Sugar Secrets…& Guilt Page 7

  “Sonja,” said her mother, putting an arm around her. “I’m sure it’s all right. I mean, the place is a little messy, but I don’t think it’s the scene of an abduction or a break-in. Like your father said on the way over. I think the most likely thing is that Cat’s taking advantage of Sylvia being away from home, skipping college and gallivanting about, knowing she won’t get any hassle.”

  “And didn’t you say her friends at college were going on about her meeting some boy on her night out on Saturday?” continued Tom Harvey. “Maybe she’s with him right now.”

  Sonja tried to remember what Vikki had said; it had been more along the lines of Cat flirting with every guy at the club. She didn’t fancy telling her folks that-it didn’t exactly cast her cousin in a flattering light.

  “Look, what we’ll do,” said Sonja’s mother, walking over to the table and taking a pen and her diary out of her bag, “is leave her a note, telling her to phone us tonight when she gets in, or tomorrow sometime, just to let us know she’s all right.”

  “If we don’t hear anything by tomorrow afternoon, I’ll give her college a call,” nodded Tom Harvey.

  “I’ll phone round all my friends, so they know to get in touch if they hear from her,” said Sonja, trying to be constructive. “But what about Aunt Sylvia? Should we call her?”

  Her parents looked at each other questioningly.

  “No, not till we give Cat a chance to check in with us,” said her father. “It’ll only cause ructions if we jump in and get it wrong.”

  Sonja nodded, but still didn’t feel entirely convinced. Yes, she could see the sense in the idea that Cat was off the leash and running wild. And yes, she could see Cat falling for some bloke she’d only just met and spending all her time with him.

  But the one thing that didn’t make sense in all this was that it just wasn’t Cat’s style not to boast about it to any of her friends…

  The rain that evening was a blessing really; it meant Maya and Alex could walk along the high street, more or less hidden from view under his big black umbrella.

  “So, since when did Billy have a crush on you? I thought he was staying away from the club because I’d overstepped the mark, being the lecturer and going out with one of his mates.”

  “He asked me out the day we went on that trip to the agricultural fair last summer. But Alex, I didn’t tell you about Billy liking me just to show off or make out how popular I am with the boys…” said Maya, feeling a little shy about what she’d just told him.

  “I know that!” laughed Alex, squeezing her hand. “But I’m glad you did-I don’t want you worrying on your own.”

  Wait till I tell you what’s happening at home, she thought, reckoning-despite what she’d decided at the beginning of the week-that the time was right to let him in on that little bombshell too.

  “Listen, I-oh…”

  Maya broke off her confession as she spotted a figure that looked strangely familiar on the other side of the road. The girl in the long navy coat and Kangol beanie seemed to be struggling to keep her umbrella up.

  “What?” asked Alex, peering out from under the huge dome of his umbrella to see what had caught Maya’s attention.

  “Oh, nothing,” Maya shook her head and watched the girl rush off down the wet street. “For a second, when I saw that girl’s blonde hair peeking out from under her hat. I thought it was Cat. But it’s not her-she’d never dress like that!”

  “Like what?”

  “Like any sensible person would in this weather,” Maya smiled, suddenly missing her friend for the second time that week. Cat hadn’t called; she wondered if Joe had seen her to pass on the message on Monday.

  “And what would Cat’s wet weather outfit be then?” Alex grinned, enjoying this insight into his girlfriend’s mates.

  “Anything short, cropped or over-the-top. Trust me, there’s more chance of seeing Cat waltz down here in a belly-dancing outfit than a mumsy coat, trainers and a hat!”

  CHAPTER 14

  DEEP BREATHS AND DASHED HOPES

  Matt flicked through the satellite listings magazine to see if there was anything interesting on that evening.

  “Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday….” he muttered to himself, drawing his finger across the page.

  It all looked dreary. The only thing that seemed mildly interesting was some Bruce Willis action movie, but he’d already seen it a hundred times.

  “MTV…” he muttered again and pointed the remote to the huge widescreen telly.

  Immediately, some cheesy American girl singer came on, warbling about love as she strolled through a cactus-strewn desert, strumming a guitar.

  It was just the sort of music Matt hated.

  Why am I watching this rubbish? he thought to himself, his eyes glued to the screen.

  Because you’re putting off phoning your mum…

  It was true. Before his dad had driven off on Sunday. Matt had promised him he’d try and arrange a visit to his mother’s over the weekend and, since then, he’d done nothing about calling her. Just thought and worried and mulled over it instead.

  His dad had a point, he’d decided. There was no reason to hang on to those stupid angry feelings of rejection. He wasn’t some little kid any more. He shouldn’t be jealous of two small girls. He was an adult. He was nearly nineteen. He should be big enough to get on reasonably well with his own mother.

  But maybe I should phone Anna first and get her advice, he mused. She’d know what I should say and how I should play it…

  Anna had been great, not so long ago, when she’d stumbled upon him in the park, doing his best to pretend he didn’t mind spending Christmas Day on his own and failing miserably. She’d scooped him up, taken him home, made him laugh, and…

  Matt stopped at the memory of their kiss. The feeling he got when he remembered that moment always confused him; this bittersweet rush in his chest, stuck somewhere between embarrassment and excitement. But the kiss hadn’t meant anything, they’d agreed on that. Matt had been madly in love with Gabrielle at the time, and Anna didn’t really see him as anything other than a friend-part of the gang. It was just Christmas spirit-or maybe the alcohol, in Matt’s case-distorting everything, making both of them act out of character.

  Matt shook his head, trying to dislodge that familiar uneasiness that had settled on him and decided not to bother Anna.

  Then again… he thought to himself, punching in her number. A weird noise-like the engaged tone warbling under water-soon put paid to his plan.

  “Something must be wrong with the line,” he muttered, after trying again and getting the same response. “Well, only one thing for it, Matty boy-can’t put it off any longer.”

  With a nervous sigh, he tapped in his mother’s number.

  Hello, Mum? he practised in his head as the ringing tone droned in his ear. I just phoned to say Happy Birthday. I know it’s not till Saturday, but y’see, I was thinking of coming to see you. Would that be—

  “Hello?”

  Matt panicked-had he dialled the right number? It had been so long since he rang it, he could have made a mistake.

  “Hi. Um, is Vanessa there?” he chanced it.

  “No,” said the young female voice. “Who’s calling?”

  “It’s her son. Matt. Er, who’s that?”

  “Oh, Matt-yes, I’ve heard about you! I’m April-I’m Simon’s niece.”

  Gee, that’s nice, Matt thought bitterly. I phone my own mother’s house and someone’s ‘heard’ about me.

  “When will my mum be home?” he asked, ignoring the girl’s friendly tone.

  “Oh, not for another week and a half. Her and Uncle Simon have taken the girls to Disneyworld.”

  “What-Florida?”

  “Yep, brilliant, isn’t it? I’m house-sitting for them. Anyway, isn’t it funny how we’ve never met in all the time your mum and my uncle have been together?”

  Probably because I was banished to boarding school for most of the time. Matt though
t blackly.

  Somehow, he wasn’t in the mood for niceties any more.

  “Yeah, funny that,” he replied flatly to her question. “Listen, got to go. Bye.”

  He stared at the receiver he had rammed down and knew he was behaving like a child. But he couldn’t help feeling a tidal wave of jealousy and disappointment well up in him.

  Why didn’t I get trips to Disneyworld? Why didn’t I get taken anywhere? he ranted silently, remembering a lonely childhood as the outsider among the other pupils at Bartdales. And then there were the empty, boring holidays hanging about at his mother’s flat, staring at the local kids who didn’t want to play with the posh boy who went to boarding school. It wasn’t that his parents had never had the money to take him away-they never seemed to have the inclination.

  “Not that I’d have wanted to go with them,” he muttered moodily, sensing himself slip back into that gloomy, gawky young boy he used to be.

  He turned back to the colourful images flickering across the screen in the corner and remembered that he’d been watching MTV. The boy band that were on now were no more his kind of music than the American singer had been, but he picked up the remote and blasted the volume full up.

  It gave him an idea.

  “No point wasting a weekend and an empty house,” he told himself, his dark eyes narrowed and determined. “Time for a party. A really, really big party…”

  CHAPTER 15

  A SHOULDER TO CRY ON

  Anna looked at her watch-it was a wet and windy Wednesday evening. Who’d ring her doorbell at this time?

  She wasn’t expecting anyone. She’d just got off the phone, trying to call her brother Owen, but there must have been a fault on the line: all she’d got were whiney electric noises. Giving up on that, she’d planned on fixing some cheese on toast before settling down on the sofa and doing a bit of mindlessly relaxing channel-surfing.

  “Who is it?” she asked, through the door.

  She felt safe and secure in her little home above the End-of-the-Line café, but the back stairway up to her flat was reached through a small alleyway and the cafe’s deserted back yard, so she wasn’t taking any chances.

  “It’s me-it’s Cat!” came a plaintive wail from the other side of the door.

  Anna pulled open the door and was surprised to see a most unCat-like figure in front of her. Fleetingly, she remembered how her friend had dressed down and demure when she was trying to get into character for the lead role in her college’s panto of Cinderella. Hadn’t Cat mentioned that there might be another drama production coming up? Was she dressing the part again?

  Not that Anna could figure out what the character could be: Cat was swallowed up in a big, long navy coat, with a pair of old trainers peeking out the bottom.

  What was visible of her hair under her black beanie hat stuck damp and limply to the sides of her virtually make-up free face: virtually make-up free, in that only a dash of black mascara was obvious, streaking down on to her cheeks-though whether that was the result of the rain or tears, Anna couldn’t be sure.

  To top it all, Cat was forlornly holding a flopping, half wind-broken umbrella uselessly over her head.

  “Cat! Come in!” said Anna, ushering her pathetic-looking mate inside. “You don’t look, um, so good. What’s up?”

  “I’m-I’m OK,” Cat shivered, throwing the umbrella down by the door and pulling off her hat. “Just got a bit spooked there, coming through the alley.”

  “It is a bit creepy in the winter, I know,” Anna agreed, helping her out of her coat. “If you’d phoned first, I’d have come down the steps to meet you.”

  “I tried to phone you from home, but your phone was engaged, so I just thought I’d come…” said Cat, looking small and vulnerable in her flat trainers, T-shirt and leggings.

  “It sounded engaged? I think there’s a fault on it, actually. I’ll have to get BT on to it in the morning,” said Anna, studying the coat as she hung it up. Closer to, it looked expensive, classic in a perfect-for-the-office way, and totally unlike anything Cat would normally be seen dead in.

  “It’s my mum’s. She’s a lot taller than me,” mumbled Cat, catching her friend’s questioning stare. “I felt safer wearing it-like no one would look at me…”

  “Uh-huh,” nodded Anna, none the wiser. “Go and sit down by fire, Cat-you look frozen. I’ll stick the kettle on.”

  Cat sniffed, then trotted off towards the two-bar electric fire, leaving a trail of squelchy footprints on the carpet from her rain-drenched trainers.

  As Cat sat in the comfort of Anna’s flat, she replayed in her head for the zillionth time the events of last Saturday night…

  She hadn’t felt the sting of her grazed hands as they broke her fall on to the wet paving stones beneath her.

  All she knew at that precise moment was that she had to get away from him. In a split second, she flipped herself round and kicked out with her free leg with all the force she could muster. It worked. She saw the lad crumple back with a yelp and, more importantly, he let go of her ankle.

  Cat scurried panic-stricken-slip-sliding her way down the wet cobbled lane and out on to the brightly lit road-towards the coach full of yawning, yelling and teasing girls.

  Stepping up into the safety and the warmth of the steamy-windowed coach. Cat gratefully heard the swoosh of the door closing behind her.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to blurt out breathlessly what had just happened, when something made her stop.

  “Where’ve you been?” “You had to be last, didn’t you?” “How many lads’ phone numbers did you get?” “Too busy snogging to realise the time, were you?”

  The other girls were all just having a laugh and normally Cat would have loved the attention, playing up to the crowd and reeling off a list of boys’ names for their amusement. But, all of a sudden, as she stood between seated rows of baying girls, Cat realised for the first time how they saw her. She was a first-class flirt, who dressed to thrill and didn’t give a damn.

  “Cat-what have you been up to?” someone screeched at her from halfway up the coach. “Your knees are bleeding!”

  Cat stared down at her pavement-grazed knees and suddenly felt cold, vulnerable and exposed.

  “Oops!” she tried to giggle. “I tripped just now…”

  “Can’t hold your drink, eh?” cackled another familiar voice.

  The comment-however wrong, since Cat wasn’t really into alcohol with her family background-gave her the excuse she suddenly needed.

  “Mmm, yeah…” she agreed, faking a wobble as she walked up the bus. “Feel lousy. Think I’ll sleep it off.”

  Desperate for the others not to realise how freaked out she was, she stumbled gratefully into a spare seat, curled up in a ball and pretended to doze. With her heart pounding, her grazed knees and palms stinging, and the girls’ laughter ringing brashly in her ears, she didn’t see how she could tell her classmates what had just happened and expect any sympathy.

  Earlier, on the way up in the coach, she’d twirled for them, showing off the outfit that Kelly Fraser had described jokingly as having “less material in it than my bag!” and boasting about how many heads she was going to turn that night.

  Would they say it was all my fault that lad came after me, even though I didn’t speak to him in the club? Cat fretted, squeezing her eyes shut and blocking out the giggling and capering going on all around her on the coach. What would they say if I told them? Maybe that I couldn’t expect anything else, the way I was acting…

  “My God! You got scared out of your wits by some total creep and didn’t even tell any of your friends on the coach that night-never mind your mum or the police?” exclaimed Anna, when she’d heard the whole story.

  Cat was sitting curled up by the fire, scrunched up into a tightly folded, origami version of herself.

  “I didn’t want to involve the police,” she shrugged pathetically. “He was probably just totally drunk, and all that really happened was that I scraped
my hands and knees…”

  “…and got so traumatised you didn’t tell anyone!” Anna pointed out. “Even if he was ‘just totally drunk’ he had no right to assault you. God-he’s a potential rapist, for all we know! You’ve got to tell the police, Cat”

  Cat scrunched up her face and shook her head.

  “I can’t. They’ll only…”

  Anna looked at her friend enquiringly. “Only what?”

  “They’ll only tell me I …”

  All of a sudden, Cat’s sorrowful expression melted into proper tears. Anna reached over for a box of tissues, then flopped down with them on to the floor beside her friend.

  “I- I- know what everyone thinks about me,” sobbed Cat. “They say I’m too tarty!”

  “Who says that?” asked Anna defensively, although deep down, she knew why people who didn’t know and love Cat as much as her friends might come out with such a bitchy comment.

  “Everyone. I’ve heard stuff like that for years, but I’ve just ignored it. Just thought - hic - I just thought it was people being jealous or mean or too boring to dress up themselves.”

  “Well, that’s all true, Cat. You can’t let narrow- minded comments get you down,” Anna tried to soothe her.

  “And I know even my mates have said it sometimes too-Sonja’s said it to my face often enough, going on about how I dress and the way I flirt with boys!” Cat spluttered.

  Anna winced and wondered how to explain this one away to a near hysterical girl. It was true that even Anna had heard Sonja make that kind of comment when Cat had come strutting into the End in some eye-wateringly short skirt or bosom-revealing top. But as cruel as Sonja’s words might seem out of context, her fondness for her cousin was obvious. And it wasn’t as if Cat was shy about throwing stinging insults around with the best of them either. “Cat by name, Catty by nature,” she’d once heard Matt mutter, after Cat had launched into one particularly venomous bitching session about Natasha, Ollie’s twin sister.