by Carmen Reid
It landed right in Niffy’s lap.
Furious, she stood up, scooped up two handfuls of the pink sponge cake and threw them at Charlie.
Niffy was a champion sportswoman, so one of her shots landed bang on his nose, the other smacked him in the chest. Meanwhile, the cake slice Amy had launched veered off course and hit Charlie’s friend on the shoulder of the smart jacket he was wearing.
‘Stop! Stop it!’ Gina protested, but now a full-scale food fight was erupting.
Hands were tearing at the cake, sponge and icing was flying. There was a scream as a girl on the next-door table was hit by a stray sticky pink bullet.
The guy sitting with her stood up and demanded loudly: ‘Hey! Look what you’ve done.’
Blobs of cake continued to fly around table eleven. A couple who’d brought their baby to sleep through their romantic coffee and cake moment were horrified when a glob of icing hit his car seat just centimetres from his tiny face.
Gina was screaming at the four to stop. Everyone close to the table was calling for a halt. The whole café was aware of the chaos going on. Even Greg and Min were interrupted and looked over in concern. But the fight didn’t stop until Dermot, closely followed by his beetroot-faced dad, marched over.
‘Get out!’ Dermot yelled, taking a hold of the back of Charlie’s jacket. ‘Get out and don’t ever come back!’
He pushed Charlie in the direction of the door and glared at the other boys with him.
Charlie glared back, his lips pulled into a tight line.
He scooped off the cake plastered to his face and flicked it disdainfully onto the floor.
‘OUT!’ Dermot’s dad repeated furiously. The entire café had come to a standstill. Everyone was staring at the cake criminals in silence. The cosy Valentine’s atmosphere was well and truly shattered.
The three boys began to head for the door as the girls sat meekly back down in their seats.
‘Sorry . . .’ Gina began. ‘We’ll help you clean up. I’m so sorry,’ she repeated.
‘Did you not hear what I said?’ Dermot’s livid, red-faced dad asked. ‘GET OUT!’
For a moment the girls just stared in horror. But Dermot’s dad did not exactly look like he was in the mood for a debate.
Quickly Amy, Niffy and Gina snatched up their bags and began to follow Charlie and his friends out.
Gina looked beseechingly at Dermot. Couldn’t he step in? Couldn’t he save them from this humiliation?
Dermot just glared furiously back.
‘Guys?!’
As Gina, Niffy and Amy began to walk away from the café, following Charlie and co down the street, they heard Min’s voice calling after them.
‘Guys? Where are you going?’ Min asked as her friends turned to her.
‘Oh, Min, sorry!’ Amy apologized. ‘With all that drama up there, we forgot about you.’
‘You got kicked out of Dermot’s café!’ Min stated the obvious, but it was just so shocking that she had to say it out loud.
‘Yeah,’ Gina said sadly.
‘Bit tricky . . . with you on your date,’ Niffy pointed out.
‘Where are you going?’ Min asked.
Charlie heard this and told her: ‘Victoria Street wine bar, it’s just round the corner. Are you going to come too?’
‘No,’ Min replied. She didn’t like Charlie. He’d once tried to snog her when she hadn’t wanted him to at all.
‘We’ll meet you outside the café in an hour,’ Amy suggested.
The girls all had to travel back to the boarding house together that night or else the cover story that they’d all been having dinner with Amy’s dad would not sound at all convincing.
‘OK. But don’t drink much. I’m not going back to the boarding house with you if you’re all drunk,’ Min warned.
‘As if,’ Gina replied.
‘C’mon,’ Charlie urged, ‘or else the fun is never going to start.’
Min headed back into the café as her three friends joined the boys on the short walk to the wine bar.
‘So who are your pals? You might as well introduce us.’ Niffy tapped Charlie on the shoulder.
‘Oh . . . I see! You want to be friends now, after you’ve covered us all in gloop,’ Charlie complained, but he stopped and turned to face the three girls.
‘This is Freddy’ – he introduced the blond-haired guy on his left – ‘and this is Phil. Meet Lou, Finn’s sister, Amy and . . .’ He paused; maybe for once he wasn’t going to call Gina by the hated ‘Yank’ nickname.
