Cathy Hopkins is the author of the incredibly successful Mates, Dates and Truth, Dare books, and has just started a fabulous new series called Cinnamon Girl. She lives in North London with her husband and three cats, Molly, Emmylou and Otis.
Cathy spends most of her time locked in a shed at the bottom of the garden pretending to write books but is actually in there listening to music, hippie dancing and talking to her friends on e-mail.
Occasionally she is joined by Molly, the cat who thinks she is a copy-editor and likes to walk all over the keyboard rewriting and deleting any words she doesn’t like.
Emmylou and Otis are new to the household. So far they are as insane as the older one. Their favourite game is to run from one side of the house to the other as fast as possible, then see if they can fly if they leap high enough off the furniture. This usually happens at three o’clock in the morning and they land on anyone who happens to be asleep at the time.
Apart from that, Cathy has joined the gym and spends more time than is good for her making up excuses as to why she hasn’t got time to go.
Cathy Hopkins
This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever tried to lose weight or isn’t happy with their shape. OK. So that’s just about everyone then. Thanks as always to Brenda Gardner, Jon Appleton, Melissa Patey and the team at Piccadilly Press. To Rosemary Bromley. And to Steve Lovering for his constant support, listening ear and magical ability to produce chocolate then make it disappear in seconds.
First published in Great Britain in 2005
by Piccadilly Press Ltd.,
5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR
www.piccadillypress.co.uk
This edition published 2007
Text copyright © Cathy Hopkins, 2005, 2007
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
The right of Cathy Hopkins to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978 1 85340 936 3 (trade paperback)
eBook ISBN: 978 1 84812 142 3
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Mixed Sources
Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD
Chapter 1
The Flabmeister
‘Mum,’ I called down the stairs. ‘My black jeans have shrunk in the wash.’
Mum appeared from the kitchen. ‘Are you sure? They’ve never done that before.’
‘Maybe you put them on too hot a wash,’ I said as I went back into my room. It was the sort of thing that Mum would do without our cleaner Mrs Dawson around to do things properly. Mum might be Mrs Not-a-hair-out-of-place in her appearance and likes the house to be immaculate but domestically, she’s a disaster. She’s been known to turn a whole load of white washing blue or pink by mistake and she did pile all my clothes into the machine in a hurry after I got back from our school trip yesterday, so that I’d have something to wear today. It’s a good job we don’t have pets in this house as they’d probably have been shoved in the wash by mistake as well.
I lay back on the bed to try once again to get the zipper up on my jeans. I held my breath and pulled . . . And held my breath and pulled again . . . but no way. The zipper was not going to budge. They had definitely shrunk. Poo, I thought. And these are my favourites too. My best jeans for making me look slimmer.
Just as I was rummaging around in my wardrobe trying to find something else to wear, Mum appeared at my door.
‘No luck?’ she asked when she saw the discarded jeans on the floor.
I shook my head. ‘Nope. Definitely shrunk.’
Mum shifted awkwardly about on her feet for a few moments. ‘Um, you don’t think that by any chance you might have put on a little weight while you were in Italy?’ she asked.
‘No way,’ I said. ‘With all that walking around Florence, I think I must have lost weight. I mean, it wasn’t as though we exactly pigged out.’ Except for the ice cream and pizza and pasta and . . . oh dear, better go and weigh myself, I thought as I headed for the bathroom.
I crossed my fingers and got on the scales.
‘No way,’ I gasped when I saw the reading. ‘No way. They have to be wrong.’
Mum was hovering outside the bathroom. ‘Well?’ she asked.
‘Scales are wrong,’ I said as I passed her on my way out. ‘Quite clearly nothing in this house is working properly.’
Mum smiled. ‘Don’t worry about it. You look fine.’
She doesn’t understand. How could she when she looks like a rake and can eat as much as she likes without putting on an ounce?
‘Do not,’ I said. ‘This is a major disaster.’
