Blueberry Wishes (4 page)

We all started throwing ideas around while Grace frantically scribbled down notes. In the end, we settled on Spicy Delight Bubble Bath for red. It was already pinkish, but we were planning to experiment with alkanet, a natural colouring, to make it really bright and cheerful.

For orange we went for our Carrot and Calendula Hand Balm, which always flew off the shelves at Rainbow Beauty. “It's for gardeners – is that a bit specific?” Mum asked, with a frown.

“We could change the description and take the gardening bit out and just say it's good for dry, chapped skin,” I suggested. “And we'll have to add turmeric and paprika to make it really orange.”

“Great,” said Grace, scribbling it all down.

“Yellow's easy,” said Saff. “Our Zesty Zing Shower Gel.” She obviously wasn't going to let go of the citrus theme. But actually I agreed with her. It was one of our most popular products already thanks to its huge burst of lemon, mandarin and grapefruit – perfect for getting even the biggest sleepyhead going in the morning.

For green we settled on the Olive Grain Foot Scrub, and decided to experiment with blue camomile and turmeric to make it even more vibrant than it already was. And blue camomile would also turn our lovely blue Chest-Clearing Massage Oil Blend (made with eucalyptus, peppermint, lavender, tea tree, rosemary and thyme oils) the perfect colour.

“Right. Indigo next,” said Mum.

“What
is
indigo, anyway?” asked Saff, wrinkling up her nose. “I've always wondered that.”

As Grace tutted and rolled her eyes, I went over to the chiller counter and came back with a punnet of blueberries. “These, look,” I said.

Saff peered at them. “Oh, right. I thought they were just
blue
, you know, being called
blue
berries.”

“I guess indigo is a kind of purply-blue,” I said.

“We don't have anything that colour,” said Mum. “Well, nothing that would work, anyway. We can't sell our Blueberry Burst Fresh Face Mask to the London shops because it needs to be refrigerated.”

I frowned. “You're right. Maybe we could make something else up, though. Blueberry oil is great for dry skin, and we haven't got a body butter in the London range at the moment. Obviously we can't transport fresh blueberries, so we'd have to use fragrance oil to get the yummy smell. I'm sure we could experiment with our natural colourings to get a good indigo colour, though.”

“That sounds gorgeous,” said Saff, “and we can use shea butter to make it really indulgent.”

We all agreed on the body butter and then moved on to violet. That was easy – Lavender Bath Bombs with real lavender flowers. They'd always been a good seller for us and the flowers made them look great. And in the end we decided to call each product simply Red, Blue or whichever colour, so that the range had a strong identity and the rainbow theme really stood out. We would put the full product name underneath that, in much smaller writing.

I put the kettle on for coffees then and Mum popped out to get some croissants from the corner shop. I was just walking back through from the kitchenette with the tray of mugs when she came back in. She was looking really shaky and pale, and instead of a bag of croissants she was clutching a leaflet.

“Oh no, didn't they have any left?” Saff said.

“Are you okay?” Grace asked.

Suddenly a really bad feeling came over me, like a darkness swooping down and settling right in the centre of my chest. “Mum?” I croaked. “What is it?”

But she didn't speak. Instead, she lurched over to the purple velvet sofas and Grace had to sit her down. It looked like she was in shock.

The blackness deepened around me then and I put the tray down before I dropped it. “Mum, what's happened? Has there been an accident?” I gasped.

She came round then. She shook her head slightly and then passed me the leaflet. Her hands were trembling.

I took in what it said (and why Mum was so upset) in one glance. And then I couldn't speak either.

“Oh, for goodness' sake,” Grace snapped, snatching the leaflet from me. “What can be so awful that…oh.”

“What?” Saff demanded. “Come on, Grace. What?”

“The Sanderton, that boutique hotel just down the road from us…they've opened a swanky new spa, and they're promoting it to the locals,” Grace mumbled. “They've got
amazing
offers on here.”

Saff grabbed the leaflet and read out loud, “‘
The Sanderton is proud to introduce its new Haven Spa. Indulge yourself with the latest luxury treatments and state-of-the-art facilities for the ultimate pampering experience'
. Oh my God. What an absolute nightmare,” she gasped. For once, I didn't think she was being overdramatic.

“We can't compete with this,” Mum muttered, finding her voice again. “I mean, look on the back of the leaflet – it offers everything we do, and it has a pool, sauna and steam room as well. Which means they can do day pamper packages with lunch.”

