahogany chairs, faded chintz upholstery, leather-bound books, 213

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and wide floorboards which bore the scuffs of generations of feet.

Charlie must have been out of his mind to think he could get away with holding a party here. Look at the rug over there! It was some ancient Persian work of art. How was he going to get cigarette burns and wine stains out of that?

They’d only seen Charlie for a moment. He’d rushed past them, not even noticing them, shouting out to no one in particular, ‘I did say no smoking in the drawing room. Come on now, there’s a garden at the back, for heaven’s sake!’

But then they’d spotted Penny and friends and decided that a spell under the dining-room table would be more sensible than running the risk of bumping into them.

‘I don’t trust her,’ Niffy explained once they were safely under the genuine Jacobean oak table. ‘She could photograph us with her phone and somehow make sure it got back to the Neb.’

After several minutes had passed, they began to realize how much fun it was to be the invisible guests at a party.

‘There’s Llewellyn admiring the Fotheringham family portraits,’ Niffy noticed.

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They watched as Penny’s boyfriend finished his tour of the art in the room, then headed over to the buffet table to heap a generous serving onto his plate.

He picked up a fork, but paused and brought it up to his face to take a closer look. After he’d scrutinized it closely, he slipped it into his trouser pocket, then picked up several other pieces of cutlery and slipped those in too.

‘He’s stealing the silverware?’ Gina whispered to Niffy.

‘Hey! You! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Charlie bounded up to him.

‘What do you mean?’ Llewellyn fired back in a voice no less posh, despite his comprehensive school education.

‘I saw you put our cutlery in your pocket. You’re stealing it, aren’t you? Even some grubby Burnside Academy boy like you can spot crested silver cutlery, can’t you?’

Charlie, possibly exhausted by the stress of fag burns on the Aubusson, red wine on the staircase sisal and the four teenage girls who had trampolined straight through the heirloom four-poster upstairs, pushed Llewellyn hard on the shoulder so that he wobbled and nearly overbalanced.

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Gina nudged Niffy. ‘This is going to be good,’

‘Look, you prat,’ Llewellyn shot at Charlie, ‘I put your precious cutlery in my pocket so I could carry some for me and some for my girlfriend into the other room, OK?’ With that, he pulled the silverware out of his pocket.

Both Niffy and Gina strained to see what was in his hands. It did indeed look like a perfectly credible two knives and two forks.

‘Get over yourself,’ Llewellyn added, jabbing a finger into Charlie’s chest. ‘It’s just stuff.’ He waved his hand around the room. ‘It’s all just stuff. It doesn’t make you any better or any worse than the rest of us.

Property is theft, anyway.’

Niffy rolled her eyes at Gina. ‘Blimey, I didn’t realize he was a communist as well as a comprehensive boy.’

Llewellyn began to walk out of the room. Charlie just let him, without adding any further insult.

It was then that Gina and Niffy first noticed the couple in the big armchair in the corner. They were wrapped round each other, his hands up her top, her hands down the front of his trousers.

‘Euwww . . .’ Gina was taken aback. ‘Don’t they have a home to go to?’

Just then the faces broke apart to catch their breath, 216

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long enough for the girls hidden under the table to see who they were.

‘Now that’s depressing,’ was Niffy’s verdict.

Gina nodded. ‘He’s a total creep. What did I say?

And how come she’s out so late?’

‘Maybe she’s staying with a day girl for the weekend,’ Niffy replied.

They watched as Jason and Sideshow Mel went back to their frantic snogathon.

‘Remind me not to invite Amy to Mel’s room for that talk,’ Niffy said.

‘Oh, look at them,’ Gina whispered. ‘I’m worried they’re going to have sex right in front of us. We do not want to see that.’

Niffy peered out. ‘I don’t suppose there’s much point reminding him about the bet now, is there? I haven’t even been able to find Angus.’ She sounded a little down about this, which could have meant she was sorry not to see Angus . . . or, more likely, that she was sorry not to see the money.

‘Might have been hard to get people to pay up though,’ she concluded and took another peek at Jason and Mel from under the tablecloth. ‘We should pay more attention – we might learn something.’

When Gina seemed to go pale at the thought of 217

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this, Niffy couldn’t help asking, ‘You don’t really seem to be as much into boys as I was expecting you to be.’

‘What? Because I’m American?’ Gina sounded offended.

‘Well . . . you go to a mixed school and all that . . .

It must be a bit easier, getting to know boys.’

Gina leaned back, sipping from the small plastic cup of wine she’d managed to bring to the under-the-table party. ‘I’m worried Squid Boy has put me off kissing for life,’ she confided. ‘I can’t tell you how horrible it was . . .

like he’d put a warm frog in my mouth.’

‘Oh no!’ Niffy cringed. ‘Yuck! You’re putting me off my drink!’

‘I don’t know if I ever want to go there again . . .

which probably makes me a little strange,’ Gina went on. ‘How am I going to go out with anyone if I don’t want to kiss them?’

‘You know, I don’t think you should worry about it,’

Niffy reassured her. ‘I’m sure if you’re kissing someone you’re totally mad about, their tongue won’t feel so warm . . . or froggy! It will probably feel’ – here her voice went into advert voiceover mode – ‘
like an
amazingly intimate adventure
.’

Gina began to giggle. ‘Speaking from experience, are you?’

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‘Oh yeah. Absolutely. But aren’t Californian boys much, much better than British ones?’ Niffy asked.

‘Aren’t they all fit and tanned, with a lot less hang-ups.’

‘We have all kinds over there too, you know. It’s not really like they made out in
Buffy
.’ Gina took another sip of wine.

‘Do you miss home a lot?’ Niffy wondered.

For a few moments Gina thought about home. She thought about her mother, heading off to work, car roof down, sunglasses on, hair flying in the breeze. She thought about Menzie and Mick listening to music turned up loud in the SUV as they set off in the other direction to Menzie’s school. Gina thought about her school and about Paula, Maddison and Ria. They emailed often, but she didn’t know where they were partying this weekend . . . and who else would be there? She imagined the smell of orange trees and salty beach air, suntan lotion and wet swimsuits. The taste of grape-flavoured Slush Puppies . . . or blueberry pancakes, warm, with a scoop of ice cream sliding off the top, the berries hot and mushy inside.

Finally, feeling her eyes swim with tears, she managed to say, ‘Yeah . . . I really, really miss home.

Can’t wait to go back.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ was Niffy’s verdict. Then came a 219

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more unexpected question: ‘When did your parents divorce?’

‘Oh!’ Gina was startled by this. Her parents had split up so long ago, nobody at home ever referred to it. ‘They didn’t get divorced,’ she explained to Niffy.

‘They never married. They were together for a few years, had me, my dad left, and that was kind of it. He doesn’t exactly keep in touch. Mick’s great though,’

she added. ‘I call him Mick but he is kind of my dad.’

‘I think my parents should get divorced,’ Niffy said in response to this, ‘but they won’t because they’d have to sell up and the Hall’s—’

‘Been in your family for five generations.’ Gina finished Niffy’s sentence with a smile. ‘Why don’t they open it to the public?’ she suggested. ‘Make some money that way?’

‘Oh God.’ Niffy let out a sigh. ‘They do! Mum shows people round our kitchen and bedrooms and stuff and it is just so totally embarrassing.’

Gina giggled. Somehow, that wasn’t quite how she’d pictured it.

And then their chat was interrupted by the sound of Jason exclaiming with some confusion, ‘Sorry! You know what? I have to go!’

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Niffy lifted the tablecloth so they could look out again.

They saw Jason scrambling up from the chair and tugging his top down and his trousers up.

‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ he told Mel before hurrying out of the room.

Neither he nor the two girls under the table were prepared for the volume on Mel’s outraged screech of

‘
Whaaaaat!!
’

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Chapter Seventeen

Amy and Niffy had pulled chairs across to the dorm window so they could watch Min running out on the track. No mention had been made of their row the night before. Amy had just shaken Niffy awake with the words: ‘Good party? Did you see Jason and Angus? Make loads of money?’

Once Niffy had informed her, ‘No, no and definitely no’ (she wasn’t going to be the one to mention anything about Jason), Amy hadn’t mentioned the party again, or the Gina and Jason incident.

Even making allowances for the fact that it was Sunday afternoon and she’d had an interrupted sleep the night before, Min seemed to be running very slowly.

‘She’s all hunched,’ said Amy. ‘She looks like she’s got the troubles of the world on her shoulders.’

‘She’s definitely got troubles,’ Niffy agreed.

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‘I think she’s depressed. Depressed people get like this. All slow and anxious and obsessive.’

‘You read that, did you, Amy?’ Niffy teased. ‘In a magazine or something?’

‘Shut up!’ Amy replied. ‘We need to help Min.’

She was already trying to help Min. Whenever she’d had a chance to get onto the boarding-house computer, she’d been searching the Internet –

Googling the words ‘medicine and physics’ and looking carefully through the array of results. Somewhere in there, she was sure, she was going to find an answer for Min.

Her eye fell on the plastic bag bundled up under Min’s bed. ‘Oh my God, Niffy!’ she exclaimed. ‘We have to get rid of the beer bottles!’

‘Bloody hell!’

The two girls left Min dragging herself round the running track. They pulled the bag out: inside there were four empties and at least eight full bottles.

‘Where are we going to put these?’ Amy asked anxiously.

They both knew that Mrs Knebworth looked carefully through the dorms during school hours, searching for contraband and secrets.

‘Where’s the Neb right now?’ Niffy asked.

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Amy looked at her watch. ‘Three-thirty. Hard to say. Maybe in her rooms or maybe prowling about downstairs.’

‘We need to get this down to the sitting room without her seeing us. You go on ahead as lookout and I’ll follow behind with the bottles.’

‘The sitting room?’ Amy asked.

‘Yeah – we stash them in the piano down there, then on Monday I leave a note for Agnes asking her to sneak them out of the building.’

‘The piano?’ Amy sounded incredulous. ‘Agnes?’

She had no idea the boarding house’s oldest cleaning lady could be so useful.

‘Sideshow Mel told me,’ Niffy explained. ‘If you ever need to get anything dodgy out of the house, you leave a note under Mel’s pillow. Apparently Agnes heads to Mel’s room before we’re even out of the door for school, so the Neb never has a chance to get in there first.’

‘And what does Agnes get out of it?’

‘Some very nice Christmas presents, apparently.’

‘I still can’t believe you and Gina went to Charlie’s last night,’ Amy said. ‘Was it worth it?’