Golden Girl

by Cathy Hopkins

  ‘Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,’ chanted the voices on the CD, getting deeper ever second. ‘A-ommmmmmmmm.’

  ‘Is good for blood and circulation,’ said Sushila as she whacked my thighs. ‘Rosemary oil. Mmm. Breathe deep. Cleansing.’

  As they continued the four-handed massage, the oil was seeping onto the couch, making it more slippery. Pummel, whackity whack, slap. I tried to relax but I felt myself sliding back and forth along the couch in rhythm to their actions. Their movements became faster, so fast that I had to grip on to the side of the couch for dear life because the thrust behind the masseuses’ pummelling was causing me to slip forward precariously. Oh whoa. Any minute now, I’m going to go flying off this couch and into the garden, like a human cannonball. I dug my fingers into the couch and hung on.

  ‘Relax, relax,’ urged Sushila. ‘You very, very tense.’

  Yes, because I’m going to shoot off into the flowerbed at any moment, I thought.

  ‘I’m sliding off,’ I tried to protest.

  Usha nodded. ‘Oil. Is good, yes?’ she said and continued thwacking and slapping.

  When Usha asked me to turn over, I tried to sit up but slid back onto my back with a thwump, trying to hang on to my plastic nappy saturated in oil at the same time.

  As I tried to regain my balance and turn over with some dignity, I noticed we were not alone. Three female gardeners in orange saris were leaning on their rakes watching, like I was the afternoon’s entertainment. I probably was. One of them waved. ‘Nice treatment, yes?’

  ‘Nooo,’ I wanted to call back. And it wasn’t over yet. After they’d finished slapping me about, the two masseuses marched me over to an open air shower and began to wash me down with freezing cold water, like I was a dog who’d got muddy in the park. ‘No, no. I can do it myself, honestly,’ I begged as I gasped for breath at the shock of the water.

  ‘No, no, we do,’ said Usha. ‘You relax.’

  Are you mad? No way can I relax, I thought. I’m freezing. I’m naked. I’ve got goose-pimples. I’m dripping with rosemary oil and I smell like a leg of lamb. Add a few roast potatoes and I’d make the perfect Sunday lunch.

  They clearly didn’t sense my discomfort because they continued scrubbing at me with rough flannels. ‘Very good for skin,’ said Usha.

  I gave up and let them do their worst.

  After I’d got dressed, I met Mrs Lewis and Pia back in reception. They were both glowing with relaxation after their facials.

  ‘Good treatment?’ asked Mrs Lewis. ‘Revitalising?’

  ‘Um. It certainly woke me up,’ I said. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful by saying that I would have paid the masseuses to stop and the best part was the sublime relief I felt when the treatment was finally over.

  Mrs Lewis went to settle our bill and I was just about to tell Pia all about the massage when her phone rang.

  ‘Alisha,’ she mouthed as she took the call then put it on speaker so that I could hear as well.

  ‘Jaipur is awesome. There’s this place called the Red Fort here and it’s out of this world. We went up to it on elephants. It was so cool. Shame you missed it. Hey, are you all healed and holy now?’

  ‘Fab facial,’ said Pia. ‘Jess is being quiet about hers.’

  ‘Oily is a word I could use,’ I said.

  ‘What, like Spanish?’ she asked.

  ‘No, oily not olé.’

  Alisha laughed. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Is Shreya there with you?’ I asked.

  Alisha was quiet a beat too long before she replied and my heart sank. ‘Yes. And Kunal and Prasad. Um. About Shreya. JJ’s . . . Hey, just a sec, the guys are back. Er . . . listen, got to go. Meet us at the landing place for the Taj at . . . what time, JJ?’

  ‘Five,’ JJ’s voice called. ‘Are you talking to Pia?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I heard Alisha say.

  ‘Don’t let Jess know anything.’

  Alisha’s phone suddenly clicked off.

  Too late, I thought as Pia glanced at me in sympathy.

  ‘I’m not going,’ I said later that afternoon when a taxi boat arrived at the hotel to take us over the lake.

  Pia put her fingers into the L for loser sign and held it up to her forehead. ‘Planet Loserville, population: you. You can’t give in this easily. No. You have to dress in your most lovely clothes, get out there and show JJ what he’s missing.’