‘Gina,’ Charlie said with effort. ‘She’s from California and she has shockingly bad taste in boyfriends.
OK now, huddle round, relax, try and look old enough to be here,’ he instructed in his bossy way as they walked into the wine bar. ‘What’s everyone drinking? I have a wallet full of pocket money and a fake ID, so enjoy.’
Niffy took off her jacket and revealed the full extent of her cake damage.
Her neck was decorated with a streak of pink icing. Blobs of icing and sponge were stuck to her shoulders and the front of the fluffy grey dress.
‘Oh, mince!’ Amy exclaimed. ‘Come to the bathroom with me, we have to get you sorted.’
‘And you.’ Niffy pointed to the large patch of pink right in the middle of Amy’s chest.
But before they could leave Charlie’s huddle, a broad-shouldered figure bounded up to the group.
It took Niffy a moment to realize who she was looking at. No! Despite the overgrown hair, the different clothes and the outdoorsy suntan . . . it really was Angus. The boy she’d been so mad about last year. She hadn’t seen him for months, but now he was right here looking at her with something close to astonishment on his face.
‘Nif!’ he exclaimed, his arms held wide. ‘Nif? Is that really you?’
Niffy stroked the back of her neck and turned her gaze to the floor, because all at once she felt strange and shy.
‘You’ve cut off all your hair!’
‘Yeah,’ she said.
‘You’re wearing a dress!’
Niffy just gave a little snorty laugh.
‘What do you think?’ she asked, looking into his friendly face.
‘I think you look good enough to eat,’ Angus declared.
He threw his arms round her and to the shock of not just Niffy, but also Amy and Gina who were riveted on this little reunion scene, he gave her neck a lick.
He must have struck icing because he declared: ‘You taste delicious too.’
Chapter Twenty-eight
NIFFY KNEW SHE was awake, because she was sitting in the back of a taxi speeding towards the boarding house, but she felt as if she was in a blurry dream.
Her lips felt numb and tingly from all the kissing she and Angus had done in a dark corner of the wine bar. She felt as if her face, neck and shoulders were all covered with him . . . probably even smelled of him.
Seeing him again had been much more fantastic than she’d even imagined.
Min was sitting quietly in the taxi beside her with an equally dreamy look on her face. Obviously the Valentine’s date with Greg had gone very well. In her hand, Min was holding the pink rose from the vase on their table.
Only Gina and Amy were talking. Amy was busy getting mints out of her handbag and giving one to everyone. Then she brought out a little bottle of perfume and told everyone to spray themselves, so that any stray wine bar fumes would be well and truly zapped.
‘My dad drove us over here tonight and took us to the Taj Mahal restaurant. Then he put us in this taxi because he had to head back to Glasgow. OK? Are we all clear? That’s the script and we’re all sticking to it,’ she explained.
‘The Neb isn’t in though, remember?’ Gina said. ‘We’ll be fine.’
‘The Neb wasn’t in at five when my dad called,’ Amy reminded her. ‘Things change. We need to be prepared.’ She held up her perfume bottle and gave one last squirt.
‘Eeek,’ Min said as Amy hit her right in the eye.
> ‘Sorry!’ Amy quickly passed her a tissue.
In the boarding-house sitting room, Miss McKinnon was on the sofa watching TV with some of the younger girls.
‘Hi, did you have a nice time?’ she asked as the four came into the room to sign in.
‘We had a great meal, thanks, and it was so nice of everyone to come over to Glasgow today and help me . . .’ Amy began. ‘But it was hard to pack up the flat.’
‘Poor old you,’ Miss McKinnon sympathized.
Amy didn’t want to say any more; there were other people in the room. This was still a situation she was working out how to talk about. She didn’t know yet how open she wanted to be.
‘Where’s Mrs Knebworth?’ Niffy couldn’t resist asking.
‘Oh . . .’ Miss McKinnon glanced at her watch and looked almost surprised. ‘She went out for dinner, but I’m expecting her back any moment now.’
‘A friend or a date?’ Niffy risked.
‘Girls, I couldn’t possibly comment!’ came Miss McKinnon’s reply.
