Sugar Secrets…& Rivals Page 3

  “What are you up to?” she demanded, peering at him under the shady tree.

  Joe didn’t answer. As usual, his mind had completely disengaged from his brain and he was suddenly very aware of the incriminating notebook and pencil in his hands.

  Cat moved a little closer and Joe could make out the glint in her eye and the sneer on her face.

  “You’re not doing homework, are you?”

  Joe looked at her mutely.

  “You are, aren’t you?” said Catrina incredulously.

  “It’s the weekend, it’s a nice summer’s day and you’re sitting here swotting. I can hardly believe it!”

  Joe flushed with embarrassment. It didn’t matter that what Cat was saying wasn’t true. The fact that she thought it was enough to humiliate him.

  Catrina waited for Joe to speak, but he could find nothing to say. It seemed to Cat that Joe was ignoring her and she hated being ignored.

  “I mean, I know you haven’t got a life, Joe, but I thought even you might have something better to do on a Sunday afternoon,” she pouted. “Like going train-spotting. Or browsing through your stamp collection.”

  Joe carried on staring at her, speechless. He couldn’t understand why she was being such a cow, but felt powerless to stop her. He wished she would just leave him alone, but to his horror, she came even closer.

  Cat knelt down and put her face so close to Joe’s that he could feel her breath. Her eyes goggled madly and her lipsticked mouth opened and closed rapidly as she babbled on.

  Joe could no longer understand what she was saying. He imagined himself putting his hands round her throat and strangling her until she couldn’t speak. If only he had the guts…

  He didn’t, of course. Instead, he just got redder and more flustered and worried by what she might say or do next.

  Suddenly, Catrina made a grab for Joe’s notebook to get a closer look. This immediately sent Joe’s stomach into even tighter knots of panic. There was no way he could let Catrina know what he was really up to. Once she’d got over the fit of hysterical laughter it would send her into, she would rush off to tell the rest of the crowd.

  In the space of a millisecond Joe had snapped the book shut and sat on it.

  This was exactly the sort of messing around Catrina loved, even if it was only with Joe who was, to her mind, possibly the least fanciable male in the universe. She gave a little shriek and lunged at Joe, who started backwards to avoid her and cracked his head on the tree trunk.

  “Ouch!” Joe put his hand to the back of his head and accidentally clipped Catrina on the chin.

  He was mortified.

  “Uh, sorry!” he said, aghast. Catrina smiled wickedly. She didn’t seem to mind at all. If anything, it made her all the more zealous in her attempts to get at his notepad.

  “You are mean, Joey,” she giggled. “I only want to have a little peek. Pleeeeease!”

  She looked imploringly at Joe, pouting her lips and pleading with her eyes, just like a child who was desperate to get its own way. Her hands were grabbing at his thighs, trying to push them out of the way so that she could get hold of the notebook.

  To Cat this was all a big game; to Joe it was possibly the most cringeworthy moment of his life so far. To have this overbearing female pawing at him and, more importantly, intent on exposing his secret passion was just unbearable.

  Catrina suddenly lost all patience and decided she’d had enough. As she’d always suspected, Joe was no fun at all.

  Dropping the playful charade, she jumped up and adopted a more condescending tone.

  “God, Joe, you’re so boring! For the life of me I can’t understand what Ollie and the rest of them see in you. You’ve got to be the dullest, most fun-free person I’ve ever met. You’ve got nothing to say for yourself, your dress sense is appalling and your hair’s a mess. All you ever do is swot and simper and skulk about in the background. Boring.”

  Not waiting to see the effect of her words, Cat turned and flounced off up the footpath.

  Completely crushed, Joe ripped the page from his notepad, screwed it into a ball and threw it on the ground.

  Sod you, he thought. Sod you all!

  CHAPTER 5

  SONJA GETS STOOD UP

  Anna Michaels, waitress at the End-of-the-Line café, shut the door of the drinks fridge and turned around. She smiled sympathetically at Sonja, who was standing at the counter drumming her cerise-painted fingernails irritably on the stainless steel worktop.

  “Still no sign, then?”