Back in my room, I took a long look at myself in the mirror. Back, front, sideways. Yuck. It’s too horrible. Flab, flab, flabby. Mum and Dad used to call me a skinny minnie. Hah! That’s a laugh. I might have been once but not any longer, I thought as I pulled in my tummy as far as it would go. The only celebrity I resemble now is Miss Piggy. Oh rat rot. I have definitely put on weight and I can’t blame the mirror.
I did a quick addition in my head. OK, so I put on five pounds over Christmas and New Year. But everyone puts on a few pounds over that time and it wasn’t exactly my fault – so many people bought me boxes of chocolate. It would have been impolite not to eat them. And with all the other stuff around at that time of year: pudding, mince pies, roast potatoes, turkey, stuffing . . . how can anyone not gain a little weight? But another three pounds at half-term on the school trip? How did that happen? Five and three. That’s eight pounds. Five pounds I could just about get away with but eight? Definitely not. In Italy, we only had a tiny mirror in the hotel bathroom so I hadn’t noticed the full extent of the damage but now I’m home, I can see properly. And it’s serious. That’s it. I’m never going out again. No way can I be seen in public looking like this. So no going out. Not until I’ve dropped it. No. I shall hide under the bed and starve until I’m fit to be seen again.
‘Izzie,’ Mum called. ‘Get a move on. I’m not going to wait all day for you and we’re late as it is.’
Knickers, I thought as I pulled on a pair of my old baggy jeans. Something has to change round here. And fast.
When I got to school, I waited at the gates for my mates, Nesta, TJ and Lucy. We’d all been on the school trip and I was dying to know what had happened after we’d got home last night. It had been amazing at the airport. We’d just come through the arrivals lounge when TJ spotted a boy with the most enormous bunch of roses at the end of the line of people awaiting passengers. It was Tony, Lucy’s ex (and Nesta’s brother). They’d had a big fall-out just before we’d left for Florence and the relationship was off but then, there he was with the flowers at the airport and he whizzed her away. It was so romantic.
I’d called Nesta for an update as soon as I got home last night and all she knew was that Tony was over at Lucy’s. And we’d all called Lucy but her mobile was switched off and when we tried the landline, her brother Lal said she was busy and wasn’t to be disturbed. Remind me to kill him when I see him, the rat, I thought. I bet he had his ear glued to her door all evening. He’s a nosy parker and is always butting into our business especially anything to do with our love lives. Probably because he doesn’t have one of his own. Anyway, by bedtime, the breaking news on the Tony and Lucy situation was they were still in ‘conference’. Probably a snog conference if you asked me. But talk about suspense. It was
killing me.
After a few moments, I saw Nesta’s dad’s BMW draw up by the bus stop. I had to smile when I saw her get out of the back. She was dressed in black with a black shawl tossed over her shoulders, her hair pulled back into a pony-tail and even though it was a dismal February day, she was still wearing the big Gucci sunglasses that she’d borrowed from her mum for the trip. With her exotic looks (half-Italian, half-Jamaican) she is stunning most of the time but today she looked every inch an Italian Vogue model. Typical Nesta. She likes to make an entrance, even if it’s only into school assembly.
‘Never forget, dahling,’ she drawled in a fake Italian accent as she came to join me and took off the glasses, ‘that wherever we are, we must never forget our sense of style.’
‘Yeah, right,’ I said as I saw her glance over my baggy outfit.
‘I thought we’d decided to go mega sophisticated after Italy,’ she said. ‘You decided to go back to the grunge look?’
‘Mum put my jeans in the wash and they shrunk and all my other stuff wasn’t dry . . .’
‘Rotten to be back, isn’t it?’ she interrupted as she leaned against the gate post and put her glasses back on.
‘Tell me about it,’ I said as I spotted TJ getting off the bus and waving at us.
‘Hey,’ she said as she came over. ‘Doesn’t this seem unreal? Like, straight back to the old routine. Already Italy seems like a dream.’
