Lula Does the Hula (37 page)

Mum shuddered. ‘Esme Trooter’s toenails?’

‘You have NO idea what goes on in that salon,’ I replied.

Aunt Phoebe raised her eyebrows. ‘Thank heavens for small mercies,’ she said, gratefully accepting her tea from Gianni. ‘What happened to your finger, young man?’

‘This, Aunt Phoebe,’ said Pen, gesturing to Gianni, who was still looking at the space Tam had vacated with a glazed, lovestruck look on his face, ‘is Gianni Caruso. He has
ice skated
in the past.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Great-aunt Phoebe. ‘I remember.’

Big Mama brought over full English breakfasts for everyone, and a steaming plate of lasagne for me. Blue stabbed a sausage happily and gave Boodle a rasher of bacon.

‘I have-a for the dog-a,’ sang Big Mama, and she sailed off behind the counter and returned with a paper plate heaped with sausages, and broken-up bread for Biggins too.

‘Even before this crisis, Mum,’ I said, ‘you have to admit that I’ve been through a lot.’

She sighed and speared a mushroom. ‘And?’

‘And I think it would be the final straw on my camel’s back if you and Dad started saying we couldn’t have
visitors
round to our rooms, or choose which
visitors
they were.’

Mum examined her plate, and speared a sausage. She held it up, bit it in half with one bite and chewed furiously, staring at Fat Angus.

He gulped.

‘Don’t look at us, Mum!’ protested Pen. ‘We have done nothing to earn distrust!’

I opened my mouth, thought better of it and closed it again. The less said here, the better. The lasagne was fantastic and while Pen put forward a very convincing case for judge and jury on the difficulties of getting to know a person within the confines of our nutso family living room, I ate ravenously.

‘You don’t want to encourage us to sneak off into the dark, dark woods, do you?’ concluded Pen.

I shot a look at Mum. She was busy with the beans. Carrie, Alex and Tam had all arrived and were talking excitedly to Gianni.

‘May I be excused?’ I asked. ‘To sit with my friends?’

Mum gestured with her fork. ‘Go, go.’

I went.

First thing I wanted to know was whether Mr K had asked Aunt Sassy about wigs. Tam was smugly smug smug about having
that
inside info.

‘I can’t believe I know something you don’t, girls.’

‘Tam, don’t make me hurt you. What’s the deal with Healey’s hair?’ I thought I was being remarkably polite for a person who still hadn’t had the required daily chocolate dose.

Tam sighed. ‘I thought it would feel better, knowing stuff. Having the power of knowledge.’

Carrie laughed. ‘You have the power of the muse – that’s all you get in this lifetime, Tamtam. Now spit it out.’

‘Fine, fine. It’s like you thought, Lula – there’s no doubt that Healey wears a wig – Aunt Sassy designed it herself.’

‘Yessss!’ I jumped up, punched the air and did a teeny dance of joy. Then something occurred to me and I stopped in mid-rumba. ‘Hang on. I thought you had to go to wig agencies for wigs?’

‘Aunt Sassy knows wigs. Look at this town! Most of the locals are well over sixty – how could she not do wigs? She’s a middle-man, kind of, and works with a specialist in the city.’

‘So . . .?’ asked Alex. ‘You’re killing us here, Tam!’

‘So Mr K took a sample of Mr Healey’s wig hair down to the station first thing. Aunt Sassy always keeps them on file to save colour matching for the next one.’ She clapped her hands. ‘But we want to know about yesterday! And last night! Did Bludgeon really sleep outside your door? Does Mr K know where Healey is?’

The questions came ever faster. Alex was making me eat chocolate cake, and Tam was making me speak at the same time, but Gianni was getting all confused and the girls had to translate every sentence.

‘Mff!’ I said eventually, and clammed up.

Gianni threw his hands in the air. ‘How you understan’?’ he asked. ‘How?’

‘We’ve got a lot of experience listening to our friend when she’s eating,’ explained Carrie.

‘She’s always eating,’ said Alex. ‘Always. Bad carbs.’

‘But today she did have good carbs,’ said Carrie. ‘Before the cake, I mean.’

‘Good carbs for winning races,’ said Alex. ‘You win this race and people will love you again, Tatty.’

‘People don’t love her?’ asked Gianni. ‘What’s not to love?’