  “No,” huffed Sonja. “I should have known he’d be late - he always is. If he’s not here soon, we’ll miss the start of the film.”

  Anna waved the coffee jug at Sonja.

  “Top up?”

  Sonja nodded and muttered “Thanks” before returning to her seat in the big bay window. She was beginning to get really annoyed. What the heck did Matt think he was playing at? He should have arrived twenty minutes ago and she was getting seriously sick of waiting.

  She wished Kerry had been able to come instead, as she wasn’t convinced Matt would remember to turn up at all.

  Sonja secretly cursed Kerry’s six-year-old brother, Lewis, who needed babysitting while Kerry’s parents went out for the evening. If it wasn’t for him, she and Kez would be guzzling Diet Coke and scoffing huge boxes of popcorn by now. Instead, she was sitting in the café wondering whether she’d been stood up.

  She was jolted back to reality by the ping! of the café door being opened. About time too! Sonja grabbed her bag and leapt up from her seat.

  “Don’t you dare sit down!” she snapped. “If we don’t go now, we might as well not bother.”

  Turning around with a deliberately furrowed brow and a miserable pout, Sonja walked right into… Natasha Stanton.

  “Oh!”

  Ollie’s twin sister was the last person Sonja had expected to see. She had heard that Natasha was coming back home for a day or so, but she’d forgotten when and certainly hadn’t expected her to come into the café.

  Sonja always imagined that now Natasha was a successful model living it up in London, Winstead would seem small-town and insignificant. Quite what she was doing slumming it in a grotty backstreet café - as Sonja figured she’d see it - God only knew!

  “Hello, Sonja, how are you?” Natasha beamed a big, perfect, pearly-white smile in Sonja’s direction.

  “Uh, fine, thanks.”

  “I’m looking for Ollie. You haven’t seen him, have you? Mum thought he might be working in here tonight.”

  “No, he’s next door in the record shop,” Sonja replied. “Stocktaking with Nick. Er, sorry about the yelling, I thought you were Matt. We’re supposed to be going to the pictures tonight.”

  Natasha’s eyes widened. “You’re not dating him are you?” she said incredulously.

  “No way!” Sonja laughed. “Give me some credit, please. No, we were both at a loose end, or at least I thought we were. Matt’s obviously had a better offer.”

  “I didn’t think you were crazy enough to go out with him. I always credited you with more sense. And taste.”

  “Hang on,” Sonja grinned, “that doesn’t say much for you, does it? It wasn’t so long ago that you and Matt had a bit of a thing going, if I remember rightly.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve always had abysmal taste in guys. It’s a known fact. Anyway, I was only doing him a favour by saving him from Catrina Osgood.”

  Sonja sniggered. She was beginning to really like Natasha. Mind you, Sonja would warm to anyone who was disparaging about her cousin. The fact that Natasha had, albeit unwittingly, caused Matt and Catrina to split up did raise her in Sonja’s estimation.

  Sonja had never particularly warmed to Natasha when she lived in Winstead. Natasha had always seemed so hugely sophisticated - stuck-up, even - and much older than everyone else in her year at school.

  And Sonja had been dead jealous when she’d heard that Natasha had been scouted by a London model agency and offered a cont
ract, a flat and a much more glamorous life than anyone living in Winstead could ever imagine.

  On the odd occasion that Natasha came home to visit her family, Sonja tended to give her a wide berth. If she was being honest, it was because she couldn’t stand the competition as much as anything else.

  Sonja liked the fact that she turned heads wherever she went. With her honey-blonde hair (natural, not dyed), tanned skin and cornflower blue eyes, she knew she stood out in a roomful of people.

  Unless Natasha was around. Sonja had always done her best to avoid playing second fiddle to ‘the model from London’.

  Natasha walked round to the big table where Sonja was sitting. “I think I’ll get a coffee while I’m here. D’you fancy one?”

  “No thanks, I’m OK. Come and join me though when you’ve got it.”

  Natasha nodded, smiling. She walked, no sashayed (like models do) up to Anna at the counter and put in her order. Then she came back to where Sonja was sitting, slid on to the red leatherette seat opposite her, pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered one to Sonja.