At least TJ was dressed normally. A week in the one of the most fashionable places in Europe and she still favoured jeans and a sweatshirt. But she looked so slim in them. Pig poo, I thought, I wonder if anyone has noticed that I have turned into the flabmeister.
Nesta wrapped her shawl tighter around herself. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘They should have given us another week off to adjust to being back in England. It feels so much colder here.’
‘So?’ I asked. ‘What’s the gossip on Lucy and Tony? Anyone seen her yet?’
Nesta rolled her eyes. ‘All I know is that Tony was over at her house all yesterday evening. He got home late and locked himself in his room and this morning, he’d already gone by the time I got up. You know what he’s like, not exactly Mr Communication when it comes to spilling the beans on his love life.’
‘All evening?’ I asked. ‘Sounds like it’s back on.’
‘Maybe,’ said TJ. ‘So I guess we’d better get ready for the roller coaster ride again.’
Tony and Lucy have been on off, on off for well over a year. The trouble usually starts when Tony starts pushing Lucy further than she wants to go in the bedroom department. That’s why they split up last time because she said, no way José and he said he couldn’t take it. Part of the problem is that he’s eighteen and she’s not even fifteen yet and she felt she wasn’t ready to sleep with him. They do make a strange-looking couple really because Tony’s tall and dark and Lucy is tiny (or petite as she likes to say) and looks like a blonde pixie. Just before we left for Florence, he decided that it wasn’t going to work but he obviously changed his mind while we were away.
As the bell for assembly rang, there was still no sign of Lucy and although we lingered as long as we could, in the end we had to go in or else risk a detention.
In double English that morning, Lucy still hadn’t shown so I reconciled myself with having to wait until break to phone her. Mr Johnson, our teacher (also fresh back from Florence) went for the easy option. Easy for him, anyway. He asked us to write an essay on ‘What I Did on my Holidays’. How predictable is that after a break? I thought. Then he fell asleep.
‘Frescoed out in Florence,’ I wrote as my title.
After twenty minutes, I had only written four lines.
Walked a lot.
Saw a load of churches and frescos.
Ate a lot. (Oh dear, but v. enjoyable at the time. Who was it said a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips? I’d like to meet them so I could kill them.)
Snogged my face off. (I met this fab boy called Jay on the plane going out. He was on a school trip too and his party was staying at the same hotel as us. At first I thought it was fate bringing us together then we found out that all the schools in North London always book into the same hotel because they get a cheap package deal. Flight and room for ze ’orrible Engleesh teenagers sort of thing. Anyway, his school isn’t too far from ours so . . . watch this space. I really hope to see him again.)
I rubbed out the last bit as I didn’t reckon Mr Johnson would want to read about my snog fests and tried to put my mind to my essay. It’s hard when you’ve had a week off. Like the battery in my brain had gone flat. I looked over at Nesta and TJ to see what they were up to. TJ was scribbling madly. Pff. She would be. She loved Florence and she loves history and English and all that sort of thing. She’s a brainbox really. Her e-mail address is babewithbrains as she’s quite a babe too, even though she doesn’t think so but boys always notice her. She has lovely thick long, dark hair and a full, wide mouth that could be used to advertise collegen injections. Only hers is au naturel.
Nesta looked as bored as I was. She made her eyes go cross, pulled a face and flicked her rubber at me with her ruler.
‘Ouch,’ I cried as it hit me on the side of the head and unfortunately Mr Johnson woke up.
‘Wh . . . where . . . what . . .?’ he stuttered as he came out of his reverie.
He clearly hadn’t quite landed either.
As soon as the bell went for break, we were out, down the corridor and I called Lucy double quick.
‘Hey, skiver,’ I said when I got through. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Mum thought I still looked peaky after my food poisoning in Florence so told me to take the day off.’
‘Pff,’ I said. ‘Lucky you. But I meant what’s happening happening?’
‘Oh . . . er . . . she said I have to drink lots of fluids . . .’
‘I mean with Tony?’
‘And rest . . .’