  I wish I had Pia’s attitude sometimes but I don’t and all I wanted to do was hide in our hotel room and listen to tragic songs about unrequited love while gazing wistfully out over the lake. I can do the Queen of Tragedy act well if I try. Like some of the sad ladies in the Pre-Raphaelite paintings I’ve seen in books at Gran’s – the Lady of Shalott or Ophelia. They adopt a noble, dignified pose that hides a broken heart – except in Ophelia’s case where it’s not so much dignified as floating dead in a river with soggy weeds in her hair. I’m not that much of a headcase. And maybe tragedy queen is more of an English thing to do on a grey day. Here, the late afternoon sun was sparkling on the lake and I’d already lost half the day being ill then tortured by sadistic masseuses. It seemed mad to be in such a glorious location and miss it because a boy was doing my head in.

  I’d found my phone when we got back to the hotel and there were three messages from JJ on it. The last one said he needed to talk to me about Shreya. Well, I didn’t want to talk to him about her. Pia was right. I shouldn’t give in to Loserville. Alisha had said that Kunal was with them. He liked me, he was fun and he wanted to see me. I’d show JJ that I didn’t need him. Course I didn’t. I’d be the new Jess Hall. Independent. Irresistible. More ass-kicking Lara Croft than droopy ‘I give up on life’ Ophelia.

  ‘OK, I’ll come with you. I am so over JJ. And if Kunal is into me, I might just have a holiday romance after all.’ I said the words but Pia didn’t look convinced.

  Neither was I.

  ‘There they are,’ said Pia, as our boat drew up at the jetty.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve seen them,’ I said, ‘though I can’t see JJ or Shreya.’ I’d spotted Alisha, Prasad and Kunal from halfway across the lake. Standing by the shore, they looked like they’d stepped out of the pages of Teen Vogue, effortlessly glamorous with their glossy black hair, pale linen clothes and designer shades. I fixed a smile on my face ready to be Miss Happy. I didn’t give a damn.

  Pia sighed. ‘Relax, Jess.’

  ‘I am. Can’t you see I’m smiling?’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ said Pia. ‘You look like the Joker in Batman. Be yourself. Relax.’

  ‘If another person tells me to relax today, I may have to kill them,’ I said and mock throttled her. ‘I’m trying to do what that happy guru man said. Make yourself smile and a real smile will follow. Act happy and you will be happy.’

  Pia grimaced. ‘I think his philosophy may be flawed,’ she said, ‘if you also feel the need to strangle your best mate.’

  ‘Sorry, P. I wish I had a fairy godmother who would make Shreya just go away and everything all right with JJ, but that’s not going to happen, is it? He’s not even here with the others.’

  ‘Pray to the great fairy godmother in the sky,’ said Pia. ‘Maybe she’ll rustle up a miracle. And why are we being so sexist? Why not a fairy godfather or godbrother even?’

  ‘True. Or a guardian angel. I used to think I had one when I was little and she’d watch over me at night with her wings spread out over the top of the bed. I used to move over to make room for her because I thought she might be tired standing there all night.’

  ‘Do you still believe in guardian angels?’

  I shook my head. ‘If I have one, these days she has a bad case of PMT.’

  Pia laughed. ‘Fairies and angels aside, let’s make the best of it. We’re in this great place, we look good and the night is young.’

  We did look good. Pia had on a bright turquoise halterneck dress that suited her perfectly and I’d made a big effort with my appearance and put on a sweet pink and primrose flor
al dress. I’d blowdried my hair until it shone. My plan was that JJ would be bowled over and as jealous as hell when he saw me flirting with Kunal.

  Small setback in the plan, though. No JJ.

  Alisha spotted our boat arriving and waved. I waved back and we soon joined her, Vanya and the handsome brothers on the shore.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ asked Kunal, his face full of concern.

  ‘Happy. Oh so happy,’ I said and gave him a big smile.

  He and Pia looked at me as if I was mad.

  ‘It’s the drugs they gave her,’ said Pia and pointed at her head as if to say I’d lost the plot. ‘Where are JJ and the teen queen?’

  Alisha looked down at her feet and wouldn’t look me in the eye. ‘Um. Not supposed to say.’ She glanced up, shrugged and put her hand on my arm. ‘You’ll find out later.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t she know? I’m sure Shreya said something about wanting to show him the Monsoon Palace,’ Kunal said, and pointed to a castle in the distance, on top of a hill on the other side of the lake.