Niffy had taken off her borrowed Amy clothes, she’d been to the bathroom and washed off the Amy make-up and probably all the particles of Angus that had been clinging to her. She’d considered not washing her face. She had actually considered not washing her face or her neck where he’d kissed her, just to keep some part of him still with her. But then she’d told herself off for being such a lovesick puppy.
Now, in her white-and-blue checked pyjamas (old ones of Finn’s), she glanced at herself in the mirror and thought she looked just like herself again, rather than the older, sophisticated girl she’d been for a few hours tonight.
It was kind of OK, being herself again.
Even her short-haired self.
Hadn’t Angus told her he liked the dress and make-up but he liked her in ‘jodhpurs and horse dung’ just as much?
Niffy lifted the corner of her duvet and eased her long legs into bed. As her feet travelled down the cool sheets towards the very end of the mattress, she felt . . . something.
She put her toe slowly down again. Yikes! There was definitely something down there. It was hard, but slightly furry. She touched it with her toe again and thought that it might actually have moved.
Niffy whipped back the duvet and gave a horrified screech. A huge, furry spider, black with terrifying looking yellow and orange circles on its back was nestled at the bottom of her bed.
‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!’ she screamed again, expecting the spider to scurry off and hide itself.
‘EVACUATE!!!!’ she yelled, wanting everyone out of the dorm and the door shut against this hideous beast.
The spider looked deadly. It looked totally venomous.
‘Min!’ Niffy shrieked, sure that Min somehow had something to do with this. Min travelled from South Africa every term. Wasn’t that where all the worst spiders lived?
‘OUT! OUT!’ Niffy shouted. ‘Huge spider! Mega spider! Got to get OUT!’
‘Where?’ Amy wanted to know.
‘Just get out, all of you!’ Niffy ordered. She was already at the door.
She pulled it open, ran out and slapped straight into Mrs Knebworth.
‘Sorry,’ Niffy said automatically, but immediately followed this with, ‘HELP! We have a great big, massive hairy spider problem in there.’
‘Really?’ Mrs Knebworth’s eyebrows shot up. ‘This isn’t another of your little jokes, Luella Nairn-Bassett?’
‘NO!’ Niffy said, feeling panicked.
‘I’m not going to go in there and get hit in the face with exploding ink or itching powder or something equally childish?’
‘No, no,’ Niffy said, sounding genuinely scared. ‘Will you get out of there?’ she urged her friends, who still didn’t seem to be taking this very seriously.
‘Where is this monster?’ Mrs Knebworth asked.
‘In my bed, at the foot of it.’
‘Well, I’ll have to go and take a look,’ Mrs Knebworth said.
‘No, I don’t think so. I think we should call the police or the RSPCA or the zoo or . . . who are you supposed to call in a deadly animal emergency?’
‘Calm down, Luella,’ Mrs Knebworth insisted. ‘I’m just going to go and take a look.’
Gina, Amy and Min, now a little more infected by Niffy’s panic, were standing in the doorway too. Min was standing on tiptoes.
‘What colour was it?’ she asked. Living in South Africa, she had been taught how to recognize dangerous spiders in kindergarten.
‘Black with orange and yellow circles . . .’ Niffy replied.
‘Orange and yellow?’ Min repeated with concern.
‘And it was huge!’ Niffy widened her hands to demonstrate.
Mrs Knebworth was right up at the bed now.
‘Careful,’ Niffy warned.
‘That sounds like a tarantula . . . but over here?’ Min said with astonishment.
‘Oh!’ Mrs Knebworth gasped.
Everyone else gasped too and shrank back from the doorway.
‘Like this?’ Mrs Knebworth asked, and for a split second the huge black spider dangled from her hand before she launched it into the air at the girls.
All four screamed with fright.
The spider hit Niffy right in the chest. But it wasn’t until it fell onto her foot, was kicked off and landed several metres away in the hall that she realized it was dead. As she inched forward to take a closer look, she realized something else . . . it was made of rubber!
Now turning in a fury to her dorm-mates, she was about to storm questions at them when something else occurred to her: Mrs Knebworth was sitting at the foot of her bed, laughing fit to burst.