He winked at me and I stuck out a chocolatey tongue at him, but I noticed to my satisfaction that as he was teasing me he was twirling some of Tam’s twirly hair and she was getting girly and twirly herself.

‘It’s a temporary thing,’ said Alex. ‘I’m on it. Tatty, you’ve had lasagne?’

‘Loads,’ I assured her, patting my stomach. ‘I had a lot of empty space to fill.’

‘Where do you put it?’ complained Carrie. ‘It’s a good thing you do occasional exercise, Lula. Otherwise you’d be enormous.’

‘Oh no,’ I said, grimacing. ‘Don’t say that word. Never again.’

‘What – “enormous”?’ asked Carrie, turning to Tam. ‘What’s wrong with “enormous”?’

‘Stop!’ I yelped, waving a fork threateningly at my friends. ‘Stop or the lasagne’s coming straight back up!’

When I got home Mum was talking nineteen to the dozen on the phone, and Pen was slumped in front of some cucumber slices at the kitchen table.

‘Is Dad back with the car?’ I asked Great-aunt Phoebe. ‘I was hoping we could all squish in and go to Port Albert together.’ I wanted to keep my eye on my father. I didn’t want any relapses going down. The thought of him getting all anxious, then all red and sweaty and slurry, especially in front of my friends, made my stomach cramp.

Great-aunt Phoebe looked at me closely through her trendy specs. I swear that woman can read my mind. ‘You don’t want to go on the bus with the rest of the crew? And aren’t there boys on the bus with you these days? You were fighting for rights with boys over breakfast with your mother. Seems a shame to waste the opportunities that come your way . . .’

‘My crew hates me and the boys are terrified of me,’ I said, getting more salad stuff out of the fridge. ‘We got any feta?’

‘Who’s getting fatter?’ asked Pen. ‘You calling me fat?’

I looked at the cucumber slices and gave Pen my
what the frik?
face. ‘Pen!’ I said. ‘Eat something! You’re going
to be hanging on to the rudder wires for a solid five kays, yelling yourself hoarse and steering the best line down the world’s roughest river. You faint mid-race and I really am done for.’

‘
All
the boys can’t be afraid of you,’ said Aunt Phoebe. She raised her voice. ‘Blu-ue! Come and eat!’ She put a piece of chicken on Pen’s plate. ‘What about Jack? And that boy Arnold?’

‘Jack spends most of his time with his unbelievably gorgeous flatmate,’ said Pen brutally, ‘so we wouldn’t know about him –’

‘Hey!’ I protested. ‘I’m working on that! Besides, he came to rescue us from the Pond. A knight in shining armour.’

‘– and Arns is only being released from hospital today.’

‘How is Arns?’ I asked quietly, sitting down at the table.

Pen pulled my plate of salad towards her and shoved some cold Pot Noodle in front of me. ‘You don’t know?’

‘He hasn’t returned any of my texts. And when I left him on Friday night he was ignoring me.’

‘You’re not allowed to have mobiles on in the hospital, Tatty,’ said Aunt Phoebe.

‘Yes, and maybe he was concentrating on his brains not spilling out all over the place, so wasn’t his usual
having a laugh with Tatty
self.’

Blue came running in and sat down expectantly. ‘Worms?’ she asked.

‘Worms,’ confirmed Aunt Phoebe, pushing a Pot Noodle Blue’s way.

‘I eat them with fingers, like twolls do?’

‘Today is a princess day,’ said Pen. ‘Princesses use their forks.’

‘Trolls use forks also,’ insisted Blue, picking up noodles in her fingers and dangling them into her mouth. ‘For eyeballs, because eyeballs are slippery. When Daddy coming home?’

‘He’ll be home by three,’ said Mum, hanging up. ‘Blue, your fingernails are caked in dirt. Please go and wash your hands and come back and use your fork.’

‘Three?’ I stole a piece of cheese from Pen’s plate and twirled it up in noodles. ‘You mean we have to take the rowing bus?’

‘You do,’ said Mum firmly, ‘so you’d better get your things together to go down there.’

I swallowed my cheesy noodles. ‘Will you make it to Port Albert in time to see us race?’

‘Course we will,’ beamed Mum.

‘What are you so happy about, Mum?’ asked Pen. ‘Glad to be alive-a?’

