Jealous Girl

by Carmen Reid

  Gina didn't have to be back at the St Jude's boarding house until 4 p.m., so she and Dermot could spend almost the whole day together. Not that her mother knew anything about this of course. Her mother had been told that Gina would drop her bags at the boarding house early, then meet a girl friend for lunch, before heading back well before the four o'clock curfew.

  When Gina and Dermot had planned their day together, on emails pinging their way back and forth across the Atlantic, it had sounded incredibly romantic and exciting. But now that Gina could hear the clunk of the undercarriage being lowered for landing, it felt . . . there was no other word for it: terrifying.

  What would they do all day? What would they talk about? The plan was to go back to Dermot's house, so she could off-load her luggage and meet . . . his mom!

  Gina thought there was a possibility that she might actually puke with fear. She checked in the seat pocket in front of her for a sick bag just in case.

  'Welcome to Edinburrrrrra,' the air hostess announced with the soft Scottish burr that Gina had come to know during the summer term.

  'Set your watches back ten years,' Gina muttered to herself. Because that was how it had felt the first time she'd arrived in Edinburgh from glittering all-new California. Like she had stepped back in time. Like she had boarded not just an aeroplane but a time machine that had taken her back to a place where everything was built of grey stone over a hundred years ago. Where people still wore tweed skirts and sensible shoes, minded their manners and used the mail to send letters. Where people, especially at St Jude's, talked about 'young ladies'. Where the 'young ladies' still wore ball gowns at least once a term and were expected to know how to do a formal Scottish dance.

  It was weird, like a whole different world. Had she really liked it enough to come back? she wondered. Looking out of the window to see a steely grey-white sky above her and a drizzle of rain coating the glass, she wasn't so sure. Had she really wanted to come back to this? Maybe she'd just needed the adventure. Gina, who'd lived in the same neighbourhood since she was four, who'd had the same friends since for ever. Maybe Gina had needed something new and totally different.

  But there was no denying that she was desperate to see her St Jude's friends again: Amy and Min. The other girl they had shared a dorm with last term, lovely, funny Niffy, was not coming back to school for a while but they had all promised to go and visit her.

  And then there was Dermot . . . the lurch of nerves gripped her stomach again: of course she couldn't wait to see Dermot again. Could she?

  As the plane came to a standstill, the FASTEN SEATBELT signs clicked off and the passengers began to stand up and collect their belongings together. Overhead lockers were opened and a scurry for bags and coats began, then the push and shove to get out onto the tarmac first.

  Gina felt in her small but genuinely Prada handbag (a spoiling goodbye present from her mom) for her mobile phone. Opening it up, she registered the low battery warning and studied the photo of Dermot on the screen. She couldn't help smiling back at it. He was lovely! Of course it was going to be fantastic to see him again. Look at the way his long, sandy-coloured hair flopped into his face. She loved that. She loved the way he was always shyly pushing that forelock of hair out of his eyes.

  Gina pulled her pink backpack down from the luggage compartment and joined the hustle for the door, then the long trek through the snaking corridors. She was walking quickly now, her legs just about keeping pace with her hammering heart.

  Her fingers dipped into her back jeans pocket for her gloss and she coated her lips just one last time before fixing them into a smile. Then she pushed through the double doors and out into the arrivals hall.

  As she cast a quick glance around the crowd, her first thought was: Oh! He's not here yet!

  But then a boy stepped forward, waved and called out: 'Gina!'

  She looked at him in bewilderment. It took an embarrassingly long moment before she recognized him. 'Dermot?' she asked hesitantly. He looked so different. A few photos on her mobile phone and a summer full of daydreams somehow hadn't prepared Gina for the reality of Dermot.

  Here he was, standing, breathing, right in front of her, and she was suddenly so nervous she couldn't speak. He felt like a stranger.

  His hair, for one thing! It was cropped close to his head. And he was in a scruffy red and green T-shirt and beaten-up jeans. She realized she'd only ever seen him in his café waiter's uniform of white or blue shirt, black trousers and apron.

  'Gina!' he repeated with an infectious grin across his face.

  'Hi,' Gina managed shyly.

  Then he was enthusiastically wrapping his arms around her; he was moving in for a kiss!

  She let his lips land on hers, but then pulled quickly back before he could get any more smoochy. Especially out here, in public. She felt as if he was someone totally new, rather than the boy she'd been emailing and texting all summer.

  'You look great,' Dermot told her, keeping his arms wrapped around her waist.

  'You look really . . . erm . . . different,' Gina replied.

  'Yeah, that'll be my great tan,' Dermot answered with a grin, holding out a bare arm for her to view. It was as milky white as when she'd left Scotland in July.

  'It's not been very sunny here then?' she asked.

  'No. No, I don't think by Californian standards you could say that there has been much sun. No danger of any of us turning mahogany – unlike you, o sun goddess!' he teased. 'I take it you have heard of skin cancer and wrinkles and the hole in the ozone layer and all that . . .?'

  Now this was better. The Dermot Gina knew and had a phenomenal crush on was funny and teasing. This definitely sounded more like him.