  “No thanks, I don’t,” Sonja said, wrinkling her nose with distaste.

  “I wish I didn’t. Costs me a fortune.” She took a long drag, then exhaled a puff of smoke up towards the ceiling. “Plays havoc with my skin too.”

  “God, really?” Sonja took a look at the immaculately made-up face across the table. “But you always look so good.”

  Natasha shook her head. “You should see me when I’m slobbing out at home on a day off. No make-up, ratty old dressing gown, gob full of pizza—”

  “Pizza!” exclaimed Sonja. “I thought all you models lived on lettuce leaves and fresh air.”

  “Yeah, well, some do.” Natasha pulled a face. “I couldn’t. Mind you, I sometimes wish I could just sit down and eat a home-cooked, well balanced meal and have time to enjoy it. Most of the time I have to eat and run - y’know? A burger here, choccy bar there.”

  Sonja was intrigued. “So, what’s a typical day like when you’re working?”

  “Hmmm, depends really. Most of the time is spent waiting for my booker to ring—”

  “Booker?”

  “The girl at the agency who gets me all my work. So I might get up at ten, call the agency to see what - if anything - is going on. Sometimes I’ve got time to watch This Morning while I’m getting ready to go out, but often I have to bolt my breakfast and get dressed all at the same time.”

  “Then I suppose you have a hard morning’s posing till lunch?”

  “No way! Lunch is usually a Coke and a Mars bar on the hoof. That’s why it’s so hard to keep fit and healthy - you can never be sure how your day is going to be structured.”

  Natasha looked at Sonja’s horrified face through a haze of smoke. “Then in the afternoon I might have a load of go-sees to endure, which is where I traipse around magazines and advertising agencies showing them my book.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s kind of like a portfolio of the best pictures photographers have taken of me. I put them together in a book to show fashion editors and such like.”

  “Oh. That sounds exciting,” Sonja said, picturing herself nosing around swanky magazine publishers, maybe bumping into the odd celebrity or two. Natasha soon brought her back to earth.

  “God, you must be joking!” she grimaced. “It’s got to be the most demoralising part of the job. You get called to a casting for, say, a magazine shoot. You go along and find that there are thirty other models there, so you mill about in a grotty corridor for ages waiting to be called. Then, when you finally get to see the fashion editor, they flick through your book for about ten seconds, say ‘thanks’ - and that’s it. An hour’s walk from your flat, a thirty-minute wait in a corridor, fifteen seconds of glory and then you find out the next day someone else got the job.”

  “Oh.” Sonja was disappointed. “So it’s not all it’s cracked up to be then?” she ventured.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Natasha replied, an earnest look on her face. “You do get to go to some good parties. And you often walk away from jobs with freebies. It’s just that the good stuff is only one per cent of the job - the rest is pretty boring really.”

  “Yeah, but I bet it beats packing boxes in a factory though, doesn’t it?”

  Natasha’s face broke into a huge grin. “Funnily enough, yes. God, I must sound like a right old moaner! Of course there are good things too, like putting on incredibly expensive clothes, and travelling abroad. So I’m not complaining. Not really. I’m just telling you like it is, y’know, in case you were interested in doing it yourself.”

  Sonja’s self-esteem was immediately boosted by the compliment and Natasha soared even further in her estimation. She loved it when people massaged her ego - it always left her wanting more.

  “Uh, I don’t think I could be a model,” she continued, fishing for compliments. “I mean, I’m not nearly good-looking enough.”

  “Sonja, you are. You could do it. I meet loads of girls who are models and they aren’t nearly as stunning as you. And I bet you’re naturally skinny, too.”

  “Well, I never seem to put on weight, even though I do eat a lot of junk food.”

  “There you go then. You’ve got looks, stamina - and now you’ve got a contact too. Seriously, if you’re ever interested in giving it a go, boring though it can be, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with a few people.”

