‘I’m not trying to make you feel better,’ she says. ‘Just get a grip. Sort your life out!’
I cannot think of one single polite answer to that, so I turn round and stalk off along the street, leaving her behind.
Ellie Powell is everything I despise in a girl. She seems harmless enough, but that chirpy, enthusiastic exterior hides a deeply irritating personality; Ellie is like a bouncy puppy that never gives up, even when all the signs are clear that nobody wants them around. As a last resort, she will turn her dark green eyes on you, piercing, pleading, and you’ll end up feeling like you’re somehow the one in the wrong.
‘We could go out sometime,’ Ellie said to me once, a while ago. ‘You and me, we’d be good together.’
She’s wrong about that, of course. We’d be bad together; all kinds of bad.
My girlfriend, Skye Tanberry, is nothing like Ellie. She’s sweet, kind, daydreamy, a country girl who dresses in vintage cool. She has blonde ringlet-waves and blue-grey eyes a boy could drown in. Skye is my perfect match in every way, except for one thing: she lives in Somerset and I live in London.
Still, we have managed OK since last year with scribbled postcards, text messages, SpiderWeb posts and occasional phone calls. On Valentine’s Day, we had a day out at the ballet in Covent Garden, although I admit my mate Alfie (one of the kids I met in Somerset) was the mastermind behind that. He’s dating Skye’s twin sister, and he set up the whole thing as a joint Valentine’s/birthday treat.
I am not the kind of boy who is good at grand gestures, but I do my best. Sometimes, alas, it’s not good enough.
I am halfway along the street by the time Ellie catches up with me. She’s ditched her smoothie and her cheeks are pink from running, her chestnut hair mussed up. I want to stretch out a hand to smooth it down, but I don’t. Ellie’s eyes are still filled with exasperation, challenge, fire.
‘Don’t give me a hard time, Ellie,’ I tell her. ‘I am not in the mood for this right now, OK?’
She pulls her jacket round her in the fading light.
‘What are you in the mood for, Jamie Finch?’ she asks.
I hate myself, I really do, but I can’t seem to help it. I snake an arm round her waist and pull her close, and then we’re kissing, and her lips taste of mango smoothie and danger, and I don’t even care.
2
I walk Ellie home and we don’t talk about how impossible it all is; we don’t talk about anything at all. We just walk slowly through the London streets and kiss for one last time in a pool of lamplight at the end of her street, and I wonder how anything so wrong can possibly feel so right.
It does, though. When I kiss Ellie Powell, the rest of the world disappears and nothing matters at all except that she’s here, now, in my arms.
And then we say goodnight and I walk home, and the guilt floods in again, the raincloud hovering right at my shoulder, ready to pour its scorn all over me.
Guilt? Scorn? That’s the very least I deserve.
I have a girlfriend already, the perfect girlfriend. And I also have Ellie.
Long-distance romance … it’s not easy, obviously. I remember my mates joking about it right at the start, telling me I could have the best of both worlds; an adoring girlfriend in Somerset and a free run here in London to flirt with anyone I please. Or more than flirt, in fact.
I told them that wasn’t my style, but maybe they’d been right all along.
‘A girlfriend in Somerset?’ Ellie huffed when I first told her about Skye. ‘That’s hundreds of miles away. Bad planning, Jamie.’
‘Bad planning indeed,’ I agreed.
‘Most people let go of holiday romances,’ she pointed out. ‘They’re not supposed to be forever.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I told her.
Ellie had laughed and rolled her eyes, and I knew that she did understand, better than I did. Things were over with Skye, whether I wanted to admit it or not.
To be honest, I’d known things were cooling off even before Alfie’s London trip, way before I’d even met Ellie. I’d been getting lazy, calling less, forgetting to reply to texts. The shine had gone off it all, but even so, that didn’t seem like a reason to finish. We’d planned for me to head down to Somerset for a week in the holidays; I was pretty sure some sunshine and a beach party or two would revive the flagging romance.
