Sugar Secrets…& Freedom Read online

  Lame, lame, lame, he chastised himself, holding the heavy camera out of sight behind his back.

  “I see,” Gillian smiled encouragingly at him, but he could sense her eyes flickering from his face to his sides. Had she seen him take the Konica? Was she going to say anything?

  Lifting her shoulders in an almost imperceptible shrug, Gillian said, “Right, then. Coming through? Kettle’s on…”

  She had spotted what he was up to, Joe was pretty sure, but he sensed that she wasn’t about to say anything. To his dad or to him.

  She doesn’t want the hassle of a confrontation. She just wants everything to be ‘nice’, thought Joe, getting a handle on her character.

  In a flash, he knew why she seemed so familiar all of a sudden: she was exactly like a much younger version of his own mother.

  CHAPTER 9

  SYMPATHY SLEEPOVER

  “I don’t think I suit blue,” said Maya warily, examining her new look, courtesy of Catrina and her toolbox of make-up.

  “‘Course you do!” Cat exclaimed, standing back in her silky plum pyjamas and proudly admiring her handiwork.

  “Yeah, it’s brilliant!” chipped in Sonja positively, although Cat’s trademark Very Berry lipstick and over-the-top eyeshadow didn’t sit too well on Maya’s light brown complexion. And her thick, glossy dark hair hadn’t responded very enthusiastically to the curls Cat had tried to sculpt in with her portable steam tongs.

  Maya glanced over at Kerry in the hope of an honest response.

  “Mmm!” squeaked Kerry non-committally.

  She’d always envied Sonja’s Scandinavian, glowing good looks, and she knew that Cat’s in-yer-face glamour always got the boys drooling, but Maya’s naturally beautiful, minimally made-up face was the one she was most in awe of. Possibly not the way it looked tonight, though.

  “Listen, Maya, this is all for your own good,” said Sonja, rifling through the mound of chocolate and discarded wrappers in the middle of the rug for an elusive Crunchie mini-bar. “Gorgeous as you are, you need to start experimenting; expanding your options, now that you’re into the idea of shaking up your life.”

  “And now that Billy’s on the scene!” Cat purred mischievously.

  “Look, I’ve told you,” Maya started, half irritated, half amused by their teasing. “I’ve only met him once—”

  “In a cosy darkroom!” interrupted Cat, her eyes wide and suggestive.

  ”—and he seemed kind of cute! End of story!”

  “Well, you may protest, but Cat’s got a point,” Sonja nodded sagely, a smile playing on her lips. It was good to see Maya almost having a laugh – she’d seemed so stressed out earlier in the week. “After all, we’ve never heard you say you thought anyone was cute before!”

  “And it’s time you had a boyfriend – it’s ridiculous to think of a girl being sixteen and never having been out with anyone,” said Cat through a mouthful of salt and vinegar crisps, getting seriously stuck into the nibbles now that her hard work was done.

  “And it’s amazing how many boys some sixteen-year-old girls have been out with,” Sonja jibed back at her, referring to Catrina’s sizeable list of exes. “Don’t you think so, Maya?”

  She turned to Maya, who was sitting cross-legged on the bed wearing a pair of crisp, navy and white gingham PJs, a mirror in one hand and an overstuffed, fluffy polar bear – who normally lived on the spare bed – gripped defensively to her chest. Maya managed a nod and wriggled her nose up at her reflection.

  “You’re just jealous, Son! When was the last time you had a boyfriend?” Cat couldn’t help but dig.

  Sonja shot her a withering glance. So, she hadn’t been out with anyone for the last… however long, but her life wasn’t the issue here. Cat seemed to be in danger of straying away from the main focus of tonight: Maya.

  After her out-of-character outburst and behaviour this week, the other three girls had agreed that they’d use the sleepover to encourage Maya to talk about her situation at home, if that’s

  what she wanted (Kerry’s suggestion). They’d spoken about giving her a make-over to cheer her up (Cat’s suggestion). They’d planned to tell her to just go and snog the face off this Billy lad, if she really liked him (definitely Cat’s suggestion).

  Sonja reached for the nearest chocolate bar without looking, tore off the wrapper and bit through the chocolate into… coconut.

  Yuk! Sweetened cardboard… Sonja thought to herself, grimacing. She swallowed quickly (without chewing), shuffled the half-munched bar back into the pile and leant over to the music system to change the soppy ballad compilation that Kerry had stuck on to something a bit more upbeat. Since she’d fallen in love, Kerry’s taste in music had definitely taken a slushy turn for the worse.

  “Hey, listen, here’s your horoscope, Maya – let’s see if you’ve got some good stuff coming!” said Cat, flipping through the pages of a magazine.

  That’s more like it, thought Sonja. Cat could always be relied upon to be totally aware of her own strengths and weaknesses, and knew without a shadow of a doubt that – compared to Sonja and Kerry – she was completely rubbish at being sympathetic. At least with the horoscope thing she was frying to be helpful.

  Rifling through a pile of tapes, Sonja found something she liked, stuck it in the tape deck and pressed the rewind button. As she waited for the counter to whirr back to zero, she stood up and walked over to the padded velvet window seat, half-listening to Cat’s voice enthusiastically spelling out Maya’s future. She could make a fortune in TV ad voice-overs, that was for sure.

  “Libra. Your life’s been in a rut, but now you’re brave enough to start looking for new challenges…’”

  Sonja’s bedroom was fantastic, like the rest of the house. She had a huge upstairs room and a view of the tops of the trees way over in the park, several streets away. And even now in the twilight, Sonja could make out the last red rays of the sun clinging to the darkened branches.

  She jumped slightly as the tape deck on her music system clunked to a halt. Striding over, Sonja leant down and pressed play.

  “’…which just might include meeting a new love’,” continued Cat theatrically, “‘without you even trying!’”

  Sonja plonked herself back down next to Kerry, who was sitting on the rug, hugging her knees, eyes wide, completely absorbed in listening to Maya’s horoscope.

  Look at Kerry lapping this stuff up – now that she’s so wrapped up in Ollie, she wants everyone to be in love! thought Sonja, gazing fondly at her best friend. That’s if she doesn’t put us all off any kind of romance by going on and on about him all the time, like she’s been doing lately…

  “Oh!” exclaimed Kerry as the opening bars of a song came on. “Is this that Best Album in the World compilation? This is one of Ollie’s favourites!”

  “Uh-huh.” muttered Sonja, trying to ignore her. “Hey, Maya – I saw your darling sister Sunny in the End late this afternoon, with a bunch of mates. They were all showing off something rotten. Looked like they were driving Anna completely mad.”

  Maya rolled her eyes. “That’ll be all her acting buddies from summer school – they were having a rehearsal for some play this afternoon.”

  “Getting worse, is she?” asked Cat. Ravi they all knew and loved – like Kerry’s little brother Lewis – but Sunita hadn’t endeared herself to any of the crowd. There was something a bit too cocky about her, a bit too knowing. And a bit too manipulative, the way she twisted her parents round her little finger, while Maya got all the strict treatment.

  “Too right,” nodded Maya. “She used to be just this annoying kid, but now she’s acting all grown up and – I don’t know – more calculating, somehow.”

  “Like how?” asked Kerry. Only having the lovable Lewis around, she couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live with an annoying sister like Sunny.

  “Well, when she was younger, she was a pain in the neck. But now she just…” Maya shook her head, trying to put her thoughts into w
ords. “She just seems to be watching me all the time. Like she’s hoping I’ll make a mistake or mess up. Like she’s somehow in competition with me.”

  “Do your parents notice?” Cat asked, stunning everyone with a pertinent question.

  “No,” smiled Maya. “I’m the oldest so I get the grief. Sunny and Ravi can do no wrong as far as they’re concerned.”

  Suddenly, Sonja decided that there was no point in beating about the bush. “So, Maya – that stuff you were going on about earlier this week – about your parents. How long have you been feeling like that?”

  Maya seemed to freeze as she continued to look in the mirror. She shrugged, then turned to gaze at her friends. She seemed about to say something.

  Instead, to everyone’s surprise – including her own – two big fat tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “Have some chocolate!” said Cat in alarm and for want of anything more useful to say.

  “N-no I couldn’t,” Maya sniffed, trying to regain her composure.

  “Go on, have the last Mars Bar.”

  Maya shook her head, which made her dark hair fall forward in a soft, chaotic tangle.

  “What about some crisps, then?”

  “Leave it, Cat,” said Sonja, gazing at Maya, whose bottom lip was looking worryingly wobbly. She stood up and sat next to her friend on the bed, putting a comforting arm around her. “This isn’t like you, Maya!”

  Maya looked at her and shook her head, trying to give Sonja a wry smile. A bubble of snot appeared at her nose.

  “Tissue, Cat,” Sonja ordered, holding her hand out. “So what’s brought this on?”

  “Guilt!” shrugged Maya.

  “How do you mean?” asked Kerry, gathering up the voluminous white material of her new sleeveless cotton nightshirt – she’d treated herself when she’d been keeping Maya company out shopping that afternoon – and shuffled closer to the bed.

  “I can’t win!” Maya began to explain as she dabbed her nose with the tissue. “I feel miserable because my parents are so strict that I feel like I’m

  suffocating, and then when I find something that cheers me up – like the idea of getting into photography – I feel guilty!”

  “What for?” asked Cat, who thought feeling guilty was a waste of energy, even though she’d done plenty of things she should feel guilty about in the past.

  “Guilty for keeping it from them!”

  “But, Maya, do you really think your parents would freak out about this photography business?” Sonja quizzed her. She’d met Maya’s parents plenty of times and they’d always been pleasantly polite, if not quite warm and friendly, to her and the others. It was upsetting to think that they were making Maya so unhappy – whether they knew it or not. “You could promise that it wouldn’t interfere with your school stuff once term starts up again, couldn’t you?”

  “No, I’d never get away with it – they’d think it was a waste of time. My parents like to know my life runs to a tight timetable. They already think they’re being very fair, letting me hang out with you guys at weekends and stuff…”

  “Well, so you’ll have to keep your class a secret from them – but it’s not like you’re robbing a bank or something! I mean, it’s not worth beating yourself up about it, is it?” Sonja reasoned.

  “But it’s not just having to lie about the photography club, is it?” said Maya agitatedly. By now, she was clutching a pillow to her chest too, smothering the polar bear that was still in her arms. A spot of black plastic nose peeked pathetically over the downy bundle, as if searching for air. “I have to lie all the time, just to have a bit of freedom. It’s not as if you all go around lying to your families, is it?”

  “Well, no,” Sonja conceded. Her parents were cool about everything and trusted her implicitly. There was no reason to lie.

  “I never see my mother often enough to lie to her,” shrugged Cat. “And when we do run into each other around the flat, we tend to concentrate our energies into good, solid, slanging matches.”

  Kerry gulped and pushed her specs up her nose. She didn’t want to think about this issue too hard: her mum had given her a now-you-and-Ollie-aren’t-getting-too-serious-are-you? talk a couple of nights previously, and Kerry – knowing exactly what her mother was trying to get at – had assured her that nothing was further from her mind.

  Which wasn’t strictly true: all too often recently, Kerry found herself wondering what it would be like to sleep with Ollie. Not that she was about to or anything, but…

  “Coffee, anyone?” she squeaked, keen to slip out of the room before anyone spotted her own tell-tale guilty look.

  “You know your trouble, Maya…?”

  Sonja paused for a minute as she saw Kerry struggle round the bedroom door, kneeing it open awkwardly. Her nightshirt had twisted itself unhelpfully around her legs and she was splashing coffee all over the tray.

  Kerry stopped mid-wobble and looked at the scene in front of her. The mattress had been pulled off Sonja’s bed, as well as the one from the spare bed, and both now lay on the floor, along with another mattress snaffled from somewhere else in the house, and an inflated Lilo. (Sonja had said earlier that they’d draw straws for who was going to sleep on that, but Kerry had a sinking feeling that she knew who that someone would be.) They’d been positioned into a cross shape in the middle of the room, with a small, square space left in the middle, filled with the debris of the choc-a-thon.

  Sonja, Maya and Cat lay facing each other, stomach-down (on the three mattresses, Kerry wasn’t surprised to notice), obviously continuing the Maya Salvation Meeting from a more relaxed position.

  “Stick the tray down here, Kerry, and come and join us,” said Sonja, first brushing aside the chocolate remains in between them all and then motioning towards the duvet-covered Lilo. She coughed, ready to restart her speech.

  “Didn’t you bring any biscuits?” Cat interrupted, turning to Kerry.

  “No,” Kerry answered in a voice that got about as irritated as she ever showed, which wasn’t much. The Lilo farted and squelched as she tried to get comfy.

  “Right,” Sonja said firmly, trying to get their attention. Sonja was herself a fast-food junkie, but she was always amazed at Cat’s ability to eat non-stop. “As I was saying… Maya, your trouble is that you’re way smarter than all of us put together. In fact, you’re so smart that you’ve been able to hide how miserable you’ve been feeling. But in the end, that’s not very smart, is it? Just bottling it up like that?”

  Maya was still clinging to the polar bear, using him now as a pillow, half of him squashed under her chest, half under her chin. His beady little glass eyes, staring slightly cross-eyed at Sonja, looked ready to pop out.

  “I guess you’re right…”

  ‘“Course she is,” Cat agreed as she rummaged through the empty wrappers on the floor with her long, manicured fingernails.

  “And you’re too serious,” Sonja continued. “I think what you need is—”

  “Hey, who’s eaten half this Bounty?” Cat butted in, waving the half-chomped chocolate bar in the air.

  ”—is a really brilliant night out, with just us girls,” finished Sonja, skipping over Cat’s comment.

  “What do you mean, exactly? What kind of night out?” said Cat, throwing the rejected chocolate over her shoulder.

  “I mean dancing, flirting, having a right laugh…”

  “Well, we do that at Matt’s often enough, at his parties,” said Cat, licking her fingers.

  “No, I’m speaking about being really silly – going out to a tacky nightclub, like Enigma.”

  “That would be a laugh!” snorted Cat.

  “Enigma? That club down by the bus station?” said Maya, perking up. “I’ve never been there.”

  “Yeah, Maya,” Kerry pointed out excitedly, “think about what your horoscope said at the end…”

  She scrabbled through the chocolate wrappers and rediscovered the magazine.

  “‘And a night out with friends
could be full of surprises!’ It’s perfect!”

  “God, that’s amazing!” said Cat enthusiastically.

  Maya tried to shake her head. She was normally pretty cynical about horoscopes, but her eyes, showing a glint or three, gave her away.

  “Right, that’s it – it’s in the stars… whatever. We’re going out,” Sonja announced. “Next Friday. No excuses!”

  As the other three giggled and cheered – even Maya in a moment of forgetfulness – Sonja smiled an all-conquering smile and subtly slid the magazine under the mattress she was lying on.

  There was no point in spoiling the mood by letting any of the others spot that the magazine was dated November last year and was only about eight months out of date…

  CHAPTER 10

  TROUBLE IN STORE

  “Don’t look now.”

  Joe panicked and glanced all around for whatever drama was headed their way.

  “Joey! I said not to look!” hissed Matt. “Now, face me and pretend we’re having a normal conversation.”

  Joe stared blankly at Matt, who was nodding in time to the track he was playing on the turntable and mouthing something at him.

  “What?” said Joe. “I can’t hear you!”

  Matt rolled his eyes up to the ceiling in despair.

  “I wasn’t saying anything, Joey – I was pretending to talk!”

  “Why?” asked Joe, now completely thrown.

  “Because I wanted us to look casual so that these two girls who are coming over will think we haven’t noticed them!” Matt explained through gritted teeth.

  “What girls?” asked Joe, spinning around involuntarily and finding himself looking straight into two giggling faces.

  Thank God they put the lights down in here… he thought to himself, feeling the furnace of a hot flush burn his cheeks and being at least in some small way glad that the extent of his blushing wouldn’t be too visible.

  Both girls stood grinning stupidly at the boys, then gave each other sly l-know-what-you re-thinking looks. These two, decked out almost identically in foxy little black numbers, were obviously the type of best mates who dressed, as well as thought and acted, in unison.