‘Oh. Ah . . . Is someone there? You can’t talk?’
‘No. I mean yes. My mum’s here playing Florence Nightingale. Hey, I wonder if she ever went to Florence. Florence Nightingale I mean. Then she’d have been Florence in Florence.’
‘Shut up, Lucy. You are clearly delirious. Shall we come over after school?’
‘Yeeesssss.’
After school, I dropped off my holiday film at the chemist’s and we all headed straight over to Lucy’s.
She was sitting up in bed, surrounded by glossy mags and was painting her nails turquoise blue. She looked absolutely fine. Better than fine. Rested and relaxed and she’d clearly had time to do her hair and now her nails. Huh. Some people.
‘Oh thank God you’re here,’ she said. ‘I’ve been so bored.’
‘Well, you look all right to me,’ said Nesta as she sat on the end of her bed. ‘So don’t expect any sympathy. You get a day off and the rest of us have had to suffer the tortures of double English and double maths, all on the same day. Life just isn’t fair sometimes.’
I laughed. Nesta would make a rotten nurse.
‘How are you?’ asked TJ who would make a good nurse as she’s always aware of others and what they’re going through.
‘OK, thanks,’ said Lucy. ‘But I did feel a bit queasy this morning. Honestly.’
‘Yeah right,’ said Nesta. ‘So? Spill. What’s going on with you and my ratfink brother?’
‘Close the door,’ said Lucy.
TJ quickly did as she asked and we all looked at Lucy in anticipation.
‘So?’ repeated Nesta.
‘Nothing,’ said Lucy.
‘Nothing?’ asked Nesta. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I told him I wasn’t going back with him. I mean, one bunch of flowers and I’m supposed to fall at his feet. Give me a break.’
‘Wow,’ said TJ. ‘I would have. I thought it was so romantic.’
‘Yeah, but it doesn’t really change things,’ said Lucy.
‘So why was he there?’ asked TJ. ‘Avec les fl
eurs?’
‘He said he’d done a lot of thinking while I was away and he’d realised that he’d rather be with me and not have sex than be with someone he doesn’t really care about and do it.’
‘Good for him,’ I said. ‘He really, really does like you, doesn’t he?’
‘And I like him,’ said Lucy. ‘That will never change. But I’m not going back to where we were before. I mean, get real. How long before he gets restless and starts with the wandering hands again? A month? A week?’
‘A day, knowing my brother,’ said Nesta. ‘No, an hour.’
‘Exactly,’ said Lucy.
‘So what now?’ asked TJ.
‘We move on,’ said Lucy. ‘Florence really helped me do that. I told him that I’m not going back.’
‘How did he take it?’ I asked.
Lucy grinned. ‘Said he’s not going to give up.’
Nesta sighed and flopped back on the bed. ‘Oh, here we go again.’
‘No, really,’ said Lucy. ‘I can be quite stubborn when I want to be. I really mean it. And anyway, he’ll be going to university in September so we’d probably break up then anyway.’
‘But that’s ages away,’ I said. ‘Almost seven months.’
‘So?’ said Lucy. ‘If we got back together, can you imagine? I’d spend seven months dreading September so I’m moving on now.’
Nesta sat up again. ‘OK. Good. You move on. We all move on. A new chapter in all our books. So let’s review the situation.’ She looked over at me. ‘Miss Foster, take a note.’
I poised myself with an imaginary pad and pen in secretary mode, ready for her plan. Nesta’s big on plans and big on getting everyone to join in with them.
‘OK,’ said Nesta. ‘Lucy. Free. Find new boy.’
‘Er, not necessarily,’ said Lucy.
‘Miss Foster, scratch that memo,’ said Nesta. ‘Lucy. Free. No boy.’
‘Not necessarily that, either. I want to stay open.’
Nesta sighed. ‘OK. Lucy. Confused as always. Moving on. TJ. You going to see that Liam guy you met on holiday again?’
Mates, Dates and Chocolate Cheats Page 1