Then I met Ellie.
She joined my drama group after Easter, and right away her personality started to grate on me. She tried too hard, caused too much trouble, said what she thought even if it wasn’t what people wanted to hear. I thought she was annoying. Then one day in July, Fitz put us on set-painting duty, finishing a piece of scenery that was meant to represent a forested hillside, and I was stuck with her. Ellie started telling me that I wasn’t quite convincing enough when I was acting, as if I was always aware that there was someone watching, an invisible audience I wanted to impress.
Was that a bad thing? The barb stung.
‘You never quite get into character because you’re always hamming it up, flashing a cheesy grin at your adoring fans,’ she said. ‘You need to forget who’s watching and lose yourself in the role.’
‘Says who?’ I’d argued. ‘Fitz doesn’t have a problem with the way I work, and he’s the expert, right?’
‘Just trying to help,’ Ellie shrugged.
‘Well, don’t,’ I snapped.
‘You’re too theatrical,’ she said, as though she was doing me a favour. ‘Too full of fire and passion.’
And then she kissed me, without warning, and I was full of fire and passion then all right. By the time we managed to pull apart, she had green paint smudged across her nose and her dark hair was all mussed up and I couldn’t find the words to be angry. I was already lost.
I’ve been lost ever since, and my life has gone from sunshiny to dark. I’m stuck in the shadows, wandering around with no map.
I didn’t think the thing with Ellie would last, but it would have felt all wrong turning up at Tanglewood when I was sort of seeing someone in London. I took a summer job as a runner for the TV company Mum works for and told Skye I just couldn’t get away; the coward’s way out. I should have finished things there and then, but admitting you’re a two-timing worm is not easy. I didn’t see myself that way, and I didn’t want to hurt Skye over something I was pretty sure was no more than a fling.
Besides, Skye had a lot on her plate; her twin sister Summer is fighting an eating disorder, her big sister Honey lurches from one disaster to the next, and her mum and stepdad are working seven-day weeks to try to make a go of their luxury chocolate business and keep the whole family afloat. I rang a few times over the summer with the idea of breaking up, but the timing was never right. Summer was going through a wobbly patch, or Honey was in a major meltdown, or everyone was working flat out in the chocolate workshop on some important order.
It was all kind of stressful. How could I add to Skye’s troubles by ditching her long distance? I decided to wait until I could do it face to face, and that’s a problem because it could be ages before I get to see her again. I will be patient. I have to wait for the right moment, tread carefully, find the right words. If there are any ‘right words’ for a thing like that, which I doubt.
‘So, Jamie Finch, tell me,’ Ellie asked again, back at the start. ‘If things are so serious with Skye, how come you’re hanging out with me?’
I had no answer for that. No answer at all.
At least I can use my acting skills to pretend everything’s fine. I smile and laugh and joke around with my friends, and nobody knows what’s going through my mind. Nobody knows what a bad
person I am, what a cheat, a loser. Not Mum, not Dad, definitely not Talia or Lara. My friends wouldn’t understand; they’d just tease me and tell me I’m a player when actually I am a lowlife worm.
I am a better actor than Fitz thinks, though, because nobody watching Ellie and me together would ever imagine we were seeing each other. They might even think we hated each other, based on the way we act.
I actually do hate Ellie a lot of the time, but not nearly as much as I hate myself.
3
On Sunday morning I check my SpiderWeb page to find that Alfie has posted a photo of a beach party at Tanglewood to my wall with the status, ‘Wish you were here.’ I look at the photo, at Skye’s laughing face beneath a wide-brimmed hat, at Summer and Alfie holding hands, at Coco and Honey and a bunch of tanned village kids toasting marshmallows in the firelight, and I do wish I was there because in that picture everything seems so simple, so easy, so cool.
Downstairs, the house fills up with people. This often happens on a Sunday; Mum works hard right through the week, but on Sundays she loves to have friends over. Her Sunday lunch ‘open house’ afternoons are legendary.