‘Very,’ said Mum, ‘plus I’ve convinced the National Trust that they cannot do without Frey’s Dam! They will, in all likelihood, buy it from the Clunys.’

There was silence while we all stared at Mum, open-mouthed.

‘What?’ I said, sounding and feeling stupid.

‘While you were out getting nearly murdered, I discovered from Elias Brownfield’s diaries that Queen Victoria took the waters of Frey’s Dam way back when. They’re warm and spa-ish and good for the insides and the outsides, apparently. A lot of history and a lot of potential for excavations. Roman ones, even.’

‘Whoa!’ I cried. ‘Genius! Mum, you’re a genius!’

‘Frey’s is perfect for them right now. They don’t want any more expensive houses to maintain, and the spiritual history of Frey’s, when linked to Coven’s Quarter, is far older than anything else they’ve got on their books in the area. The Clunys will get the current value of the property, so their money worries will be over, and it will never be commercially developed. Excavated maybe . . .’

Great-aunt Phoebe sat back in her chair. Her eyes looked suspiciously misty. ‘Well done, Anne,’ she said. ‘Sally would be so proud of you. We’re all so proud of you. That place means a lot to this town.’ She reached over and squeezed Mum’s hand. ‘The Clunys are going to be so very relieved.’

Mum smiled back at her and looked suspiciously misty too.

‘Let’s go rowing,’ I said to Pen. ‘Before they kill our vicious competitive spirit with their love and appreciation.’

‘I have spent all of Saturday fixing this boat up at the school workshops,’ said Mr VDM. He stood in his usual aggressive posture: legs astride, arms crossed over his chest, chin tucked into his neck. ‘I want us to put the accident behind us, get out on the water and win this race. The PSG squad is pathetic. Ridiculous dollies. I will be very angry if you don’t have them for breakfast. I will make your life hell. Your hands will bleed. You will beg for mercy.’

The crew was standing in a circle, none of us looking at VD. He was being loud and embarrassing. Most girls had their arms crossed too, and were staring at their feet, scuffing the sandy soil.

‘Quite the motivational speaker,’ I said quietly to Hilary. She ignored me.

I saw Pen looking around, oblivious to VD’s butt-kicking pep talk. She saw Fat Angus tinkering with the four boat they were going to race instead of the eight, and a smile flitted across her face. She gave him a little finger wave and I watched him blush. Pen flushed a little too, and I wondered how it was that my fourteen-year-old sister always seemed to be further on in the world than me. She and Angus gave me the impression of twenty or thirty-somethings about to be married.

I didn’t bother looking for Jack. He’d be in the university
editing suite with Jazz back in Hambledon, the two of them working together intimately in the darkened room. Or he’d be back at the hospital with Jazz, garnering a few more gruesome facts. Or out in town with Jazz, taking a break at Big Mama’s, maybe sampling that mousse off Jazz’s long-handled spoon. Jazz, Jazz, frikking JAZZ!

It seemed to me that Jack now hated me for being a snitch. Why else would he not have called? Oh, frik. Was it time to face the fact that Jack and I were never going to work? The thought of it sent a pain shafting into my chest that made me want to sob aloud. I sighed instead. If I were him, I’d be distracted by Jazz too. I’d be cross with me, and happy with her. She’d never broken promises to him. I had. Big ones. And, forgetting all that, I’d also want to spend every waking minute with her. She was gorgeous; I was not. She had begun her life; I was still obeying the school bell. She had a kick-ass GTI; I was on the bus with boys who thought phlegmy bogies and stinky bums were funny.

Plus Jack was a busy guy. He had stuff going on with his sick grandmother, he had Mona to drive around whenever she needed to get places, he had his studies, he had the beginnings of a new career.

So I
understood
. I did. I could be grown-up and sensible about this.

But why didn’t Jack have the guts to talk to me about it? Did he think that our relationship, if it had ever been that,
would just fizzle out painlessly? No need for him to deal with a messy break-up? It looked like it would be up to me to end it cleanly. Maybe it was a good thing that I’d been through enough recently to know I’d be strong enough to do what was necessary.

Even if it felt like my heart was going to shrivel up and die.

VD had got to the punching-the-air stage, and his voice was getting louder. The crew was looking even more embarrassed, but I was beyond caring.