More Million Dollar Mates books
Million Dollar Mates
And, coming soon . . .
Catwalk Queen
Other series by Cathy Hopkins
Mates, Dates
Truth, Dare, Kiss or Promise
Cinnamon Girl
Zodiac Girls
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © 2011 Cathy Hopkins
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Cathy Hopkins to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Gray’s Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-84738-758-5
eBook ISBN: 978-1-84738-993-0
Typeset by M Rules
Printed and bound in Great Britain.
www.simonandschuster.co.uk
www.cathyhopkins.com
1
‘Are they always there, Jess?’ asked Meg as we approached Number 1, Porchester Park and saw a bunch of paparazzi gathered outside.
I was walking home from school with my friends, Pia, Meg and Flo. Pretty normal. Apart from the fact that home was the flashiest apartment block in town.
‘Not always,’ I replied. ‘It’s usually when they’ve got wind of a celebrity moving in or an A-lister guest visiting one of the residents. Last week, Will Smith was in town and he came to see Alisha’s dad.’
To my left, I noticed that Pia had whipped her make-up bag out of her rucksack and was busy applying brick-coloured lippie. Next to her, Flo had shaken her long blonde hair out of its ponytail. Both of them were probably hoping they’d get their photos taken. No chance, I thought as they struck a modellike pose – hand on hip, bottom out.
A moment later, when Pia saw that no-one was taking any notice, she crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out. I knew she was wasting her time trying to get their attention. I wasn’t even going to bother untying my hair, although it did look better loose around my shoulders. The paparazzi know who’s somebody and who’s nobody and four teenagers like Pia, Meg, Flo and me, in our black-and-white school uniforms and coats buttoned up against the bitter December wind, weren’t going to cut it, no matter what pose Flo struck or daft face Pia pulled.
‘Will Smith?’ said Flo. ‘Cool. Did you or Pia see him?’
Pia ran her fingers through her short dark hair to give it more height on top then checked the gathered journalists and photographers again to see if any of them had noticed her yet. They hadn’t.
‘No,’ she said. ‘We were at school. Hey, Jess, I reckon we should get in with the paparazzi and ask them to tip us off when they hear that someone fab is on their way.’
‘Yeah, right, like that’s going to happen,’ I said. ‘Anyway, you know we’re not meant to talk to them. Come on, let’s get inside. It’s freezing out here.’
Pia and I live at Porchester Park. Not in the posh bit where the rich people live, but in the staff area, which is to the side. My dad’s the general manager and Pia’s mum runs the spa. Both jobs come with a house, though they’re nothing fancy, just a bunch of new builds in a mews.
Flo gazed up at the tall apartment block and sighed. ‘You guys are so lucky to live here,’ she said, with a dreamy look in her big grey eyes. ‘The poshest, most amazing address in London with the most glamorous people in the world in and out the door every single day.’
Number 1, Porchester Park doesn’t look much from the outside: a tall heap of concrete and glass with an elegant forecourt – pretty much like any five star hotel or apartment block in the city. However, I’ve seen inside some of the apartments and know what treasures are hidden there: paintings worth millions, rare artefacts from all over the world, lavish marble interiors, gorgeous antiques from foreign palaces, designer kitchens that open out onto vast terraces, bathrooms as big as the whole ground floor of my house, enormous dressing rooms, even a security system designed by the SAS.
Most of the apartments have breathtaking views over London and, on the top floors, it feels like you’re up in the clouds. Some of the apartments are awesome, others I think are crass – like bling city – even so, all of them cost loads of money – one resident even has a room used exclusively for their staff to wrap presents! Another has a copy of one of the paintings from the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican on their ceiling. Dad has told me that the cheapest apartment went for twenty mill and the penthouses at the top as much as ninety.
Flo was right. It was the poshest address in London, no doubt about it, with residents made up of international celebrities, royalty, wealthy businessmen, their families and personal staff.
‘It’s not how you’d imagine,’ I said, ‘not for Pia and me anyway. It’s like living just on the edge of wonderland, isn’t it, P? We know that this incredible world exists a short distance away but you have to have a magic password to get in.’
‘That magic password being ker-ching: millions and trillions,’ Pia added. ‘Our ten quid pocket money isn’t quite in the same league.’
‘Understatement,’ I said.
‘It sounds like Narnia,’ said Flo. ‘Remember those books where the characters fall through the back of a wardrobe into a magic land?’
I laughed. ‘Yeah but the people living in the wonderland here are real, not fairies.’ It was typical of Flo to have thought of the Narnia books. She loved fantasy and romanticised any situation.