My sisters are here, along with their boyfriends, Tim and Kai. There’s one of Mum’s researcher friends from work, Peter, plus a presenter, Adele; a cameraman, Mozz; and Mum’s friend Della, a single mum from along the road, with her two kids, Lola and Kenzie. The kids are at the kitchen table making Play-Doh monsters and everyone else is preparing food or reading newspapers, sipping white wine and talking about a million things. There seems to be an uprising in South America and a war in the Middle East; the government have done something else ridiculous and wicked, and my sisters are debating whether it is possible to make vegan tiramisu or whether Tim, the vegan boyfriend, will be OK with a dish of fruit salad instead.
‘There you are, Jamie,’ Mum says, ruffling my hair in a way that would infuriate me if anyone else dared to try it. From Mum, though, it’s OK, and I grin and chase the Play-Doh kids out for a quick ball game in the back garden so I can start setting the table for twelve people. A clean tablecloth, cutlery, glasses, mismatched vintage china, a few jugs of iced water … I can negotiate the Sunday lunch rules in my sleep.
Moments later, my sisters are setting out steaming dishes of stuffed peppers, risotto, some sort of baked fish and a vat of simple pasta and pesto all along the centre of the table. Everybody sits down and the process of serving the food begins. After an initial lull of contented silence, the chat begins again; happy chat, the kind that goes with good food and good friends and lazy Sunday afternoons with the French windows open and a gentle autumn breeze wafting in.
I am half listening as Tim explains why a vegan diet is the way of the future when I hear Mum mention Charlotte Tanberry, Skye’s mother. I snap to attention.
‘They really would be perfect for the show, Peter,’ she says. ‘I’ll give Charlotte a call in the morning and see what she says, but I think she and Paddy would be totally up for it; they have a business to build and this could be just the boost they’re looking for. They really are the nicest people, and they have five gorgeous daughters between them. Add a big Victorian country house beside the sea into the mix and you’ve got TV gold …’
‘We’d need a bit of drama,’ Peter says. ‘A story with no ups and downs is no story at all.’
Mum laughs. ‘Trust me, the Tanberry-Costello family have more ups and downs than a roller coaster,’ she says. ‘They’ve had a bit of a rough time of it, to be honest … One daughter has an eating disorder, and the eldest has a few behavioural issues … though I’m not sure they’d actually want any of that made public. Let’s just say that there’s never a dull moment at Tanglewood. The girls are lovely … four blonde beauties and one stunning half-Japanese girl. And their friends and boyfriends would be great to include too … There’s a boy called Shay, a singer-songwriter … we could work him into it somehow …’
‘Mum?’ I interrupt. ‘What are you talking about? What do Skye’s family have to do with anything?’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘Peter and Adele want to pitch a new reality TV show – something upbeat and inspirational – about a family business. Peter was thinking a restaurant or a B&B might make good entertainment, but I thought of Charlotte and Paddy right away. Behind the scenes at the chocolate factory …’
‘I’d like to meet them,’ Adele says. ‘They sound amazing. The chocolate strand of the story combined with the whole dysfunctional family aspect …’
My fork clatters down on to the tablecloth.
‘Skye’s family are not dysfunctional!’ I protest. ‘Mum!’
‘No, of course not!’ Mum agrees. ‘Adele didn’t mean that … They’re just … very modern. With all the issues and worries of a modern family, and of course viewers will love that. They’d really empathize and connect. But don’t worry, Jamie. I would never ask Charlotte and Paddy to do something they’re not totally comfortable with!’
Adele holds up her hands in surrender. ‘My fault,’ she says. ‘I didn’t choose the best words there, but your mum is right – we need a family who would be good value TV-wise. The plan is not to show them in a bad light, nor to exploit them in any way … We just want to chart their challenges and cheer them on in their triumphs. It would be an uplifting, feel-good series.’
