by Carmen Reid
Niffy brought over the coffees and put a plate loaded with four doughnuts in front of her place. She gulped a great mouthful of coffee down, then headed back to the counter to collect Amy and Finn’s doughnuts.
‘This is just for now,’ Finn said, hurriedly shaking salt over Niffy’s plate.
‘No!’ Amy gasped. ‘You can’t do that.’
‘Can,’ Finn replied, plastering a perfectly innocent expression onto his face as Niffy returned with more doughnuts.
‘Four each for us and two for you,’ Niffy explained.
‘You won’t be skinny for ever,’ Amy commented, as Finn crammed an entire doughnut into his mouth.
‘Yeah we will,’ Niffy assured her. ‘You’ve seen our mum and dad. Whereas you, Aim, need to get back on that hockey pitch with me or you’ll get all squidgy.’
‘Huh?’ was Amy’s embarrassed response. But there was a little sting of truth in the comment. Niffy hadn’t been at school for half a term, and without Niffy to inspire her, Amy’s interest in hockey had waned and her thighs and waistline had undoubtedly spread. Not by much – but obviously enough for Niffy to notice.
Finn was gulping down his coffee, studiously pretending he hadn’t heard any of this, but Amy’s cheeks burned because she knew perfectly well that he had.
Suddenly her appetite for doughnuts disappeared completely and she pushed her plate away.
‘I wonder how Min’s surviving at her auntie’s?’ Amy said, desperate to change the subject.
‘Min will be fine – she’s probably taken a physics textbook or two to help the time pass. You know what?’ Niffy asked, picking up the first of her sabotaged doughnuts and holding it just in front of her mouth.
Amy flinched. She wanted to say something, she really did.
Niffy bit down. ‘I think we’ll do the pool tomorrow – get you started with a fifty-lap race and a new fitness regime,’ she said through her mouthful.
‘The pool? I dunno . . .’ Amy hesitated, not wanting to do anything that took her away from Finn. She was trying not to stare at Niffy as she chewed.
Finn had shaken a lot of salt onto that plate, but Niffy ate her way cheerfully through the entire doughnut, and the three others, without uttering a single murmur of complaint.
Only when her plate was scraped clean did she say, ‘Must have burned my tongue on the coffee – those tasted odd.’
When both Finn and Amy burst out laughing, Niffy stared at them in confusion. ‘Have I missed the joke?’ she asked.
‘Never mind,’ Finn said.
‘No, it’s nothing,’ Amy insisted. Then Finn gave her a wink, and once again she found herself wondering uncomfortably what exactly she had agreed to do with him later.
Chapter Nine
‘WHAT DO YOU think your mom is doing?’ Maddison asked as she peered out of the small cottage window into the darkness. ‘It looks like she’s trying to climb up that hill.’
‘Is she holding her BlackBerry?’ Gina asked.
‘Umm . . . there’s a light in her hand. Is that her phone?’
‘Definitely. Just what I thought. My mom is out there in the darkness, in the rain, climbing a hill, trying to get a signal so she can download her email, then phone up her PA and yell at her for messing up our holiday,’ Gina informed them.
‘Jeez . . .’ Paula flopped down onto one of the chairs and stared into the empty fireplace.
‘Anyone want to take June’s fire-starting advice?’ Gina asked.
Paula shook her head. ‘Isn’t it kinda late?’
Maddison was looking at the tiny bookcase. ‘Two fish cookbooks, one old thriller and a Monopoly set. They sure know how to have a good time up here,’ she grumbled.
‘Is there a TV?’ Paula asked.
‘No,’ Maddison answered immediately.
At least dinner had been good. They had spent three whole hours in the cosy hotel, eating, drinking and chatting. But the wi-fi connection had been down, and June had assured Lorelei that there wasn’t any hope of getting a signal – apparently only one network covered the island, and it wasn’t hers.
While they sat in the dining room, Gina couldn’t help noticing that her mom was finding it hard to relax. Her eyes kept straying to her phone as if she could somehow will it into life.