I felt sick and trembly too, but I reached for something positive to say. “It's not like we're the only beauty place in Totnes,” I pointed out. “There's a big spa at The Royal Devon, but that's never bothered us.”

“They're much further away,” said Grace. “And they don't target locals – it's really just for hotel guests on package deals. These leaflets have been put round in the shops for local people to pick up.
Our customers
.”

“I don't even understand how they can offer these services for such low prices,” Mum said. “I mean, look at this – a massage with free facial for £25. And this – free manicure when you book a pedicure.”

Grace peered at the leaflet over my shoulder and raised her eyebrows. “Those offers are loss leaders, to get people in the door,” she told us. “They won't make money on them, but they hope clients will spend on products, and book in for extras and other treatments at higher prices. It's like the supermarket selling beans for 10p and then once you're in there you buy other full-price stuff. The Sanderton's part of a chain. Head office is probably paying for this.”

Hearing that, it felt like my stomach had dropped into my shoes. “But how are small businesses like us supposed to compete against that?” I stuttered.

“We aren't,” Grace said flatly.

I really thought I was going to throw up then. We'd just got the business going, and now it looked like we had a huge battle on our hands. We were on target to make our next rent payment, but we still had a long way to go. What if business was badly affected by the new spa? How would we pay Mr. Vulmer then?

We all sat round the table, feeling sick and shocked, the coffee going cold and all thoughts of croissants forgotten. The Haven Spa opened on Monday morning and it felt like we were waiting for a hurricane to hit, to find out how bad the damage to our business would be.

We still had to deep-clean the treatment rooms after that, and look at what stock needed to be made or ordered in, but there was no more laughing and joking. We dragged around miserably, and I hardly felt like I had the energy to do anything. Grace was taking her frustration out on the floor, which was lucky because it needed a good scrub, but Saff seemed to have stopped completely, and was just leaning on the reception desk staring at the stock lists.

It was Mum who pulled us together in the end. “Come on, let's finish up and get out of here,” she said. “There's no point hanging around moping. Let's walk up to the supermarket and get the ingredients to cook a big roast. We haven't had one since we've been here, and I really fancy it now autumn's in the air.”

“Mum, we can't
cook
our way out of this crisis,” said Grace flatly.

“I know that,” said Mum, giving her a nudge, “but I want us to do something together. And a decent meal always makes things seem a bit better. Come on, Gracie, we can have beef. With Yorkshires…”

Grace's favourite.

“Fine,” said my sister, “but only if there's pudding as well.”

So, by half two, after lots of shopping and chopping and peeling and searing and basting and boiling and, erm, whatever it is you do to cook Yorkshire puds, we all sat down around the Formica-topped table and had our first roast dinner on it.

About halfway through, as I was reaching for more carrots, I noticed that the darkness I'd felt earlier had lifted a little. And perhaps the roast dinner had worked a bit of magic, because when the problem of the Haven Spa came into my mind (for about the hundredth time) instead of just feeling sick and blank and shuddery, I saw a little shoot of hope. “You know, we can't beat them on price,” I said, “but we could create our
own
offer, and put leaflets in all the shops too.”

“Good thinking,” said Mum. “We can't just roll over and let them take our business.”

“No way!” Saff agreed.

“We need to think of something that doesn't cost us too much, though, or we'll actually start
losing
money,” Grace warned.

“How about a free manicure with every massage or other body treatment?” I suggested. “The cost is mainly Saff's time, isn't it?”

“Yes,” said Grace. “The nail polish and other bits don't cost much.”

“I'm happy to do as many as you can book in,” said Saff eagerly.

“I'll sort out the leaflet,” I said. “We can do it at school tomorrow. Summer can help and I'm sure Mr. Mac will let us use the Media Lab if we explain what it's for.”

“Then we'll hit the streets and put them
everywhere
!” cried Saff. “We'll let that new spa know who they're dealing with! No one messes with the Green girls!”

“It's not about us being
against
them. We're simply promoting our business in a professional manner, that's all,” said Mum, but she did give Saff a proud smile.

We'd bought a chocolate cheesecake too, which Mum produced from the fridge with a flourish as we were clearing the lunch plates away. It was delicious, and we even had our traditional argument about who'd got the biggest bit, which made it feel like Sundays used to in our lovely house in Ealing.

Well, almost.

