Soul Love (16 page)

Charlie came closer. ‘You OK, Jenna? You don’t mind Julius taking some pictures, do you? He was massive in the old days. Used to photograph rock stars and models.’

‘Why am I not surprised?’ I muttered, looking down at my crumpled jeans and the food stain on the side of my T-shirt. If I acted all put out then it would mask my reactions to seeing
Gabe again. ‘I’m dressed for a rehearsal not a photo session,’ I grumbled. Let people think I’m vain and trivial.

Cleo made an entrance wearing a tight black dress, small black cowboy hat and silver chain around her neck. She looked stunning.

‘You look fine,’ Gabe said in a quiet voice that made me jump. Then he added, whispering now, ‘I came back from London early. Did what I had to do and decided that I had to
carry on with my life.’

Cleo was in a manic mood and she seemed determined to monopolise Gabe’s attention. For once I didn’t mind. Gabe and Cleo needed each other.

But as I was swigging from a bottle of water he stood beside me and whispered, ‘Have you read my letter?’

I nodded.

‘Let’s meet up tonight, usual place but an hour later.’

I nodded again. I was about to reach out and touch him, but he deliberately moved away. Then everything got crazy for a while as Julius set up his equipment.

‘Just act natural,’ he said as he switched on a bright spotlight and dazzled us all.

Cleo grabbed hold of Gabe, Freddie struck mean poses, Charlie looked startled and I tried to melt into the background.

Behind a camera Julius transformed himself into a camp monster screeching weird stuff at us from ‘
Fromage
, my lovelies, say
fromage
!’ to ‘Love the camera, love
the camera – now hate the camera, hate the camera.’

Ava came in the shop dressed to the nines in a sparkly top and freshly applied make-up. She put on a pathetic charade of acting surprised that we were having our photographs taken and being
reluctant to join us.

There was just enough time to run through the order of the songs and make a half-hearted attempt at playing them. We’d used up all our energy posing.

As we were packing up, Charlie handed out our performers’ passes to the festival. They were plastic bracelets.

‘Don’t lose these or you’ll never get in,’ he said. ‘Plus, we’ve been allocated a corner in the performers’ area, close to the stage, where we can camp
and use as a space to store our clothes and instruments.’

‘I don’t have a tent,’ I said.

‘The vicar is lending us one of the cub scout tents for us all to sleep in,’ said Freddie. ‘So that all the groupies and freeloaders can come and party after the show. We are
playing on Saturday so we can spend Friday settling in and listening to the other bands or whatever.’

‘In your dreams, Freddie. We’re not sharing a tent with the likes of you – are we, Gabe?’ Cleo asked.

But Gabe wasn’t listening. He looked down at his watch, threw on his coat and walked out of the door. This time, he at least managed a short wave goodbye. Cleo followed him out of the
door.

Charlie sighed. ‘I’m the lead singer so it should be me who’s the mean and moody one.’

I ruffled his hair. ‘Come on, let’s go for some chips.’

Now I could understand Gabe’s moods.

Charlie and I walked back home together, stopping on the way to buy the chips I promised Sarah. Charlie was unusually quiet, and I wasn’t saying much either. I supposed he was getting
nervous about playing at the festival and my head was in a spin thinking about Gabe and what we would say to each other. Half of me was excited and the other half was scared that I’d stuff
up. Charlie sighed and threw half his chips in a bin.

I said, ‘You know what they say in the theatre – bad dress rehearsal, great show!’

Charlie grinned. ‘It’s been really great having you sing with the band. Maybe we could go out together when we’re both back in London?’

I was startled. Was Charlie asking me out? Charlie noticed and backtracked. ‘When I said go out, I meant to listen to some more anti-folk bands so you can see what they are like. Maybe eat
some more pizza afterwards.’

‘That would be great,’ I said. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings so I said, ‘I hope we’ll go out lots, Charlie. You’ve been a good friend to me in Netherby
and I’d like it to continue.’

He walked quickly inside.

Sarah was still sitting in the front room.

‘I brought you some chips,’ I said as I unwrapped the package. I had also bought a fish cake for Tallulah that I crumbled into her dish.

‘I’m not hungry,’ Sarah said slowly.

