by Zoe May
‘Come up on stage, Edward!’ Mick says. Edward’s mum ushers him towards the stage and helps him up.
‘Right, Edward, you can pick our winners,’ Mick says, pulling off the lid of the tin. Edward smiles up at him delightedly.
‘Okay, so our first prize we’ll be announcing is a fifteen-pound Waterstones voucher and the winner is …’ Mick presents the tin to Edward, who reaches for a ticket.
He pulls one out victoriously.
‘Thanks Edward,’ Mick says. ‘What number is that?’ Mick holds the microphone down to Edward.
‘Number 231,’ Edward announces shyly.
‘Oh, that’s me! That’s me!’ A red-haired lady I recognise as the receptionist from the local GP surgery calls out, waving her ticket in the air. She comes up on stage and Mick hands her the voucher. She seems delighted. I know it’s only a raffle and I should just relax and have fun, but I can feel myself becoming totally gripped with excitement. I really want to win too!
Mick and Edward reveal the rest of the raffle winners. Will’s mum Sharon wins a dinner for two at an Italian restaurant in town and I can’t help feeling sorry for her as her admirers all seem to light up, clearly hoping to be her plus one. I suspect she’ll probably end up taking Will. Rowena wins the bottle of port. By the time the final few prizes are revealed, Edward’s beginning to look exhausted, like the novelty of choosing winners is starting to wear off. He goes back to sit with his mum. Edna, an elderly lady from the local church, comes up on stage to pluck the final winning tickets from the tin.
The table of prizes is growing increasingly empty and the tension in the room is mounting as we get closer and closer to the star prize reveal. I know it’s only a charity raffle, but I can’t help caring so much. A holiday to Marrakech is not something that people in my village take lightly. I know this prize and whoever wins will be the talk of the town for months. My mum was right. This is an important event on the village calendar. I can’t believe I even considered missing it.
‘Okay ladies and gentlemen, now the moment you’ve all been waiting for – we’ll be announcing the winner of the star prize! A romantic getaway in gorgeous, exotic, exciting Marrakech,’ Mick says. He switches a button on a projector on the table and suddenly, beautiful images of the most exquisite hotel fill the screen. It’s stunning – a huge white palatial building with a tapering gold domed roof and tall majestic archways, lined with palm trees soaring to the sky. The images cut to the inside of the hotel and it’s all dreamy-looking terracotta walls, sun-filled riads and wide marble hallways. The pictures cut to a photo of a plush sumptuous bed covered in fractured light flowing from ornate silver lamps and photographs of a giant tranquil aquamarine pool lined with sun loungers in the most stunning courtyard ever. Rita really wasn’t exaggerating when she said this holiday was ‘top notch’. The images of the hotel blend into images of Marrakech, with its bustling souks, full of spices, tagine dishes, rugs and elongated lamps that look like something you could use to summon a genie.
I drink in the images, my daydream of reclining on the sun lounger in a bikini and sunglasses growing sharper and sharper by the second. I really want to win this prize. It would be so great for me and Lauren. She seems to be loving the single girl-about-town life, but I know it gets exhausting and she could do with a break. We used to go on mini-breaks from time to time. She and I took the Eurostar to Bruges one weekend and we’ve been to Paris a few times, too. I’ve felt a bit bad since I had Hera and moved to Chiddingfold as we don’t get to hang out anywhere near as much as we used to. This holiday would be perfect for us. We’d get to spend some quality girl time together.
‘And the winner is …’ Mick holds the tin our to Edna, who reaches inside.
We all hold our breath. We’re so silent you could hear a pin drop. Yet Edna is taking forever to choose a ticket, rummaging about in the tin. She probably feels like Dermot O’Leary right now, announcing the winner of the X Factor.
Eventually her hand emerges from the tin and she unfolds a piece of paper.
‘Number 18!’ she announces.
Excitement floods through me as I scan my raffle tickets. I’m pretty sure I had number 18 and then my eyes land on the winning ticket. Number 18!
‘And number 102,’ Edna adds just as I leap to my feet, waving my winning ticket and cry, ‘It’s me!’
My moment of joy is suddenly shrouded in confusion. Why is Edna calling out another winning ticket? I won!
‘Ha! I have 102!’ Will calls out, brandishing a ticket.
I look over at him. What? I glance around the room, trying to figure out what’s going on, but everyone else is looking equally perplexed. We all look towards Mick, who seems baffled.
‘It’s just one winner Edna, not two!’ he says eventually.