As Niffy walked slowly and furiously into the room, her hands balled into fists, her Angus daydreams well and truly forgotten, Mrs Knebworth looked up at her.
She lifted off her glasses and wiped at the tears of laughter which were forming there.
‘Got you!’ she said.
All the way down the hall, Mrs Knebworth was still laughing.
Chapter Twenty-nine
ON SUNDAY MORNING, Gina tapped lightly at the door of Mrs Knebworth’s sitting room.
‘Come in,’ boomed the familiar voice.
‘Er . . . Mrs Knebworth,’ Gina began. She looked at the housemistress carefully. After last night’s spider incident, Mrs Knebworth didn’t seem quite as knowable as she had before.
‘Do you remember we spoke about me going off to meet Dermot for lunch today?’
‘Oh yes!’ Mrs Knebworth looked up. ‘Yes, of course. Have a nice lunch and . . . you can stay out till five if you want to. The exams are over, so there’s nothing to worry about for a while. Have fun,’ she urged, ‘but take your mobile and, obviously, come home in a taxi. It’ll be getting dark by five.’
‘OK!’ Gina smiled gratefully.
As she hurried to get her coat, pull on her boots and apply just another little layer of blush and gloss, she checked her mobile anxiously again.
She’d texted Dermot three times since last night.
She’d apologized again and told him she was still going to go along at twelve, just as the Valentine’s card had suggested.
But there had been no reply. Nothing at all.
Still, Gina was going to go. This was Dermot – he couldn’t possibly be angry with her for long. It just wasn’t like him. She was absolutely sure that he would show up.
It was their first proper date in weeks because of all the studying. And it was Valentine’s weekend. He couldn’t blame her for the cake fight: she hadn’t invited Charlie to the café, plus she’d tried to stop everyone who’d been involved.
Dermot wouldn’t let her down. Maybe there was just some problem with his phone. He would be there. She knew it. And if he wasn’t there, she told herself as she buttoned up her short coat, she would just take the bus out to his house and make up with him.
Way at the back of her mind was another thought. She kept trying to push it away, but every now and again it bubbled up aga
in. That thought was – if it didn’t work out with Dermot, maybe she would accept Callum’s offer and go out on a date with him. No. She pushed the thought away again.
Dermot. This was all about making up with Dermot and getting back to where they were before the cake fight, the exams and the awkward hand-on-boob incident.
Gina took a bus into the centre of town, then walked the last short stretch towards the looming Scott monument.
The ornate, gothic building housed a huge marble statue of Sir Walter Scott underneath a giant tower which looked oddly like a church steeple without the church. She’d never been inside, but she did know that there was a long winding spiral staircase which took visitors up to the viewing platform at the top.
As she walked along the pavement towards the building, she began to look out for Dermot. It was a clear, cold day. He’d probably be bundled into his big, tweedy overcoat: the one he’d worn to meet her mom last year. Big mistake.
Her mom had wrinkled up her nose at first sight, as if she could practically smell that the coat had come from a charity shop. Her mom had not exactly ‘got’ Dermot. She hadn’t found his jokes funny and she had worried that he and Gina were just a little too close for comfort.
Maybe they had been very close back then. Now, Gina wasn’t so sure. With all his time taken up with studying . . . with his looming exams in the summer . . . with the tingle gone right out of his kisses . . . Gina wasn’t sure how close they were any more. She needed to see him today and find out. The Scott monument felt like a make-or-break date.
Even in February, there were plenty of tourists milling about Prince’s Street Gardens: taking photos, consulting maps and guidebooks. She heard American accents and felt a little pin-prick of homesickness. Most of the time, thoughts of her family and home were at the back of her mind, but now they were jolted forward. It was a full eight weeks before she’d be home again. It was a long time. Her little brother Menzie would look shockingly different and she’d realize how much time had passed since she’d last seen him.
Gina walked all round the base of the monument and scanned the benches and paths nearby. Dermot wasn’t here. He definitely wasn’t here.
She checked her watch and then her mobile just to make sure she had the time right. Both told her it was 12:03. So he wasn’t exactly late. But still, she could feel her heart sinking.