But their delicious dinner in the lovely hotel had the unfortunate effect of making the cottage seem all the more gloomy and unwelcoming.
‘My mom doesn’t really do vacations,’ Gina told her friends now. ‘She and Mick go on business trips and take the odd weekend break – but that’s about it. We don’t do family trips. Mom doesn’t like to be away from work for long. So I really want her to have a good time here.’
When neither of her friends made any reply to this, Gina went on, ‘I’m really sorry we’re not at the hotel, but I don’t think this place is so bad. It just needs to warm up – we’ll get used to it.’
‘I thought it would be cool to be on an island, but it feels like we’ve gone back in time,’ Paula whinged.
‘Yeah. The land that time forgot,’ Maddison added. ‘I mean, we are so far away from anything and it is so boring out here. What are we going to do tomorrow? Go for walks in the rain?’
‘Just think about it, Gina – your mom used to be stuck here for weeks on end. No wonder she lives in California and never takes a vacation any more. She’s traumatized!’
‘I don’t think you’re being very nice,’ Gina snapped, annoyed with both of them now. ‘The cottage isn’t that bad, and I’m looking forward to seeing round the island.’
‘Not that bad? Have you even been in the bathroom?!’ Maddison protested.
‘Yeah, maybe you’ve got used to this kind of thing at your boarding school – but we still have standards,’ Paula said.
‘Standards!’ Gina spluttered.
‘Yeah, we like something a little more twenty-first century, or even twentieth century,’ Maddison added.
‘You mean you’re both totally spoiled and pampered princesses who can’t survive one night without a Jacuzzi and a pump-action shower. Babies!’ Gina declared. ‘Or should that be Barbies?!’
Oh! That sounded much angrier than she’d intended. But she was so annoyed with them. They’d all been looking forward to this trip for so long, and now it just seemed to be going horribly wrong.
‘I’m going to bed,’ Maddison said, standing up and crossing her arms huffily.
‘Me too.’ Paula joined her, so now both friends were standing there glaring at her.
‘Fine!’ Gina said.
They carried on looking at her; maybe they thought she should apologize.
‘I’m not going to say sorry,’ Gina blurted out. ‘You’re being babies. The girls in my dorm wouldn’t be sitting around complaining about not being in a five-star hotel. They would have lit the fire, opened up the Monopoly and tried to see the funny side!’
‘Oh, really!’ Paula exclaimed. ‘Well, maybe your new friends should have come on your island trip with you instead of us.’
‘Maybe!’ Gina replied. ‘All you’ve done is whine ever since we got here: Oooh it’s so cold, oooh it’s so dark, oooh my hair, oooh my shoes, oooh why can’t we be in the luxury hotel with satellite TV and wi-fi? It’s supposed to be travel. An adventure!’ she told them. ‘You two are about as adventurous as a couple of old ladies!’
Now Gina had done it.
Now both Paula and Maddison were properly angry with her.
‘Scotland stinks, Gina. Get used to it!’ Paula retorted. ‘Like Maddison said, it’s like travelling back in time. To the dark ages! I wish we’d never bothered to come.’
‘We gave up a really good Halloween party for this trip!’ Maddison added.
‘And I’m kind of wondering why! Do you even want us here?’ Paula asked.
‘Yeah, it’s pretty obvious we’re your second-best friends now anyway,’ Maddison threw in. ‘I don’t know why you asked us over.’
Gina sat bolt upright and might have said
a whole load of other things she would later regret, but then they all heard Lorelei stepping onto the front porch.
‘C’mon, Maddison, there’s nothing to do here,’ Paula snapped.
And with that, the pair stalked off into the tiny bedroom they were sharing.
Gina could feel her cheeks burning with anger and embarrassment, but she didn’t say anything to stop her friends leaving the room. Right now, she meant every single word she’d said. Right now, she just felt so angry and upset and disappointed that she couldn’t possibly have thought of anything nice to say to them.
She had been looking forward to this holiday too. She’d had all sorts of lovely pictures in her mind of what they would do on the island: of them all exploring together – maybe hiring a boat; of her mom taking her to all the places she used to visit as a child. She’d thought it would be so much fun. But it was all going wrong.