Edna blushes. ‘Oh … I thought it was a prize for two, so I just read out two names.’
‘No love. A prize for two but the winner can take whoever they want.’
‘Right,’ Edna replies, looking completely out of her depth. I can’t help feeling sorry for her. She’s in her eighties and I don’t think her mind is quite as sharp as it used to be.
‘It’s okay, Edna love,’ Mick says, rubbing Edna’s back.
Mick thanks her for her help and reassures her that she’s done a good job. She smiles sweetly and goes back to her table to sit down.
‘Right, well, er, this is a difficult situation …’ Mick looks towards me and Will. We’re both holding our winning tickets.
‘Well, my ticket was read out first so it would probably be easiest to just let me have the prize,’ I suggest. ‘Maybe next time, Will.’
Will smirks. ‘Just because your ticket was read out first doesn’t mean anything. My ticket was read out fair and square.’
‘Yes, it does. Ever heard of first-come-first-served?’ I remind him.
Will laughs. ‘Raffles don’t work like that, Natalie.’
I suddenly realise that everyone in the hall is watching us bicker.
‘Why don’t you just pull a ticket from those two?’ Clive suggests, gesturing between me and Will. Not a bad idea actually, except I’ll stand a 50 per cent chance of losing and I really don’t want to lose.
I don’t comment and neither does Will. I can tell Will’s not particularly keen on the idea either.
‘Good suggestion, Clive, thank you. But I’ve had an idea too,’ Mick says. My ears prick up.
‘How about you both go? Together.’
A laugh escapes my lips. ‘Together?’ I gawp.
I look over at Will, who’s also laughing.
‘That’s a great idea, Mick,’ my mum pipes up, a twinkle in her eye. She’s sitting a few seats down from me at the table and I shoot her a look. I know she likes Will, but I mean, seriously? Suggesting I go on holiday with him. I haven’t even seen him for sixteen years, I’m hardly going to just hop on a plane with him to Marrakech!
‘You could …’ Rita suggests, looking hopefully between me and Will.
Suddenly everyone in the hall is murmuring in agreement.
‘Maggie used to love our holidays,’ Mick reminisces over the microphone. ‘There was this quote she used to like – “The world is a book and those who don’t travel only read one page”. She loved that. I know she would have been keen for you both to have a read of the Morocco chapter.’
Oh my God, what is happening? How has this trip of a lifetime that I was dying to get my hands on five minutes ago suddenly turned into the world’s most awkward holiday?! Now I can’t even refuse to go without feeling like I’m somehow betraying Maggie’s memory.
‘Come on, love. It’s what Maggie would have wanted,’ my mum says. I blink at her in shock several times, unable to believe her nerve. She’s not interested in what Maggie would have wanted, she’s just trying to set me up with Will.
As I gawp at my mum, another voice pipes up.
‘I have an idea …’
I look over to see Brian. Googly-eyed annoying Brian. I hadn’
t noticed him until now, but he’s sitting at a table by the buffet eyeing me intently, almost hungrily. It’s a little disturbing, actually.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Brian offers. ‘If Will doesn’t want to. I’ll take the ticket and come with you. Give you a bit of company, do you know what I mean?’
He stares at me with a look of impassioned intensity as he makes this offer. I’m not sure he realises he’s not helping the situation at all. As if Will’s going to just give up his ticket! I glance at Will who is now smirking mischievously.
‘That’s not a bad idea, Brian,’ he says.
My eyes widen in shock. He’s not seriously going to sacrifice his ticket to Marrakech purely to get a laugh out of making me go on a four-night romantic getaway with Brian? Actually, that’s exactly the kind of thing Will would find hilarious.
‘No, Brian! Thanks for the offer, but no,’ I state firmly, my voice tight and a little erratic. Brian deflates a little, but I don’t care. I know he’ll bounce back and will probably have moved onto his next target by the time the raffle’s over.
‘Okay, well in that case, maybe we should just go together then?’ Will throws his hands up in surrender. I glare at him. What is he doing? He smiles back, shrugging.
Suddenly everyone’s eyes dart towards me, expectantly. I don’t want to go on holiday with Will, but if I say that, I’m going to look like a total spoilsport.
‘Come on, Natalie!’ Mick says, with a hopeful grin.
‘Yeah come on,’ a few others echo.
Everyone’s looking my way and even though only seconds have passed, it feels like a lifetime. I squirm, not knowing what to do. My mum’s nodding encouragingly. So’s Rowena. Even Clive looks keen on the idea. I glance towards Rita, who seems to be the only person in the room who’s giving me a sympathetic look.