In desperation, I began to babble on about the photo shoot, the rehearsal – anything I could think of to cut into the awful silence in the room.

‘Have you got the food stall ready? I could give you a hand. And the poetry tombola?’

Sarah sat up bolt upright and said, ‘Kai will be at the festival and then we can sort out this misunderstanding. Must get everything ready. No time to lose.’ Then she began to
manically pace about the room. I’m not sure which was worse. This frantic activity or when she never moved a muscle.

I went upstairs to pack my stuff for the festival. I hadn’t really given much thought to what I was going to wear on stage. I’m sure Cleo had, though. She had seemed really wired
tonight and even more focused on Gabe than usual. I put on my Walkman and played my CDs as loud as I could to blot out the frantic bustling and rustling noises from downstairs.

There I was, only a few weeks ago, thinking I was so grown up because Mia was my best friend and Jackson liked me; and how cool it was to keep them out of trouble and lose my place at school
because of it. Now all that felt like childish stuff. Gabe was right to laugh at me.

Then it hit me just how much I needed Gabe. How much I valued his presence in my life. How many different sides of me he could see. I thought of all the ‘Our Times’ we had spent
together. For a brief time I had stopped thinking about him as a person and let some germ in his body affect the way I felt about him! There was so much more to him than that. When I saw him later
tonight I was going to let him know how much he meant to me.

I crept downstairs to check on Sarah before I left. As I switched off my music I could hear manic laughing. My first thought was that Sarah had completely lost it, but then I heard some familiar
voices.

‘Mum!’
I screeched. I’d never been so pleased to see her. Even Marcus was there.

‘You dark horse, Jenna. Once I found out that you were performing at the Netherby Festival I had to come.’

‘You’ll never get tickets. They sold out ages ago,’ I said.

‘Lucky for us that Sarah sent me some.’

‘I always send your mum a ticket for sentimental reasons,’ Sarah said with a sigh.

‘We went to the first ever Netherby Festival when we were teenagers,’ Mum explained.

‘We both fell in love with the same boy,’ Sarah added, giggling.

Mum laughed. ‘We trailed him round a field for hours on end.’

‘Scary thought,’ I said as Marcus jumped up and down on the sofa, screeching, ‘Did you kiss him? Did you kiss him?’

‘That’d be telling,’ Mum said with a wink.

‘Please
don’t do that,’ I said darkly.

‘Marcus, you can help me run the poetry tombola,’ Sarah said. She was looking more like her normal self.

Marcus frowned. ‘What’s that? It sounds weird.’

‘It’s great fun. People pay money for a ticket and if they pull out a raffle ticket that ends in zero or five, then they win one of my poems.’

‘Can I keep some of the money?’ Marcus asked.

‘No way,’ said Mum.

‘I’ll pay you a fee for managing the stall,’ Sarah said.

‘I want paying in money, not poems,’ Marcus said and we all laughed.

‘So my dark horse of a daughter is now a backing singer in a band.’ Mum sat next to me on the sofa and patted my knee.

‘Not just backing. I’m going to sing a song too – “Because the Night!” ’

‘My favourite song!’ Mum exclaimed.

‘I’m doing an anti-folk version,’ I explained.

‘Oh, I see,’ she said, clearly not seeing at all.

‘It’s an alternative music to manufactured pop music. Apart from my song, everything else has been written by the band.’

Mum jumped up and asked, ‘Sarah, is that old trunk of mine still in the box room?’

‘I think so . . .’ Sarah said, frowning. I guess she couldn’t be sure what else Kai had taken a fancy to.

Mum dragged me upstairs while Sarah and Marcus made hot chocolate. She pulled out a dusty old trunk from underneath a pile of cardboard boxes in the box room.

As soon as we were on our own she said, ‘Spill.’

I shook my head, but inside I was panicking. What did she know?

But I was just being paranoid. Of course Mum didn’t know anything about Gabe. Is this how keeping other people’s secrets made you?

‘Let me remind you, my little clam of a daughter, that Sarah is my sister. She looks terrible. What has Kai done this time?’

It was a relief to be able to tell Mum something about what had been bothering me. I left out the bit about Sarah accusing me of stealing the vase, but I kept in the bit about Kai’s
pregnant girlfriend.

