Paparazzi Princess (7 page)

‘Hi Carly,’ said Pia. ‘Welcome to London.’

‘Thanks. Hey, great to meet you all,’ she said in an American accent and with a big smile.

‘Staying long?’ Pia asked and I knew she was asking for me.

Carly looked coyly at JJ. ‘Not really. Just passing through. I was in Italy but Mr Lewis invited me to spend Christmas with the family in Aspen.’

‘Aspen?’ I asked.

Alisha nodded. ‘All very last minute. Dad didn’t think he’d be able to make it but he really needs a break so we’re all off to Colorado until the New Year. Skiing!’

Pia gave my arm a squeeze. She knew how I’d be feeling about JJ and on top of that, Alisha was jetting off too. Sometimes it was hard being friends with someone who wasn’t just loaded, but mega-loaded. There was no way I could keep up. I didn’t even know where Aspen was, to me it sounded like a breakfast cereal.

When we trooped back up to Alisha’s bedroom later, I felt flat and confused. I didn’t like how I was feeling. It was like when I’d first moved in to Porchester Park, the whole issue of them and us. I’d been pretty mixed up about it then. I’d hoped that I’d moved on, but nope, those old feelings were back and they’d brought a bunch of friends.

The Lewis family left two days later. The Russian family went the same day, before I even got a chance to check out Alexei. Loads of other residents were also seen disappearing in fleets of limos, heading for the airport. It was a grand exodus from Porchester Park. Gran, Meg and Flo included. All off to their fabbie-dabbie locations around the world.

Pia was still around but, as I’d suspected, I hardly saw her any more, nor Henry. Even Charlie commented that Henry hadn’t been round as much as usual. Pia asked me to go to a movie with them one night but I knew she’d prefer to be on her own with him. No way was I going to sit with them like a sad hanger on.
So much for my Christmas plans
, I thought.
No Tom, no JJ, no Gran, no new teenagers to meet, no Flo, Meg, Alisha or Pia.
I went round our house singing the Celine Dion number,
All by myself
, until Charlie told me to shut up and get a life. He wasn’t around much either. He was in a band and was always off rehearsing. Tom sometimes played with them too and I knew that Charlie had seen him a few times but no matter how hard I tried to chisel information out of him, he wasn’t giving much away – either that or they didn’t talk about girls.

‘How’s Tom?’ I persisted over breakfast, the week before Christmas Day.

He shrugged his left shoulder.

‘Is he seeing anyone?’

He shrugged the other shoulder.

‘Has he got a girlfriend?’

He gave me a blank look. ‘Dunno.’

‘So what
do
you talk about when you get together?’

‘Music.’

‘Don’t you ever talk about girls or relationships?’

‘Nope.’

Boys are so different to girls
, I thought. With my mates, I know within five minutes exactly how they are, what they’re feeling, their latest crushes, all the intimate details of their lives, but boys never seem to know what’s going on in their friends’ heads.

I turned to Dad. ‘I despair. Why didn’t you and Mum have another girl so I could have a sister to talk to? All my mates are busy. Everyone’s going away and I’m
lonely.’

‘How can you be lonely when you’re in one of the most exciting cities in the world with a thousand things going on?’ said Dad as his phone rang.

‘Ah, but a person can still be lonely in a crowd,’ I replied. I thought that was very deep but Dad just rolled his eyes, took the call then said, ‘Your Aunt Maddie’s at the gate. Go and let her in.’

No-one understands me
, I thought as I got up to do as I was told. Aunt Maddie, the Scroogemeister, my only company for the hols. Could it
get
any worse?

Five minutes later, Aunt Maddie was unpacking bags in the kitchen. I noticed that Dad had quickly made himself scarce. He’s not daft. Aunt M can be heavy going sometimes. She gets intense about things, like saving the world, going green or recycling. Whichever, you could always guarantee a lecture on something worthy.

‘A few presents for your Christmas tree,’ she said as she unpacked parcels wrapped in red and gold, which was unusual for her. She didn’t normally do wrapping paper, what with the season being a commercial venture in her eyes. I wondered what she’d got us this year – probably something festive like a book with the title
Save the Turkey, he has a soul
or
How to make your own soap from leftover parsnips.