I had mixed feelings about the place. I’d been living at Porchester Park for a few months now and Pia had moved in a few weeks ago. My first weeks here were well mis. I’d had such great expectations of how it was going to be: how I’d be rocketed into a new life and be moving and grooving with the rich and famous. Ha ha. I’d soon found out that it wasn’t like that. It was one set of rules for them and another for us, all dictated by the American director, Mr Knight. For instance: staff and family members can’t use the spa, can’t talk to the paparazzi, can’t use the front entrance, can’t keep pets. For the first time in my life, I’d felt inferior, poor and out of place. It was weird. Stuff I’d never felt before. Confused.com, that was me. I’d wanted to leave after a few weeks and go back to my gran’s, which was safe and familiar, especially when I was told that I couldn’t keep my cat, Dave. That was the last straw. Luckily things changed. The lady running the spa quit and Pia’s mum was offered the job and the house that went with it. Hey presto, my best mate in the world was there with me. And I did a deal with a Japanese family in one of the apartments which made it possible to keep Dave. They wanted me to look after their cats when they were away – so, in return, I’d asked that they adopt Dave on paper to keep Um Big Boss Mr Knight happy, so he wouldn’t know Dave was a staff pet but he could still live with me. It felt like someone had waved a magic wand. Suddenly I didn’t feel so alone. Life at Porchester Park seemed do-able.
‘Why can’t you talk to them?’ asked Meg. I noticed that she hadn’t bothered to glam up for the photographers. Her attitude is – take me as I am. Lucky for her, she can get away with it. She’s pretty, with a heart-shaped face and layered shoulder-length blonde hair which looks highlighted even though it isn’t
. She looks good whatever she wears, even though she’s a tomboy at heart and not into fashion and girlie stuff like the rest of us.
‘Dad said I mustn’t. We mustn’t. None of the staff or their relatives can gab about what goes on. The residents want, insist on, privacy. They’d hate it if anyone let something slip about their lives.’
‘Sometimes the paparazzi offer loads of money,’ said Pia, ‘just to hear about what celebs eat for breakfast or what colour their bathroom is or even what’s in their rubbish. Henry told me he’d heard that one journalist regularly went through celebrities’ bins looking for details of their lifestyle.’
‘Ew, gross,’ said Flo.
Henry lives at Porchester Park too and has recently become Pia’s boyfriend, as in proper with regular dates and hanging out at each other’s houses. His dad looks after the fleet of fab cars in the underground car park and they also live in one of the staff houses. He and Pia made a cute couple. Henry’s dark and stocky with a square handsome face. Pia’s got dark hair too, but she’s small and pretty with a wide mouth that always seems to be smiling. They look good together, plus both of them are cheeky with a mad sense of humour.
It was still early days for them, though, as it was for me with the two boys I liked. Number one being JJ, who is Jefferson Lewis’s son, and number two, Tom, who is in the sixth form at my school. Tom and I had had a couple of kisses and he always flirted when he saw me so maybe it was time to take it further. Or was it? I liked JJ too. We’d only hung out a few times, no kisses yet but I sensed that he liked me. Two boys, both Hunky McDunky, and they were adding to my confused state of mind. Questions whirled around in my head. Which one? Were either of them even interested? How to read the signs they put out? Were they even signs they liked me – or just part of their natural charm? I didn’t know. I’d realised recently that I was rubbish at reading boys. They were an alien species with a language all of their own. I certainly wasn’t an expert, which is why I had come up with an ingenious plan to wise up. I was going to put it to the girls later and see what they thought . . .
At the front of Porchester Park, I noticed that the doorman, Yoram, had clocked us. He’s Israeli, an ex-soldier and not to be messed with. He’s not very friendly, unlike his counterpart, Didier, who works the other shifts and is a lovely, handsome French man. Didier is ex-army too but he’s charmant and treats me like I’m a person, not a speck of dirt to be brushed away. Yoram caught my eye, glanced over at the paparazzi, then back at me. He jerked his thumb in the direction of the staff entrance round the side then brushed an imaginary speck off his immaculate black suit. I felt he was saying that I was that speck, out of place. I got the message. Don’t hang around here, move on or else. Four girls looking like they’d just escaped from St Trinian’s probably didn’t give the right image for the front of the apartment block, where the usual people who came and went were dressed in Chanel, Armani, Prada or some other knobby designer, and were getting in and out of limos with blacked-out windows, rarely arriving on foot.
‘We’d better go inside,’ I said, ‘or He Who Must Be Obeyed will have us shot at dawn.’
Pia glanced over at Yoram. She gave him a cheeky grin and a thumbs-up. ‘All right, Yo man?’ she called. He glared back at her. ‘I’ll take that as a yes, then.’
She knew not to push it and linked arms with Flo and Meg, and together we trooped around to the side entrance. I took one last glance at the paparazzi. I felt sorry for them some days as they could be there for hours and on a day like this, they must be well freezing. Some of them knew my name but most days, they ignored me. Today, however, one of them, a short dark-haired woman with a square face, waved. Her name was Bridget O’Reilly. She’d tried to be all pally one evening last week when I was coming back from school. I didn’t buy it. Dad had warned me that some of them might try and act like my friend in order to get secrets out of me about Porchester Park. I’d decided that I’d say hi if any of them spoke to me but I wouldn’t give anything away.
As I waved back to Bridget, I noticed that there was someone at the back I hadn’t seen before. A young handsome man with dark hair was standing slightly apart from the rest of the group and when he saw me looking at him, he pulled up the collar on his mac and turned away.
‘Hey Pia,’ I said. ‘Have you seen that guy over there?’
By the time she turned to look, he’d disappeared.
‘Who? Where?’ she asked as she looked around.