‘I mean, you could always go together and just do your own thing?’ Rita suggests in an upbeat, optimistic tone.
I suppose she’s right. I could always go on the trip, enjoy the gorgeous hotel, hang out at the pool and explore Marrakech on my own. Just because the trip is billed as a romantic getaway for two doesn’t mean Will and I have to be romantic. It may be a package holiday, but we can unpackage it. We don’t have to do everything together. I glance over at Will.
‘Don’t worry Natalie, I won’t cramp your style,’ he says, smirking again.
‘Okay, fine,’ I sigh, giving in.
‘Oh fabulous!’ my mum cries out.
‘Excellent!’ Mick says. ‘Maggie would be so proud.’
‘Great.’ I smile uneasily, sitting back down.
Chapter 5
‘You’re going on a romantic getaway with Will Brimble?’ Lauren gawps over a coffee in Starbucks. It’s the one around the corner from this really cool vintage shop in Soho we always used to go to. I was tied up in a meeting with Becky but Lauren nipped in before coming and she’s now wearing a yellow polka-dot headband featuring a giant bow that she managed to pick up. It’s from the Fifties, apparently. Only Lauren could pull a headband like that off. It goes surprisingly well with her black biker jacket and bright red lipstick, and despite insisting she has ‘the hangover to end all hangovers’, she looks vibrant.
‘No, I’m not going with him! We’re both going on the same holiday, but not together,’ I point out.
Lauren looks blank. She takes a sip of her coffee, but discovering it’s not sweet enough, tears open a third sachet of sweetener and decants it into the mug.
I try explaining again. ‘So basically, the holiday is meant to be a romantic getaway but we’re obviously not going to be romantic. So we won’t be doing romantic things, like candlelit dinners and couple’s massages or any of that stuff. We’ll just do our own thing.’
‘Oh, come on, how is that going to work?’ Lauren scoffs, taking another sip of her now super sweet coffee, seeming satisfied this time. One of the perks of Lauren being a freelancer is that she can often squeeze in seeing me at a moment’s notice so when I arranged an emergency trip to London to discuss the situation I’ve found myself in, she was more than happy to oblige. Regardless of the whole Will thing, it’s good to see her. I’ve missed her plain-speaking and her love for overly sweet coffee and outlandish accessories.
‘Won’t you have to share a bed?’ Lauren asks.
‘Well, no, not necessarily,’ I reply. ‘Not at all. I think our hotel room has a sofa. Will can sleep there, I’ll sleep in the bed. Maybe we’ll take turns. But we’re definitely not sharing a bed.’
‘Right. It’s just sleeping on a sofa doesn’t sound particularly comfortable. You’ll end up sharing a bed and you know it!’ Lauren smiles naughtily, placing her mug back on the saucer.
‘I won’t. I really won’t,’ I insist.
Since Hera was born, I haven’t shared my bed with anyone but her. I’m definitely not going to jump into bed with Will and certainly not in the sexy way that Lauren’s suggesting. She may be my best friend, but she has a much more laidback approach to sex than I do. I’ve only slept with a couple of guys, including Leroy, whereas Lauren’s had quite a few partners. I often lose track of the guys she’s dating. There was a guy called Dennis or Darren or something who she seemed pretty into for a few months, but then she started talking about some ‘cool, sensitive’ physiotherapist and Reiki healer called Carl. I have no idea what happened to him. She’s already seeing someone new, a lawyer who she insists has ‘great hair and an even better sense of humour’. Apparently, he’s the reason she’s hungover today and has slicked lashings of concealer under her eyes.
‘Lauren, you know how I feel about Will. There is no way I’m going to end up in bed with him,’ I point out.
Lauren rolls her eyes. ‘Seriously? You’re not still whingeing about that time he called you “pancake boobs”.’
‘That wasn’t Will,’ I point out. ‘That was his friend, Nathan.’