Before Lorelei could even make it in through the door, Gina left the sitting room and went into the bedroom she was sharing with her mom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she felt tears well up in the back of her throat, but she struggled to choke them back down.
The front door scraped open and Lorelei called out, ‘Hellooo, where is everyone?’
Then her face appeared at the bedroom door. ‘It’s a bit early for bed, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘Is it?’ Gina huffed. ‘There’s nothing else to do here, is there? Paula and Maddison have gone to bed and you don’t want to talk to me,’ she accused her mother. ‘You’re too busy trying to talk to someone in your office on the other side of the world!’
Chapter Ten
‘SHHHH! I THINK I can hear something . . .’
Amy, crouching down, knee-deep in straw, thought this had to be the most ridiculous thing she’d ever done. She was only here because of Finn. This was his big idea, his clever trick, and although she didn’t entirely approve of it, she couldn’t think of anything she’d rather be doing right now than crouching, knee-deep in straw, beside him.
Whenever Finn’s elbow brushed against hers, even through the layers of jumpers and jackets, she felt a thrill. More than anything else, she wanted his face, which she was studying so carefully in profile, to turn towards her, smile and – her stomach clenched at the thought – lean down towards hers. Amy knew for certain that she wanted Finn to kiss her, and somehow, before half term was over, she was sure it was going to happen. She’d make sure it happened.
Even if she had to spend the rest of her time here crouching down in straw in the darkness at the back of Ginger’s stable.
‘This will be OK?’ Amy had asked anxiously as Finn had opened the stable door and given Ginger a friendly pat.
‘Fine,’ Finn had assured her. ‘Ginger’s more like the family pet than a horse. We’ve had him since he was a foal . . . Good boy.’ He walked casually past the huge animal, Amy following nervously behind him.
Once Finn and Amy were at the back of the stable, Ginger seemed to forget all about them and went on tugging hay out of his net with great grinding teeth.
As soon as Amy was crouched down beside Finn, she thought Ginger’s behind looked very big and very strong.
‘Couldn’t he just kick us – without even meaning to?’ she asked Finn.
‘Nah, he wouldn’t,’ Finn promised her. ‘This is going to be hilarious,’ he added. ‘Shhhhh! I think I can hear something . . .’
Amy hunkered down in the darkness, strained her ears and waited.
Now, sure enough, she could hear footsteps. Niffy hadn’t taken long to get here. As soon as she’d left the dining room with the words, ‘I’m going to change into my old clothes and settle Ginger down for the night,’ Finn and Amy had jumped into action.
Without giving Mr and Mrs N-B much explanation, they’d fled out of the dining room too, grabbed jackets and wellies and raced down to the stable to get here ahead of Niffy.
‘Hello, my darling, how are you doing?’ Niffy’s voice drifted across to them. ‘Have you had a lovely supper . . . have you? Where’s my clever, handsome boy then . . .’
Niffy approached her beloved horse. She stroked his head, then pulled him in close and nuzzled her head into his neck.
‘Hello, my lovely boy,’ she said, the words a little muffled against his coat. ‘Who’s my good boy, then? Is it you?’
Then to Amy’s surprise, Finn uttered a surprisingly convincing ‘Naaaaaaahay,’ in reply to Niffy’s question.
‘Yes, you are – yes, you’re my darling . . .’ Niffy said, her head still buried in the horse’s neck, delighted to have got a response from him.
Amy looked at Finn and saw that his face was tight with suppressed laughter. Now she wanted to laugh too. She had no idea where this was going, but she had a suspicion that however it ended, Niffy was going to be absolutely furious with them for spying on her like this.
‘I love you, Ginger,’ Niffy went on, her deep affection for her horse spilling out, ‘and you love me too, don’t you?’
The horse had his nose against Niffy’s ear and seemed to be snorting into it.
‘Yeeeeeeeeeah,’ Finn risked, sounding more boy than horse this time.
For a moment Niffy seemed to freeze.
The horse’s nose stayed at her ear and she didn’t move at all – perhaps wondering for a split second what on earth she’d heard.