  “Wow, thanks,” Sonja gushed. “I’ll bear it in mind. I mean, really I’d like to get into public relations - that’s my big dream. But, well, who knows what’ll happen in the next couple of years? I might flunk my exams…”

  “In which case modelling could be something to fall back on. Plus it would be a good way to find out about PR, especially with advertising work.”

  “Mmm. It’s certainly worth thinking about,” Sonja nodded thoughtfully. “How long are you here?”

  “I go back next Thursday. Why?”

  “Well me and Kerry are going clubbing tomorrow night. If you’re not doing anything, why don’t you come along?”

  “Great! I’d love to,” grinned Natasha. “Kerry won’t mind if I butt in?”

  “No, course not. It’ll be great - we’ll have a right laugh. D’you want another coffee?”

  “Please.”

  Sonja stood up and went over to where Anna was polishing the ancient coffee machine. As she got to the counter, the phone rang. Anna gave Sonja an apologetic look as she answered the call.

  “It’s for you,” she said and then whispered, “sounds like Matt.”

  Sonja pulled a face as she grabbed the phone from Anna’s outstretched hand. She glanced at the clock on the wall - 7.45 pm. What sort of time did he call this? Sonja relished the thought of tearing into Matt in front of Natasha and Anna. She wouldn’t let him make a fool of her.

  “yes?” The tone was distinctly cold.

  “Son, hi. It’s Matt.”

  “Matt?” she squawked back. “Matt who? I don’t think I know anyone called that. I used to have a friend called Matt but I dumped him because he was an unreliable sod.”

  “Sonja, listen, this is serious. I was on my way to you, but I didn’t get as far as the café because I found Joe in the road.”

  Sonja dropped the haughty tone to one of concerned surprise. “What do you mean, in the road? What, like run over?”

  “No, just completely out of it. You know, like virtually comatose. He was slumped against a lamp-post on Rosermann Street. Totally gone. Drunk. Absolutely off his face.”

  CHAPTER 6

  HUNG-OVER… AND HUNG UP

  “No, really? Joey Gladwin? I can hardly believe it!”

  Kerry’s eyes were like saucers as she listened to Sonja relaying the story. Kerry was the third person Sonja had told after she’d got off the phone to Matt. Anna and Natasha had listened incredulously as Sonja had given them an abbreviated version of events before picking up the café phone and calling Kerry.

 
“I know! Talk about the person least likely to. I didn’t think he even drank. But Matt said he could hardly open his eyes, let alone speak. He didn’t dare take him home - you know what his mum’s like…”

  Kerry couldn’t help nodding, even though Sonja couldn’t see her. They all knew how over-protective Joe’s mum was.

  “…So Matt shovelled him into his car and took him back to his house,” continued Sonja. “Apparently, he sat Joe in the garden and put the hose on him to sober him up! And when he did come round, he threw up all over Matt’s black leather jacket - you know, his favourite? The one from Italy that he’s always going on about. Matt was speechless! You can just imagine it, can’t you? Anyway, that’s when Matt rang me.”

  Kerry was worried, unable to rationalise Joe’s strange and uncharacteristic behaviour. “So what had happened?” she quizzed. “Why was he drunk?”

  “Matt still doesn’t know. Joe was pretty incoherent.”

  “Has anyone tried to get in touch with Ollie? Maybe he was out with Joe. He might be worried about him.”

  “Uh, no,” Sonja countered. “Ollie can’t have been involved. He’s working next door. Has been all day. But Tasha and me will go and see him as soon as I get off the phone.”

  “Tasha? What, Ollie’s sister? What’s she doing there?”

  “She’s on a break from London. She came in looking for Ollie while I was waiting for Matt. We’ve been sat here gossiping for ages.”

  Kerry felt a pang of jealousy. She pictured Sonja and Natasha having a great time in the café, while she was stuck at home looking after her wretched little brother. She felt strangely threatened by Natasha, though she didn’t know why. There certainly wasn’t any logical reason why she should feel that way. But she did.

  Stupid really. She tried to push the negative thoughts to the back of her mind and carried on with a forced lightness to her voice.

  “Oh, right. Lovely. So what have you been chatting about?”