Before Will came to our school, this guy Nathan had been bullying people in our year. He dubbed me ‘pancake boobs’ back when I’d only just started developing. I was so self-conscious about my tiny breasts and I absolutely hated that nickname. But I wasn’t Nathan’s only victim. There was Susan Granger – a really sweet girl who I used to sit next to in English – who came into school one day with toothpaste on her mouth, earning the nickname ‘jizz lips’, which all of Nathan’s mean friends seized upon for weeks. And there was this weedy maths nerd called Lewis, which Nathan shortened to ‘Loo’, which then morphed into ‘Bogmeister’. Although ‘Bogmeister’ didn’t really stick. Too many syllables probably. When Will came along, he put a stop to all of that pettiness. He was bigger, better-looking and cooler than Nathan, and he hated all forms of bullying. In comparison to Will’s friendly, cool attitude, suddenly being nasty no longer seemed like such a good move and people like Nathan dropped all that pettiness.
‘Will actually put a stop to pancake boobs,’ I tell Lauren, reminding her of the story.
‘Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Will’s cool,’ she says, casting her mind back to our school days, her eyes misting over with memories.
‘He could be cool, but he could also be a real dick. Don’t you remember the tent incident?’ I ask, suddenly wishing we were in a pub and not a café. The memory is still raw, and I could do with something a bit stronger than tea. Although I do feel grateful that I had the foresight to buy a brownie.
Lauren pauses for a second. ‘Ohhh …’ The penny drops. ‘The tent incident.’
‘I can’t believe you remembered Nathan calling me pancake boobs, but you forgot about the tent incident!’ I balk.
‘I didn’t forget. It’s just pancake boobs was funnier.’ She smiles wickedly.
I pick up my spoon and slap her on the arm with it.
‘Ouch!’ She cowers away, giggling.
I take a bite of my brownie.
‘So, the tent incident. If I recall correctly, Will made a move on you, you freaked out and then you guys never spoke again?’ Lauren says, rubbing her arm even th
ough I’m sure it doesn’t hurt.
‘Well, no, not really. I need to refresh your memory,’ I tell her, before explaining exactly what happened.
What actually went down was that Will and I became really close at Art Club. We’d always sit next to each other and we realised we had quite a lot in common. It was the kind of stuff that matters when you’re a teenager: we both loved The Strokes, we shared an addiction to Neighbours, we enjoyed English and hated maths, and we were in agreement that pineapple on pizza is amazing. One day Will asked for my number and we got into the habit of chatting in the evenings. I used to love taking my phone up to my bedroom, snuggling up in bed and listening to Will’s voice. We’d chat about everything: the latest Neighbours episode, coursework, what we’d had for dinner, plans for the future, school gossip, all sorts. We could talk for hours and even though we played it cool at school, our growing closeness was hard to ignore. We both knew it had meaning and that something would happen between us eventually.
Then the time came. We’d been studying landscape painting in Art Club and Mr Reed, our art teacher, suggested a camping trip to a coastal national park not too far away where we could set up our easels and paint the scenery. I was excited about the trip for weeks and it didn’t let me down. Our train arrived early in the morning and after putting up our tents and leaving our stuff at the campsite, we headed off to the coast and set up our easels. The scenery was beautiful – lush green grass, white chalk hills, deep blue sea and a bright azure sky streaked with wispy clouds. The weather was perfect too – bright and warm with a light breeze. It was ideal weather for painting, since everything was illuminated but the breeze dried the paint quickly from our canvases. It was heavenly. We were all moved by the peaceful atmosphere and there was none of the usual bickering, attention-seeking or crude jokes we usually made as teenagers. Instead, everyone was perfectly calm.
Eventually, the light faded, and we packed up and headed back to the campsite. Mr Reed and a couple of the other teachers set up a campfire and cooked jacket potatoes in tin foil with beans and cheese. We sat around the fire chatting away until it got cold and we headed back to our tents. I was meant to be sharing a tent with another girl from the club, Emily, but she fancied Will’s friend, Raj, and we’d planned a swap on the train down. I’d share with Will and Emily would share with Raj. Once the campsite had gone quiet, Raj and I swapped places, sneaking across the campsite and slipping inside each other’s tents. It didn’t last long before the teachers realised what we were up to, but for a precious half hour, finally, Will and I were alone, after what felt like forever. I’d chatted to him under a duvet hundreds of times before, but never without a phone involved. It felt strange to be next to him. To be able to smell him and hear him breathing. To be able to touch him. Will gently ran his fingers up and down my arm, and I was silently begging for him to kiss me and also terrified of it. I’d only ever kissed one boy before (a regrettable sloppy incident with an annoying guy with bad breath during a game of Spin the Bottle) and I was worried the kiss with Will might be a disaster like that had been. I was also equally worried that Will wouldn’t make a move at all and that it would finally dawn on me that he wasn’t interested, and that after all this time pining over him, I’d been totally delusional.