I supposed that nothing would ever be exactly the same again, not with Dad gone. But perhaps we'd make some new traditions of our own, like Saff nicking a bit of Grace's cheesecake when she wasn't looking and then Grace chasing her round the table.

As we cleared up afterwards, Saff mentioned possibly going into town later to meet Emily, but Mum went all parenty on her. “No one's going out this evening,” she shrilled. “It's the first day of school tomorrow, or college in your case, Saff, and I want you to have an early night. And, by the way, we're all going for an afternoon walk now, together, as a family, in the fresh air.”

“You're joking!” Saff cried.

But Mum wasn't, and amazingly, Saff somehow ended up walking down a country road and then the track along the back fields with us. And even more amazingly, she managed to do the whole thing without moaning and I can officially report that she can now walk past a sheep without having a fit of terror and saying it's looking at her strangely and is about to charge! (Do sheep even
do
that?!)

Saff stayed in with us that night too, and we all squashed up on the revolting brown sofa with steaming mugs of tea cupped in our hands and watched our fave programme,
Embarrassing Bodies
, on the tiny telly.

A few minutes in, Mum sighed and said, “Oh, you're all leaving me tomorrow and doing your own thing – Rainbow Beauty won't be the same.”

“Mum, we're going to school, not Timbuktu!” Grace cried. “We'll be back in the afternoons to help out. And all day Saturday.”

“And I'll be with you on Tuesdays, for my work-placement day,” Saff reminded her.

Mum smiled. “I know. It just feels strange, that's all. It's been me and my girls for the whole summer.” She put her arms round Saff and me, and I pulled Grace in too, and we had a sort of sitting-sideways hug. Amazingly, no one got scalded by hot tea.

“OMG, is that what I think it is?!” Saff gasped a few seconds later. “That poor, poor man!”

We all peered at the weeny, rubbish screen for a moment, then made out what the embarrassing bit actually
was
and all screeched and turned away, covering our eyes. And then I found myself thinking that if we'd had a huge telly, and a big armchair each, it wouldn't have been half so much fun.

I spent ages getting ready for school on Monday morning, even by Saff's standards. I used our Rainbow Beauty Luscious Lavender Shower Gel for relaxation, but not even a truckload of lavender would have calmed me down right then because I was SO EXCITED that I'd be seeing Marco, my BOYFRIEND, every day – yippee! And I felt much better about the new spa opening now that we'd come up with a plan to tackle it head-on.

My uniform was Summer's old one that she'd passed on to me, so of course it was already pretty cool, but I jazzed it up even more by rolling up the skirt, knotting my tie loosely with pearl necklaces draped around it, and putting on loads of bracelets and hairslides.
And
my usual ton of black and grey eye make-up, of course.

Mum nearly had a heart attack when I walked out of the bathroom. “You look more done up than you did on Saturday night!” she cried. “Abbie, you're not going on a date, you know! I hope you're not going to be distracted by Marco at school. It's about getting a good education.”

I grinned. “I promise I'll be the perfect student,” I said. As I caught Saff's eye, she winked at me.

“I saw that!” Mum cried. (Of course she did – she never misses anything.) “I mean it, Abbie. School's not a lurve palace.”

“A
lurve palace
?” I repeated, shuddering with horror. “Mum, where on earth did you get
that
from?”

“No, school is not a
lurve
palace
, Abigail,” said Saff, all primly, and Mum looked smug about her swapping sides, until she added, “School is a catwalk.”

Mum groaned.

“And so is college,” Saff added. “How do I look?”

“Great. Obviously. As ever,” I said, with a sigh. It's not easy having stunning Saff for a sister and natural beauty Summer for a best friend. It's lucky I'm fairly confident, that's all I can say. Otherwise I'd just want to hide in the loos all the time with a bag over my head.

And then it got even worse, because Grace came out looking so jaw-dropping, we hardly recognized her.

She'd jazzed up her uniform, and she must have plaited her hair when it was wet the night before because it fell in beautiful glossy waves over her shoulders.

“Wow, Grace!” I gasped.

“Look out, Year 11!” cried Saff.

The sweep of black eyeliner and mascara made Grace's eyes look big and bright, and I was sure Mum would veto the gothy dark plum lipstick she'd paired with it, but she didn't say anything except, “My goodness, darling, you look lovely.”

Grace allowed herself the tiniest smile. “Just because I've put on a bit of lippy doesn't mean I haven't got a brain,” she announced.

“No one's saying it does, love,” said Mum.

Then Grace peered at Saff, and the smallest frown flickered over her face.

“What?” Saff demanded.

“Oh, nothing,” said Grace innocently, reaching for her bag.

“No, come on, what?” Saff cried.

Grace sighed. “Are you really wearing that top?” she said, with a cheeky grin. “It's just…it makes you look sort of mushroomy.”

Yes, you read that right. She said that to Saff. As in, Ultimate Style Queen Saff.

“Mushroomy?” Saff repeated. “What does that even
mean
?”

But Grace just called out, “Come on, slowcoaches!”, nicked the last bit of toast from Saff's plate and flounced off down the hall.

Saff walked as far as her bus stop to Paignton with Grace and me, and then we carried on up the road to Cavendish High. We linked arms, walking in time like we always did. I'd swapped the foul brown loafers Mum had made me wear on my first day for black ballet pumps, fortunately, and Grace had somehow managed to sneak Saff's slouchy boots past Mum, who'd have had a fit if she'd noticed her wearing them.

Things couldn't have been more different from when we'd arrived on our first day, a few months back. Now, instead of both being terrified about not knowing a single person, Grace and I were saying “hi” to people, and calling out and waving as soon as we walked through the gates. Grace spotted her friends Maisy and Aran near the canteen door and headed off to them. (I noticed Aran's jaw drop too, when he saw her new look!)

Then I spotted Marco, getting off his mum's motorbike and stowing his helmet. Sienna waved to me and I waved back, remembering how I'd panicked and thought she was Marco's girlfriend when I'd first seen her drop him off like that. She's lovely – really young and sparky. I didn't know what his dad was like because I'd never met him. From what Marco had said, Luke didn't have much to do with them, he just turned up sometimes and then disappeared off again.

As Sienna roared off and Marco slouched through the gates, what I actually wanted to do was that running-up-to-him thing with my arms out, like when people run through a meadow towards each other (does that ever really happen?!). But I forced myself to walk normally, even though my legs felt really weird, like I'd forgotten how. When I reached him, I didn't know whether to kiss him, hug him or what. I
didn't
want to look like a mental possessive person and be all over him, but on the other hand I
did
want anyone NOT yet aware via the gossip vine that we were together to get the message.

To be honest, what I
actually
wanted to do was make a giant placard with MARCO IS MY BOYFRIEND written on it, and carry it round – but I'd definitely have looked a bit weird then. My brain was still whirring, trying to work out what to do next, when he gave me his big, gorgeous, lazy grin, said, “Hey, Abs”, slung his arm round my shoulders and carried on walking. There. That's it. Perfect. Why can't
I
think of cool stuff like that?

The bell went and as we walked into class, just about everyone we saw said something about the cafe gig and how good it was. A really shallow bit of me was just LOVING walking down the corridor with the coolest guy in the year, who was my BOYFRIEND (oh, sorry, couldn't help mentioning that again!) but mostly I was just so proud of Marco. The gig
had
been great, and he told me they were getting loads of hits on their site, and tons of good comments and photos posted on Facebook. Obviously I had to check out the pics on Summer's phone before registration, and they really caught the warm, fun, tea-lighted atmosphere.

Then Ben turned up, and I told them all about the new spa. Summer looked really gutted for me, and Ben and Marco didn't seem sure
what
to say. “Is there anything we can do?” Summer asked.

“I'm hoping you'll help me make some leaflets of our own,” I told them. “We're doing a free manicure with every body treatment.”

“Good idea,” said Summer. “I've still got some Rainbow Beauty pictures saved on the computers in the Media Lab from stuff we've done before – we can use those to jazz it up.”

I smiled at her. “That's great. Are you all around at lunchtime?” I asked. “I'm going to see if we can use the lab then.”

Ben and Summer were free, but Marco said, “I've got band practice, but I can put leaflets in the shops in town after school, and stick them on billboards and trees and stuff.”
Oh, I could kiss that boy,
I thought. And I nearly did. But just then, Mrs. Leavis walked into our form room. We were 10L now, and as well as being our new form teacher, she took us for Geography and she was really nice. The first thing she talked about when she'd done the register was how it was all about GCSEs now. She kept mentioning building blocks and stepping stones and other ways of saying that this year is very, very important, even though we're not doing most of our actual exams until Year 11. I thought it was just Mrs. Leavis, because she's our form teacher, but everywhere we went all day we got the same talk.

When I went to the staffroom at break to ask Mr. Mac about using the Media Lab, he didn't hesitate to sign passes for me, Ben and Summer to be in there at lunchtime. He even said I could just pay cost price for the leaflets, so it worked out far cheaper than using a print shop.

So, as soon as the bell went after French, us three grabbed sandwiches from the canteen and headed over there. We designed the leaflets, then printed out batches on massive A3 sheets of glossy paper on the colour printer.

As we worked, I noticed that any awkwardness between Summer and Ben seemed to have completely melted away. Ben was happy because he got the total boy-job of chopping the A3 sheets into individual leaflets on the giant razor-sharp guillotine (Mr. Mac was in there doing some prep by that time, so he got it out of the store cupboard for us) and Summer and I got massively girly with the design and made Rainbow Beauty look like heaven on earth.

I felt so much better after we'd actually
done
something to counteract the new spa that I got really giggly and silly and completely embarrassed myself in Maths, thanks to my uncontrollable mouth. When Mrs. Croft announced that we'd be starting our preparation for our first piece of GCSE coursework straight away I found myself going “YEEEESSS!” very loudly, and everyone laughed. CRINGE! – I'd only meant to whisper it to Summer to be funny, but I was so excited and happy about all the Headrush stuff and the me-and-Marco-ness in general, it came out at about a gazillion decibels, with an added air punch.

“I'm glad you're so excited about it, Miss Green,” said Mrs. Croft, and then obviously I had to pretend I
was
so I didn't get told off, which made me CRINGE even more. All I can say is thank God Marco's in the top group (which I am so NOT, obviously!), so he wasn't there to witness my utter cringe-aciousness!

Us four were all together for English, though. It's one of my fave subjects and I'm really into it usually, but seeing Marco again after precisely forty-six minutes apart was so exciting that we ended up doing this flirty, whispery, note-passing thing and in the end Mr. King sighed and said, “Abbie and Marco, let me put it like this and maybe you'll pay more attention. So Marco, imagine Abbie is Juliet, and you're Romeo, and you're madly in love with each other, but your families want to keep you apart and you're gutted… What would you do about it?”

“Erm, I, well, we…” Marco mumbled.

Everyone cracked up, even me, as he went bright red and then got very interested in taking down the notes from the board.

While all this was going on, Summer and Ben, who were sitting opposite us, were chatting through stuff together before writing anything down. Their hands brushed as Summer opened her notebook and she quickly pulled hers away. Only
I
saw her looking a bit flustered. Ben either pretended not to notice or, probably, being a boy, he actually
didn't
notice. I couldn't help wondering, though – was she
really
over him? Maybe the awkwardness I'd spotted between them wasn't about what happened at the beach party after all. Maybe it was because she still liked him. I thought about asking her outright, but then I decided to just wait and see what happened. After the beach-party disaster, I was sure the last thing she needed was me trying to matchmake, even if she
did
still like Ben.

I gave most of the leaflets to Marco at last break (plus the kiss he hadn't got at registration time!) and Summer and Ben took a big bunch to put up round where they lived.

On the walk home, Grace and I stuck leaflets on every lamp post and tree (luckily, loads of drawing pins were left on them from previous posters) and in every letter box and shop window that we could find. By the time we arrived back at Rainbow Beauty, I was on a complete high. I'd convinced myself that we'd made the new spa out to be much more of a threat than it really was, and that with our clever bit of marketing we'd keep our customers coming to us.

When we showed Mum and Saff the leaflets, they were really impressed too, and Saff took a bunch to give out at her college in the morning. She was so excited about her first day, and bubbling over with chat about her tutors and the other girls (and the couple of boys) on her course, and what they learned, it lifted us all even more. “I'm glad I'm here to help you tomorrow,” she said to Mum. “With such an enticing new offer, and leaflets everywhere, I'm sure the phone will be ringing off the hook from first thing in the morning.”

I grinned at her. I was sure it would be too.

On Tuesday after school, Marco, Summer and Ben walked back to Rainbow Beauty with me. The boys were on their way into town and Summer was going to give me, Mum and my sisters a hand putting our Rainbow range together. And, of course, we were all keen to find out if the response to our leaflets had been as good as we'd hoped.

Mum met us at the door, beaming. “We've had seven bookings for the offer already,” she told us. “I just wanted to thank you all for getting those leaflets done, and for all the legwork putting them up and giving them out.”