Then she raised her head and looked around. ‘Finn?’ she asked sharply. ‘Finn? Are you in here?’
At this, Finn couldn’t contain himself any longer. He exploded in a loud volley of laughter.
Both Niffy and Ginger started and looked in surprise towards the back of the stable.
Amy stood up, anxious to get out as quickly as possible. She’d had quite enough of the smelly straw and the big horse bottom.
‘Sorry . . . we shouldn’t have done that . . .’ she began, seeing that her friend was absolutely furious.
‘Amy?!’ Niffy managed to blurt out, feeling a surge of anger, hurt and betrayal flooding through her.
They’d been listening! They’d been spying on her and Ginger . . . She would never have spoken to her horse if she’d known they were listening. What she said to Ginger was totally, totally private. This was just so unbelievably rude!
Finn would never have done this without Amy to show off to . . . Amy would never have thought of this without Finn! What was going on with those two?
Then the horrible realization dawned: Amy and Finn were trying to impress each other, and Niffy was their piggy in the middle.
Without another word, she turned on her heel and ran out of the stable.
Chapter Eleven
‘AUNTIE, DO YOU ever use your computer?’ Min was faced with the prospect of another day without any word from Greg, the boy she was ever so slightly interested in . . . Well, that was all she was admitting to her friends anyway.
For some reason best known to Min and Greg’s parents, neither of them had a mobile phone, so their friendship relied completely on the Internet.
Well, in fact, until the night of the Halloween party, their friendship had been an exclusively cyberspace one. They’d met through an on-line physics club. But now that Min had met Greg in the flesh and found him just as nice and cute-looking in person as he was on-line, she wanted to email him all the time, and the prospect of a half-term without a single sentence from him was unbearable.
‘Not much,’ Min’s auntie replied.
‘But you have a dial-up modem?’ Min asked, looking at the hulk of grey computer parked in a messy corner of the room; books and papers were piled on top of its keyboard.
‘Huh?’ Auntie called over her shoulder from the kitchen.
‘The Internet?’
‘Oh yes . . . the Internet, yes – but I don’t use it much.’
Min could see that. She wondered how slow this old dinosaur could be. Surely if she was patient, she could dial up a connection and then eventually connect to her googlemail account. Then she could email Greg and, even better, download w
hatever email he might have sent her over the past couple of days. She’d only had one tiny, brief message from him since the party and she was desperate to hear more.
‘Can I switch it on?’ Min asked her aunt.
‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘but not for long. I don’t like it to block up the phone line.’ Auntie was still in the kitchen. She was always in the kitchen. No matter how much Min offered to help, the kitchen work was never done, according to her aunt. There was yet another huge meal to cook for her enormous bear of a husband, and yet another huge meal to clean up and clear away. So it went on from breakfast, through mid-morning snack, lunch and afternoon snack, to dinner. It was very hard to get Auntie out of the house for even half an hour before she had to get back to her cooking schedule.
Eagerly Min cleared the books, papers and other stuff off the keyboard and dusted the computer screen. She was good with computers – no surprise there: she was pretty good at everything, apart from maybe French and certain bits of the biology syllabus. But computers? Easy.
Ducking down under the desk, she plugged in the machine and made sure all the relevant leads, wires and cables were connected. Then she switched it on. It hummed, clanked and bleeped into life.
Several agonizingly slow minutes later, a very simple blue screen with just a few icons was staring back at her. She clicked on the Internet connection, and the whirring and high-pitched bleeping that took her way back to the days before broadband started up.
This was going to take some time, she reminded herself. Maybe she should go and make some tea while the computer came slowly back to life.
Coming back over to the desk with her mug, Min saw the Internet page finally up and ready, and clicked on it to begin. The screen promptly froze and a red-bordered message began to flash up in front of her.
‘How long has it been since you had the computer on?’ she asked her aunt.
‘Oh, I’m not sure . . . maybe Christmas?’
Last Christmas! It was nearly this Christmas!
According to the message, 11,598 spyware updates and 8,560 virus scans were waiting.