‘You need a few bumps in the road with any story before you get to the happy ending,’ Peter chips in. ‘That’s how reality TV works.’
I frown, uncertain. I’ve seen from my summer job at the TV studios that reality TV footage can be edited in any way you want. The same pieces of film can be chopped and changed, edited to look positive or negative, dramatic or serene. Still, I trust Mum’s judgement. I know she wouldn’t suggest Skye’s family for the show unless she thought it would help them in some way, or that at least they might enjoy it.
‘Do you think they’ll be interested?’Adele asks, a glint in her eye.
Mum shrugs and starts to clear the table, bringing out the puddings.
‘Like I said, I’ll call in the morning,’ she says. ‘If they’re interested in hearing more, we can arrange a visit to Tanglewood so you can see what you all think, and answer any questions they might have.’
‘Somerset, didn’t you say?’ Peter muses. ‘Has to be worth a visit. It could be amazing, visually. And the family sound great … like you said, TV gold.’
Mum laughs. ‘You researchers … always looking for a free trip! Well, we’ll see what they say. Although if they are interested in finding out more, I bet I know someone who’d be up for a weekend trip to Tanglewood – hey, Jamie?’
I struggle to look careless and cool, but the two spots of colour that seep into my cheeks tell a very different story. A trip to Tanglewood? A chance to see Skye, to talk to her face to face? Isn’t that exactly what I’ve wanted all along?
My half-baked plans to finish things with Ellie are shelved instantly. Better to see Skye and tell her everything. Long-distance romance is seriously hard work … Skye’s own texts and messages have tailed off lately, so surely she’ll understand? I might not even have to tell her about Ellie …Perhaps I can just say things don’t seem to be working out, that we’re drifting apart?
‘Of course he’d like a weekend trip to Tanglewood,’ Talia tells the rest of the table. ‘To see the beautiful Skye! That’s his girlfriend, by the way. They met the last time Mum was down that way filming. Romantic, huh? Long-distance love still going strong over a year along the line … How’s that for your family-interest story, Adele?’
‘Awww,’ Peter says. ‘No wonder you’re looking out for them! Sweet! But don’t worry, we’d make sure it was all handled
with sensitivity …’
‘Right,’ Mozz agrees. ‘Any more of that tiramisu?’
Adele narrows her eyes, watching me carefully over the top of her wine glass. ‘You know, Jamie, there might even be a cameo part in the series for you,’ she says. ‘Teen lovers reunited! Great story. What do you think?’
I rest my head in my hands. ‘Perfect,’ I echo. ‘Just … perfect.’
4
Just as Mum predicted, Charlotte and Paddy say they’d like to hear more about the idea of a reality TV series based on their business. Who wouldn’t? Mum arranges that we’ll head down to Tanglewood next Saturday with Adele, Peter and Mozz and an armload of plans and proposals for the projected show.
‘It’s all at such an early stage, I’m sure Charlotte and Paddy can call the shots and tweak things to suit them,’ she says. ‘I’ll advise them to ask to be involved at every stage, to have the right to veto footage if they wish. It should be an amazing opportunity for the Chocolate Box business, Jamie.’
‘I guess,’ I say.
‘Are you nervous?’ Mum teases. ‘Seeing Skye again after all this time?’
‘Course not,’ I lie. ‘It’s no big deal.’
‘Charlotte says we can stay all weekend,’ she says, ‘It’ll give Peter and Mozz some time to check out the locations, and Adele can get to know everybody properly. You and Skye will have plenty of time to hang out. I know what you teenagers are like!’
‘Mum!’ I protest. ‘Don’t, OK?’
She just smiles as if she knows much better than me, as if she’s given me the perfect weekend on a platter instead of the biggest headache ever. I want time with Skye, sure, but I can’t help wondering how to finish things without wrecking the weekend for everyone. I punch out a brief text message to Skye, light and chirpy and cheery, but hinting that we must have a big catch-up chat.
Life is Sweet Page 14