‘Oh, just a journalist I haven’t seen before. Cuter than the rest,’ I replied.
Hmm, curious, I thought as we reached the side gate. He hardly looks old enough to be a journalist – maybe he’s a student on work experience or maybe . . . a stalker or kidnapper! But if so, who’s he after?
2
Once inside our house, I lifted Dave off the sofa where he’d been busy cleaning his black-and-white fur. I put out some food for him then filled a pan with milk and began to make hot chocolate. The room soon filled with the soft, sweet smell of cocoa.
Meg and Flo settled on stools at the breakfast bar and Pia draped herself on the sofa that Dave had vacated.
‘I wish our house was open plan like yours, Jess,’ said Meg. ‘It’s cool to have one big room where you can watch telly but then get a drink without going far.’
‘Has its down sides,’ I said. ‘I can’t get away from Dad and Charlie without going up to my room. And if I want a snack or a drink, they always ask me to make them one too, like I’m their personal slave. Plus Chaz makes rude comments if he sees me eating naughty stuff which is a cheek seeing as he eats rubbish non stop. It’s so not fair because he never gets fat.’
‘Neither do you,’ said Flo. ‘You’re a skinny minny.’
‘No, I’m not. I am so fat,’ I said and I made my stomach blow out so that I looked pregnant, which made them all fall about laughing.
‘Hey, what are those marks on the wall?’ asked Meg as she looked at two pencil dots to the left of the breakfast bar.
‘Our height. Charlie and I measure how tall we are,’ I said. ‘Mum used to do it regularly so she could see how fast we were growing and we decided to carry on the tradition. I was five foot nine and an eighth last time I did it.’
Meg hopped down from her stool. ‘Let’s do us too,’ she said. ‘Would your dad mind?’
‘Course not,’ I said and I got a pencil out of the drawer and put it on the counter.
While I finished making our drinks, Flo marked everyone on the chart. She was tallest at five foot nine and a quarter, I was next and then Pia at five foot three and Meg at five foot two and a half.
‘Cool,’ said Meg as she noted her height. ‘I’ll do it every time I come here so I can see if I’m growing at all or am cursed to be a munchkin my whole life.’
Pia got up and began to do a sideways walk like a crab and sang the munchkin song from The Wizard of Oz in a strange voice as if she was being throttled. ‘Follow the yellow brick road, follow the yellow brick road, follow, follow, follow, follow, follow the yellow brick road . . .’ which made us all fall about laughing again.
Meg’s height was her hang up. She hated being titchy because she thought people might not take her seriously. She did martial arts in her spare time to make certain that didn’t happen.
Flo took her place back at the bar. ‘So, Jess. What’s this brilliant plan you wanted to tell us about?’
‘I’ll tell you in a mo. I promised we’d wait for Alisha to come down. I texted her that we’d be here about four so she should be on her way.’
‘We should put her on the height chart too,’ Flo suggested. ‘She’s probably about the same height as me, though, I reckon.’
Alisha is the daughter of Hollywood African-American actor and A-lister, Jefferson Lewis. She lives upstairs in one of the penthouse apartments. After a bumpy start, we’d become mates and I’d promised to let her know when the gang was over next. She is home-schooled and sorely misses her friends back in the States so is really chuffed that
we get on now and she has my crowd to hang out with as well as me.
The doorbell rang and Meg went to answer it. Alisha was here, bang on time. ‘Hey,’ she said, as she came over to the bar and dropped a pink box with a ribbon on the counter. ‘Choc chip cookies from Harrods. Major yum alert.’
‘Thanks, Alisha,’ I said and unwrapped the cookies and put them out on a plate for everyone. She brings something every time she comes – always in the same pretty bags or boxes, always tasting divine and probably costing more than a month of my pocket money. I feel bad sometimes because I can’t reciprocate – well, not unless I rob a bank. Instead I make her music CDs with our favourite tracks on so that I don’t seem like a taker but sometimes it’s hard having a pal in a pocket money bracket that’s way out of your league. As always, she looked immaculate in designer jeans that fitted perfectly and a blue silk top. I also noticed that she was carrying a camera.
‘Taking pics?’ I asked.
‘I’d like to take one of you guys,’ she said, ‘to send to my friends back home so that they don’t think I’ve moved to Planet Loser and have no-one to play with.’
‘But we’ve got our school uniforms on,’ Flo objected. ‘We look rubbish.’
Alisha rolled her eyes. ‘Would you like me to send for my stylist before we do the shots?’
‘Yes!’ chorused Pia and Flo.
‘Joking,’ said Alisha, although we all knew that the Lewis family had someone on call to come and tart them up anytime they wanted. Alisha had her long curly hair blow-dried regularly and her nails were always immaculately polished in dark purple. ‘You guys look great. Just smile. As the saying goes, of all the things you wear, your expression is the most important.’
‘Ew, vomit,’ said Pia. ‘Is that like, American New Age speak?’
Alisha laughed. ‘Yeah. And it’s true,’ she aimed her camera. ‘So smile, guys. Think bee-oo-tiful and you will be.’
Meg and Flo ducked down and Pia put her hand over her face.
Paparazzi Princess Page 1