Aunt Maddie was Mum’s younger sister and about as different to Mum as anyone could be. Mum’d had style. Aunt Maddie went out of her way to dress like a bag lady, in jeans that sagged around the bottom and fleeces that sagged around the top. Today she was wearing a strange woolly green hat with earflaps. Not a good look. Sometimes I wondered what it had been like for her growing up with Mum.
It must have been hard having a prettier, funnier sister who everyone loved
, I thought. Suddenly I felt kinder towards Aunt M. I knew all about being the one left out.

‘Will you be spending Christmas with Brian?’ I asked.

Brian was her boyfriend and largely responsible for the change in her. Although she’d always been intense, she’d grown even more so after meeting him. He really was Mr Do Good, Go Green, Save the World, Killjoy. The first time I met him, he’d given me a talking to about wearing make-up and what a waste of time it was.

Aunt Maddie shook her head. ‘We broke up.’

‘Broke up! But why? You seemed so right for each other.’

Aunt Maddie looked sad. ‘He found someone else. A twenty-year-old someone else.’

‘Are you OK?’

She shrugged like it didn’t matter but I could see by the shadows under her eyes that it did.

‘I won’t be seeing the boys I like, either,’ I said, in an attempt to make her feel better.

She laughed. ‘Boy
s
? Not just one?’

‘I was keeping my options open but well . . . neither of them worked out. In fact, I’ve realised I don’t know a lot about boys at all. I mean how are you supposed to find out? Having an older brother doesn’t help. All he does is grunt at me these days. I’m doing some personal research into the whole boy/girl thing, hoping that I can learn something to pass on to other ignorant girls like me. Have you got any pearls of wisdom to share about them?’

Aunt Maddie thought for a moment. ‘Just think of a boy, or a man, as a big daft dog with attention-deficit disorder and you won’t go far wrong.’

Now it was my turn to laugh. ‘Seriously?’

Aunt Maddie nodded. ‘It took me years to work that one out. Most men are boys at heart, even the forty- or fifty-year-old ones. We ladies credit them with far too much intelligence and sensitivity, whereas most of them are just looking for their mum.’

‘Isn’t that sexist?’ I’d never heard Aunt Maddie talk like this before. Brian really had hurt her.

‘Maybe. I don’t care. The biggest mistake a girl can ever make, Jess, is to expect a boy to fulfill everything. They can’t. We girls must get a life, use our brains, be independent and not become doormats.’

‘I can’t imagine you ever becoming a doormat,’ I said.

‘Me neither but love makes you behave in strange ways. I tried to be what I thought Brian wanted me to be. I should have just been myself.’

‘That’s what my mate says. Be yourself. But other friends say you have to make an effort – that boys are visual and have to like what they see,’ I said as I looked pointedly at her baggy jeans.

‘Pff,’ said Aunt Maddie. ‘Men are quite capable of falling in love with plain girls as well as beautiful ones, although . . . the girl Brian went off with
was
very pretty.’

‘Even plain girls can look the biz,’ I said, ‘with the right hair and make-up. Anyway, you’re not plain, in fact, you could be very pretty, Aunt Maddie. Why don’t you let me do a makeover on you?’

Oops. Wrong thing to say. Lecture coming. I could tell by the way her back stiffened and her lips pursed together. I’d obviously hit a nerve.

‘Wishing you’re better-looking is probably the biggest teenage angst there is,’ she said, ‘even when people say you look lovely, you don’t believe them. There’s always someone better-looking, an image in a magazine you want to be like. It’s a shallow world, Jess. Don’t get stuck in it. It should be about who you are, not what you look like.’

So I was right
, I thought. She could never live up to my mum and her response was to give up.

‘I agree, Aunt Maddie, but I think there has to be a balance. Yes, be yourself but wear a bit of lip gloss while you’re doing it.’

Aunt Maddie cracked up. It was good to see her laugh and it made me realise I hadn’t seen her do so for quite some time.