Mum didn’t say much, but I could see by the tightness around her mouth that she was cross.

‘Aha. Here it is.’ She pulled out a crackly cellophane-wrapped parcel. She handed it to me.

Inside it was a T-shirt. The cotton was thin and on the front was a faded screen print of Patti Smith.

‘I bought it from a second-hand clothing stand in Camden Market about twenty years ago. It comes from her first concert in London in the 1970s. You can wear it.’

It was perfect! ‘Thanks, Mum.’

Gabe would love it, I thought. Then suddenly I glanced at the clock. It was already twenty past ten. It would take me at least another ten minutes to race to the treehouse. Would Gabe wait for
me?

‘Forgot something for the concert!’ I yelled as I ran down the stairs two at a time.

I was out of the door before anyone could stop me.

Chapter Thirty-Two

T
oo late. By the time I’d made it to the treehouse, there was no sign of Gabe.

‘You could have given me a chance and waited!’ I yelled to the empty space.

When I got back I noticed that there was a scrap of paper with a stone holding it down on the wall opposite the cottage, where Gabe liked to sit. It was a page torn out of his astronomy
notebook. On the blank page he had written:

I started back down the hill. I had to catch up with Gabe and explain that I was only late because Mum had showed up and that I wasn’t brushing him off.

I made it as close as I could to Netherby Hall, but the road leading up to the house was fenced off and a group of menacing security guards stood outside. The festival had transformed the quiet
countryside into a bustling city.

I turned back to walk down the hill past a stream of parked cars queuing to get into the festival site. I had to let Gabe know that he was wrong about me. There would be no time to talk once we
were caught up with the band stuff at the festival. The church bell sounded eleven times. I had to find him soon!

As I was making my way down past the stream of traffic, the window of a battered old car wound down and a voice shouted, ‘Jenna!’

Oh no! I thought. Could this evening get any worse?

In the car were Mia, Jackson and Rebecca.

Mia shrieked, ‘We made it! It’s taken us hours to drive down.’

Rebecca said, ‘The car broke down and we had to wait ages for the AA.’

Jackson reached out his hand and touched my arm. ‘Good to see you, Jenna. Thanks for the e-mail.’

Rebecca looked a bit peeved, but said, ‘We heard you got a job working on a food stall. That sounds like fun.’ Although she said it in a way that really meant, ‘I’d
rather have all of my teeth pulled out by a pair of pliers.’

I couldn’t be bothered telling them that I was also performing at the festival. Let them find out that for themselves, the snobs!

‘Have you found another school yet?’ Rebecca wasn’t letting go of that knife she was digging into me just yet.

Jackson looked suitably embarrassed and Mia looked away.

Rebecca’s brother, Justin, piped up from the driver’s seat, ‘So
this
is the girl. The one who went shopping with a teacher’s credit card? Cool.’

‘We’re looking forward to meeting Charlie,’ Mia said and winked.

‘Charlie’s just a friend,’ I snapped back. Mia had this way of getting under my skin and making me feel vulnerable. I used to accept it, but now they all seemed so
insignificant. I wasn’t going to let her take control of me any more.

Jackson smiled. He was the only one who really looked genuinely pleased to see me.

‘We’ll see you in there,’ Mia said, waving to me as the line of traffic began to move again.

‘Not if I see you first,’ I said. Everyone laughed, but I meant it. Meeting up with them again made me feel awkward and a little sad. It was like their friendship was a pair of party
shoes that I’d grown out of.

Mum had been too busy trying to prise information out of Sarah to notice how late it was when I got home. She even lent me her mobile so I could ring Netherby Hall. I’d
made up some excuse about needing to finalise an urgent arrangement. It was constantly engaged.

My head was spinning. Gabe thought I didn’t want to be with him. He must think I’m really shallow and trivial to give up on him so easily. And Cleo would be only too pleased to back
up that idea.

Mum was too preoccupied with Sarah to see how messed up I was. Besides, she’d surely put any restlessness on my part down to the fact that I was performing tomorrow.

As I crept up to bed the church bell rang for midnight. I felt my insides tighten. Everything felt hopeless.

Marcus was curled up on a mattress on the floor in my room. He couldn’t sleep either.