  ‘A beautiful place to watch the sunset,’ said Prasad. ‘It was built to watch the monsoon clouds and the views from up there are spectacular.’

  ‘It looks so romantic,’ said Pia, then clapped her hand to her mouth. She realised that was the last thing I’d want to hear when JJ was off there with Shreya. ‘I mean, I thought he wanted us to meet him here.’

  ‘He did. He does,’ said Alisha.

  Prasad shook his head. ‘Sadly he hasn’t been getting much say about anything today. Shreya sure is one control freak. And JJ’s been acting oddly all day, don’t you think? All twitchy and looking at his watch the whole time.’

  Alisha pulled me aside. ‘Sorry, Jess, I tried to find out more but the only time I got him alone was for a few minutes, and when I asked him what was going on, he tapped his nose like he had some great secret. If Shreya is that secret, I am so going to kill him. But I wouldn’t be too worried. They will be chaperoned. Shreya always has to have someone with her, just like we do.’

  Prasad pointed back up to the mountains. ‘The palace was used as a hunting lodge by the royal family in the past.’

  ‘Perfect,’ I said. The perfect place for Shreya the man-hunter to take her latest prey.

  Kunal took my hand. ‘But tonight is your night, Jess. To make up for upset.’ He rubbed his stomach and flashed me a smile. ‘What would you like to do?’

  Push Shreya into the lake came to mind but I quickly deleted the thought. ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I, we, don’t know the area. Maybe you could tell us?’

  ‘Town is still very busy with all the visitors and holy men from the festival,’ said Prasad.

  ‘I’m guru-ed out,’ said Alisha. ‘So let’s pass on town.’

  Kunal shot his brother a look. ‘What do you girls do when you’re at home? To chill out?’

  ‘Have sleepovers. Watch DVDs. Get takeaways. The usual stuff,’ said Pia.

  ‘Sounds perfect,’ said Kunal. ‘Come back to our place and we’ll hang out. We can get something from the hotel kitchen then watch some TV.’

  Pia pulled me aside. ‘Hey, I’m starting to feel like a gooseberry here, you know. You and Kunal, Alisha and Prasad. Do you want me to split?’

  ‘No way. It’s not Kunal and me,’ I said. ‘He’s a laugh, yes, but I’m not going to get involved with him.’ I linked arms with her and pulled her back towards the others.

  We travelled in two taxis to the brothers’ family home in the grounds of their hotel on the other side of the lake. Vanya went in one with Prasad and Alisha, even though Alisha tried her hardest to persuade him that he wasn’t needed. He wasn’t having any of it and got into the back of the car and sat between her and Prasad. Poor Alisha. She’d finally met a boy she liked and now couldn’t get any time alone with him. I knew exactly how that felt. Pia, Kunal and I travelled in the other car with Kunal in the middle. His thigh pressed gently against mine as we set off. I moved away and squidged up towards the door and stared out of the window at the passing scenery. My plan had been to flirt with Kunal if JJ had been around to witness it, but in his absence I didn’t want Kunal getting any ideas.

  No doubt about it, the view was beautiful with the sun setting over the hills. Udaipur was the city of romance and JJ was up a mountain with another girl. We hadn’t had five minutes alone together since our first morning here and it was getting more and more unlikely that we ever would, now that Shreya had got her hooks into him.

  As we drove on, my thoughts turned to home. I wondered what Dad and Charlie were doing. I had so much to tell them and thought about how I’d describe it all. My Tweety Pie ringtone going off in the middle of the movie shoot, getting the Rajasthan rumbles, then being slapped about by the masseuses and almost flying off the couch into the flowerbeds. Mum would have laughed until she’d cried.

  Part of me still thinks about telling her stuff, even though it’s over a year since she died. Sometimes I catch myself reaching for my phone and thinking, must tell Mum that, or I wonder what Mum will say about this, then I have to remind myself that she isn’t here. I miss her so much and wished I could call her and tell her all about JJ and what was going on out here. She’d have known how best to deal with it. I remember what she said when she was told that her cancer was terminal and there was nothing more the doctors could do to save her; when she found out that her whole life was not working out as planned. ‘You have to be like a tree,’ she said, a few days after the news had sunk in, ‘it bends in the wind. Resist and stand too stiff and it will break you. The only way to be is to bend with it.’ She was still mobile then and started messing about, dancing like a tree in the kitchen, waving her arms around. She acted really daft sometimes.