‘Sometimes you’re just like your mum, Jess.’

I liked the sound of that. I smiled. ‘So, what will you do at Christmas?’ I asked.

‘I’m organising Christmas lunch for the homeless,’ she said. ‘It’s at the Guild Hall school. We’ll be catering for two hundred. What are you doing?’

‘Ah. Um. I’m here. Catering for three.’

‘Like to come and help out? It can be great fun.’

‘Fun? No way,’ I blurted. I couldn’t help it. Christmas Day with the down-and-outs was so
not
on my wish list.

‘What else are you going to do?’

‘Well, exactly,’ I said crossly. ‘All my plans have been scuppered so I suppose I might as well come and join the great unwashed and unwanted.’

‘Jess, that’s no way to talk about them. If you heard some of their stories, it would break your heart. People who’ve lost their families, businesses, fortunes, homes. Most of them didn’t
choose
to be homeless you know, any more than you chose for Gran to change her plans. Sometimes life deals you a round of bad cards.’

‘Tell me about it. Now I feel guilty too,’ I said. ‘Thanks a bunch. Deck the halls with Christmas holly, tis the season to be
jolly
, you know, not slave away serving up lunch to people you don’t know.’

‘Exactly. But why shouldn’t the homeless be jolly too? They have nothing in their lives but the clothes they stand up in and they don’t always have those! It wouldn’t hurt you to come and give up some of your time. You live a privileged life, Jess. I do too. I have a home, heating, food on the table. Sometimes we should give something back.’

I felt like I’d swallowed a stone. There was no getting out of it. I didn’t exactly have any plans I couldn’t break but why should it be
me
having to give something back when other people swanned off to their holiday homes in the sun? Why was I the one with an Aunt Maddie, conscience of the blooming world? Why meeeeeeeeee?

‘Tell you what. You come with me and help out on December twenty-fifth and later we can have our Christmas celebration. Mum will be back from Florence just after New Year and she’ll do a big dinner with all the trimmings then. It doesn’t matter what date it happens. What are you going to do this week?’

‘Nothing. Everyone’s away and Pia’s got a boyfriend.’

‘Ah. But that shouldn’t stop you. London’s a great place to be during the Christmas run up.’

‘That’s what Dad said.’

‘He’s right. There are outdoor ice-skating rinks, carol services all over the place, window displays to look at in all the big shops, shows, movies, loads of things to do.’

‘And all are more fun if you have someone to do them with.’

‘Tell Pia that you’re feeling left out. If I know her, she’ll be round in an instant.’

I knew Aunt Maddie was right but I was finding it hard to shake off the blues. Sometimes I think that feelings are like clothes and some days, you wake up and just find you’re wearing them. Today, I was swathed in stubborn and sulky. ‘Christmas was always something Mum did. We had our traditions and now we have nothing.’

Aunt Maddie’s expression softened. ‘I know, love. But who started those traditions? She did, and some of them you can carry on but why not start a few of your own, too? Think about what
you’d
like to do, places you’d like to go, people you’d like to spend time with. Life is what you make of it, you know.’

‘I guess. When life throws you lemons, make lemonade. Mum used to say that. I have my own saying and that is when life throws you a lemon, duck . . . or throw it back.’

‘That’s not the Jess I know. You would never duck. Come on. Take a challenge. Do something different. Christmas Day with the homeless. What do you say?’

I felt I couldn’t say no without being the worst person in the world. ‘I suppose I have to now,’ I said and then an idea occurred to me. ‘But seeing as I don’t really want to and you’re blackmailing me through guilt . . . how about we do a deal?’

Aunt Maddie looked at me suspiciously. ‘Do a deal?’

‘I do something I don’t want to. You do something you don’t want to.’

Aunt Maddie narrowed her eyes. ‘I’ve got a feeling I’m not going to like this, but go on. What’s the deal?’

‘You let me do a makeover on you.’

Aunt Maddie sighed heavily and I thought I’d let myself in for another lecture but then she smiled and held out her hand to shake. ‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘Deal.’