Styling Wellywood: A fashionable romantic comedy (Wellywood Series Book 2) (17 page)

Leaving Kelburn in a flap I race into the city, find the drycleaner Mum’s used for years, who declares assuredly they can make the dress look like new and promise to have it ready for two the following day. I heave a massive sigh of relief, feeling the stress of the last few hours flow out of my body.

Calamity averted
. Well, for another day at least.

I make a mental note that I need to pick it
up tomorrow before dropping both Stephanie’s and Lex’s dresses off. Two birds with one stone. Easy.

Just then my phone begins to ring.
I pick it up and notice it’s Laura, so I hesitate before answering it. I wonder whether she knows about what happened with Scott? She’s friends with Brooke, so it’s entirely possible that she does. God, I really don’t need her ranting at me about it all right now, so I decide to hit ‘decline’.

After a moment
my phone beeps telling me I have a new message and curiosity gets the better of me, so I dial voicemail and listen to what she has to say, expecting a terse message in the very least. But she sounds bright and breezy, hoping I can meet her for coffee as she’s in town and has an hour or two free. Since she sounds happy and I’m in the city anyway, I text her saying I’ll meet her at Pravda, a stylish café-come-restaurant on one of the main central city shopping streets.

Five
minutes later she waves at me from a table in the back of the café and to my relief appears genuinely happy to see me. I order a flat white and walk over to the table where she gives me a warm hug and asks how I’ve been.

“
Oh, you know, really busy. Estil’s taking off but, actually, things aren’t great.”

“
What’s up?” She looks concerned.

“
Well, I don’t know if you know but it looks like Morgan’s left Darling Dave. I’ve tried and tried to get in touch with her but, other than a brief, “I’m fine don’t worry about me,” message, she’s not returning my calls or my texts.”

“
Oh my god! I didn’t know she still wasn’t back.” She looks genuinely shocked.

“
Yeah, well, it sucks. Not just for Dave,
obviously
, but she’s missed loads of Estil stuff. I’m really struggling with keeping the business afloat.”

My coffee’
s delivered and I thank the waiter. “Anyway, enough of my woes. How are you? Got some baby-free time?”

“
Yes, I just came into the city to run a few errands, had a moment, and so decided to see if you were free, which you are, so it’s fantastic!” She’s rambling and sounds a little nervous suddenly.

“
I saw Brooke yesterday,” she states suddenly.

And
now I know why.

“
Oh?” I try to appear disinterested as I concentrate intently on stirring my coffee.

“
She’s in a bad way, Jess.”

I have the choice here of feigning impartial interest or coming clean. I
’m not proud of it, but I go for the first option.

“
Oh, no. Sorry to hear that.” And then go with distraction, “How’s your coffee? Want another one? Maybe a cinnamon roll? They look good. I’m tempted myself.”

I suspect my paste-
on smile and sing-song-y tone are coming across as slightly manic, but I’m hoping Laura doesn’t notice.

She shakes her head
, adeptly disregarding my attempt at diversion.

“
You
know
what I’m talking about, Jess.”

She’s looking at me very
gravely and if I could slip down my chair and under the table with my fingers in my ears singing “
la la la la la’
” I would gladly do it. Despite the inevitable odd glances from onlookers.

Of the four of us in our tight little girls’ club
of me, Laura, Lindsay and Morgan she was always the sensible one, the one you’d go to with your serious problems. She was almost middle aged at sixteen. Which also meant she was the one who wouldn’t take any crap from anyone - bit of a shame for me right now, considering it’s pretty obvious she knows what I’ve been up to lately.

But instead
of sliding under the table like a four-year-old I take a deep breath. Got to face this one like the grown up I am. Well, supposedly.

I deci
de to take the defensive route. “Yes, I guess I do know what you’re talking about, but you need to understand
I’m
in a bad way too, Laura. Scott screwed us both over, you know. I had
no
idea.”

“
Jess, that’s no excuse! When are you going to start taking responsibility for yourself? You’re a grown woman, for god’s sake. You can’t just go around doing what you like, as though your actions have no effect on anyone else. Because they do.”

I didn’t expect her to be doing backflips about what had
happened, but surely that’s going a bit far?

“
Steady on there, Laura,” I spurt. “Scott never told me he was in a relationship with anyone else and …”

“
Living with.” Laura interrupts me, arms crossed in front of her on the table like a displeased boarding school matron, shooting me a withering look.

“
What?” I squeak.

What’s she talking about?
He hadn’t actually said he lived in an apartment on his own, but I’m pretty sure he’d suggested it. But then I never did go to his place, which I put down to his adventurous spirit, not that he was hiding the likes of Brooke there.

“
He was
living
with her. With Brooke. But it’s all over now. Thanks to your little ‘
fling’
,” she continues. She holds her fingers in the air, making the quotation gesture, incensed sarcasm written blatantly across her face.

Shit
! Just when I’d started to feel like I was able to put the whole humiliating Scott debacle behind me, now I feel even worse. I had no idea Scott lived with Brooke. What an arse.

I almost feel sorry for
Brooke. Almost.

Laura’s
face then changes as a new thought appears to occur to her. “He was the guy in the car, wasn’t he? The one you had sex with on Mt Vic. Like you were some sort of hormonal, sex-crazed teenager.”

She makes it sound so cheap, so
tacky, when in reality it was so exciting. Well, at least it was at the time.

God,
I’m such an idiot.

I look down at my
cup, pretending to find the coffee streaked milky foam quite fascinating.

Eventually I reply
quietly, “Yeah, he was.”

Feeling the anger rising in me I look up at Laura, hoping she’ll see
the way he’d treated me was just as bad as how he’d treated Brooke.

“
God he’s an arse. But you
have
to believe me, Laura. I. Didn’t. Know.”

“
So you said,” she replies. She gives me such a contemptuous look I swear my insides shrivel up a bit. “And now she’s kicked him out and I’m really worried about her. But you have your excuse. You don’t have to worry about any of this, do you? Just like you didn’t have to worry about Lindsay.”

“
What
?!” I almost shout in shock. “What’s Lindsay got to do with any of this? And you know how I felt, how we
all
felt when she died.”

T
his is a real stretch. Lindsay dying is one thing, but it really has nothing to do with the whole Scott catastrophe. Talk about a quantum leap.

“
No, Jess, not when Lindsay
died
. When she
killed
herself. When she committed suicide because she found it too hard to live. And how did you handle that? Let me think... Oh yes, that’s right. You jumped on a plane as quickly as you could and moved to London for four years.
Four years
, Jess. Leaving me here to pick up the pieces. And now you think you had nothing to do with what’s happened to Brooke? Jesus. Way to shirk all responsibility, Jess. Good one.”

She stands up,
pink in the face and breathing hard with anger, pushing her chair across the floor which makes a loud screeching sound. Several heads turn our way to see what the ruckus is and I slump slightly in my chair in embarrassment.

“
Get yourself a cinnamon roll if that’s what you want.” She turns on her heel and storms off down the stairs and onto the street, leaving me sitting at the table, shrinking into my chair and smiling weakly at everyone. Completely in vain, I try to make out one of my best friends didn’t just pull large, painful, deeply buried strips off me in the middle of a café.

***

Lindsay. Yeah, so I haven’t been entirely honest. She
did
commit suicide, she didn’t just die as I’d said before. But I just don’t like to think about it much. I mean, who would? It’s not like it’s an enjoyable topic - hardly a laugh a minute experience, fun for the whole family.

It was some
years ago. Hell, who am I kidding? I remember exactly when it was - twenty-second of February, so four years and seven months ago. And counting.

The memory
of what happened that day is indelibly etched on my brain.

One
of your best friends, a girl you’ve been incredibly close to since you were a teenager - who you’d confided in, had fun with, gone through so much stuff with, both good and bad - decided one day her life was shit enough to top herself.

And she did
it without warning, without even leaving a note to help us understand.

H
ow did that make me feel? Not exactly like the cat who got the cream, I can tell you.

So here’s
what happened. I met Lindsay at the same time I met Laura and Morgan, on our very first day of secondary school. We were in the same class and saw in one another kindred souls. We were inseparable from day one. Lindsay came from a wealthy, liberal family who believed in the public education system, hence she went to our high school and not some snooty private girls’ school down the road.

I first noticed her
when our homeroom teacher, Mrs. Bayer, asked us all to stand up and tell the class a little about ourselves on the first day of school. Why do teachers think this is a good introductory exercise for thirteen-year-old girls? Talk about putting you on the spot! Don’t they know teenagers want to just merge into the crowd in order to deal with the hormonal hurricane wreaking havoc inside? The last thing they want to do is stand up in front of a room full of girls they’ve never met before and come up with something interesting to say about themselves at one minute’s notice - something that could set the scene for their entire high school life. The pressure is insurmountable!

When it came to my turn I stood up, feeling
the heat rise in my cheeks, as I mumbled something extremely mundane about being an only child and living in Karori with my mum and dad and cat called Stanley, all the while looking down at the desk in front of me. It had ‘FS is a bitch’ etched into its surface in typical teenage eloquence.

Not exactly earth
shattering oratory, I can assure you.

But when it
was Lindsay’s turn she stood up with the sort of confidence other thirteen-year-olds could only dream of, looked Mrs. Bayer straight in the eye, and said, “Good morning, Mrs. Bayer. I’m Lindsay F. Whitman. The F is for Flora. Like the margarine.”

She paused,
and I noticed everyone in the room was looking at her, smiling faintly at her pretty embarrassing middle name, while taking in her ethereal looks - her long, thick, red hair, tied back in a ponytail; her pretty, delicate features and fair skin, virtually luminous in the morning light; and her almost unnatural looking bright blue eyes.

“
I hope you’re going to make my high school career something to remember, Mrs. Bayer.”

Our teacher looked quite taken aback, but Lindsay flashed her a beautiful smile, which suggested she was only joking with her and she would
in fact be a wonderful student to teach.

She then turned to the class, looking
around at us all, until she saw me and continued, “Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you’re a mile away from them
and
you have their shoes. Jack Handey.”

The whole class erupted into
surprised laughter, more from the sheer gall of this girl in front of us than from the feeble joke, even if it
was
mildly amusing. Lindsay took her seat, smiling sweetly and winking at me. I couldn’t help but smile back at her as Mrs. Bayer tried to regain control of her new class of hysterically laughing thirteen-year-olds.

“
Great speech,” I said, approaching her as she leaned against the wall at morning tea, drinking out of a juice box with a straw.

“
Thanks,” she replied. “Yours was great too.”