  My eyes filled with sudden tears. Just when I think I’m over crying about her, the loss of her springs out like a tiger from the bushes and catches me by surprise. She’d been amazing right up until the end. She’d had so many plans. So many things she’d wanted to do but had to let them all go when her life took such an unexpected turn. ‘I’m going to make the most of every day, every hour,’ she said after she’d shed her angry tears, ‘and in that time, I’m going to do my best to find some happiness in this strange situation I’ve been thrust into.’

  That’s what I have to do, I decided, although what was happening to me wasn’t frightening or sad, like it had been for her. She wouldn’t want me to be miserable just because things weren’t going the way I wanted. Let go, I told myself. I’m still in this glorious location. Having the trip of a lifetime. I’m with mates. OK, so maybe things haven’t worked out with JJ but, just like Mum, I’m going to do my best to find some happiness here. Not the happy-clappy guru’s way by laughing like a mad girl, but by being grounded and making the best of things. And like a blooming tree, I’m going to bend in the wind of change.

  Prasad and Kunal lived with their parents in a spacious bungalow. Unlike the heritage hotels, this place looked like something from a futuristic movie, with spotless black marble floors in the high-ceilinged central reception area where the restaurants were and honey-coloured guest bungalows with verandas dotted around the grounds. We had a fun evening with the boys and they really made us laugh.

  ‘We’re going to have an Eeenglish,’ said Prasad, putting on a strong Indian accent.

  ‘Make mine really bland,’ said Kunal, joining in with his brother in his exaggerated accent. ‘Go strong on the ketchup. I can take it.’

  Pia and I cracked up. I knew the comedy sketch that they were quoting. I’d seen it on telly back home; it was a skit about a group of English-born Indians parodying us Brits when we order an Indian takeaway and compete as to who can take the spiciest.

  Our supper wasn’t bland at all. The hotel had an Italian chef so we had pasta. It was delicious and actually a nice change from the spicy food we’d been eating for the last few days.

  After supper, Kunal showed us his collection of DVDs. He had a wall full of English and American sitc
oms.

  ‘Fawlty Towers is my favourite. And my dad’s. He roars with laughter at Basil Fawlty,’ he said as we settled down to watch an episode.

  After the meal and DVD, Pia talked about Henry and how she missed him. Prasad insisted that she Skype him from the super-duper computer in their business centre as it had a huge screen, so they disappeared off with Alisha. Vanya had gone to have supper in the hotel restaurant so that left Kunal and me alone.

  Alone at last, but with the wrong boy, I thought, as he put on a DVD of The Office (another of his favourite English sitcoms). He sat back on the sofa and rolled up what I thought was a cigarette. As soon as he started smoking, I recognised the smell from the temple steps earlier in the week. Hashish. He inhaled deeply then offered me the joint.

  I shook my head.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Kunal. ‘I won’t tell.’

  ‘It’s not that. I don’t smoke dope.’

  ‘I thought everyone smoked over in English schools.’

  I laughed. ‘No way. I mean, yeah, some people do but not me. Thanks.’

  ‘Have you ever tried it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how do you know it’s not for you?’

  ‘I . . .’ I wasn’t sure what to say or how to handle the situation. He probably thought I was really uncool for refusing a smoke, but I knew people at school who smoked and didn’t like how it affected them. We called them dopeheads, because that’s exactly how they acted: dopey. A mate of Charlie’s had had to leave school and go to hospital for six months for mental health problems after smoking skunk. I wouldn’t be able to tell which was the lighter type of dope and which was skunk so I wasn’t going to risk it. ‘I prefer to be clear-headed,’ I said, ‘that’s all.’

  I’d made up my mind ages ago to be like that, after Josh Tyler had tried to pressurise me into smoking it at one party, making out that I was acting like a scared kid if I didn’t. I almost gave in because I didn’t want to appear childish. Pia and I had had a long talk about it at the time and decided that actually it was more immature to give in and do something we didn’t want to just because some people might say we were uncool.