  'Yes thank you.' She slapped his arm playfully. 'So, your hair . . .' she began.

  'I know, I know.' Dermot gave a satisfied smile. 'How cool and tough do I look? If I was in a film, you'd know I was the baddie.'

  Gina made no reply; just looked at the haircut and the face, which was now so exposed. Dermot had alarmingly blue eyes and a wide, charming smile, but now that there was no bouncy forelock, his nose looked big and plain and his forehead seemed to protrude. The new hairstyle just didn't suit him at all.

  'Uh-oh.' He seemed to sense that all was not well in Gina's gaze. 'You don't like it, do you? Oh no!' He smacked his palm into his forehead. 'Oh no! I'm going to get chucked because of my hair! She liked it better the other way. Oh no! It's all over!'

  Although Gina had been tempted to blurt out, Oh, you look weird! I don't know you! before running away, now that Dermot was joking about his hair, now that he had voiced the problem and made fun of it, well, her reaction seemed completely ridiculous. His hair would grow. She would encourage him to grow it. In a few weeks he'd look just as cute as he had when she'd left for the States.

  'I'll grow it out, OK?' Dermot was assuring her. 'I will grow my hair just for you . . . well . . . and my mum,' he admitted quietly. 'She doesn't like it either.'

  'That's very kind of you.' Gina smiled back at him properly for the first time. Then she added, 'C'mon, I have to get my bags.'

  When Gina heaved not just one but two enormous, bright pink bags from the airport conveyor belt, it was obvious that Dermot was a little taken aback by the quantity of luggage.

  'Boy, these give a whole new meaning to the word holdall,' he joked, hauling the first bag onto a trolley and then struggling with the second. 'What have you got in here? A body you're trying to get rid of? No, no, don't tell me – this is one term's worth of haircare products, isn't it?'

  'I'm not going home till Christmas,' Gina reminded him snippily. 'And I've brought back lots of presents, you know.'

  'Presents?' Dermot, still in the act of manhandling the second huge pink sausage onto the trolley, sounded surprised. 'Presents? I didn't know there were going to be presents! Why wasn't I warned? Why did no one tell me? Why do I not seem to know any of the boyfriend rules? Is there a book about this that I should have read?'

&nbs
p; 'You've not got me a present then?' Gina teased, pretending to sound hurt but actually feeling a little shocked that he had used the 'boyfriend' word so casually.

  'I am so chucked now, amn't I?' he asked.

  'Totally,' she agreed, although her smile told him otherwise.

  Moving closer, he put an arm round her and asked: 'Can we do that kissing thing again? Because I know I'd like to.'

  Gina leaned in towards him, put her arms around his waist and tipped her face up slightly so that she could reach his lips. He pressed his mouth carefully down on top of hers and pulled her close. The weird tingle Gina remembered from kissing him the last time, before she went away for the summer, started up again. It seemed to travel from her lips directly to the pit of her stomach. A buzz, a flutter. She closed her eyes and kissed some more, opening her mouth just a little like Dermot had.

  'Woo-hoo,' a little boy in a baseball cap shouted cheekily as he walked past them, causing Gina's eyes to blink open and the moment to pop like a bubble.

  'Come home with me,' Dermot said a little huskily, not even turning his head to look at the kid; his hands slid into Gina's back pockets as he pulled her against him. 'Maybe we can do a little more of that. Provided my mum lets us out of her sight for longer than five seconds . . . Why, oh why did this have to be her day off?' He gave his forehead another theatrical slap, making Gina laugh.

  'What's her job?' she asked, surprised that she'd never thought to find out before. She knew Dermot's dad ran the café where she and her friends hung out. This was how she'd met him – he worked there at weekends and school holidays to save up for his going-to- university fund.

  'She's a midwife,' Dermot told her. 'Absolutely nuts about babies. Don't get her started. Please! You have been warned.'

  'Gee . . .' Gina was impressed. 'That's such a real job.'

  'Yes!' Dermot sounded amused. 'Very real. She works in a real hospital with real women, but unfortunately she doesn't get anything close to a real wage.'

  Gina didn't say anything more, but she was thinking that being a midwife and running a café were both very different jobs to the kind of work her mom and stepdad did. Nowadays they were into licensing software or something. They didn't even design it; someone else did that. They were at the big money, selling end, Gina was sure.

  Running a café or working as a midwife could surely never be as lucrative as licensing software. She knew Dermot went to an ordinary state school, so he wasn't like the private school pupils she'd met when she was in Edinburgh the last time – the privileged young ladies of St Jude's and the boys from Craigiefield and St Lennox, whose 'people' (parents) all seemed to live in four-storey Georgian townhouses, glamorous penthouses or large country mansions.

  Gina knew that Dermot was from a different walk of life. And as he struggled with the trolley piled with her large pink bags, she realized that this was part of what was so interesting and exciting about him.

  There hadn't been many 'ordinary' guys at her school in California either. Well . . . maybe there had, but she hadn't known them very well. Anyway, to live in that neighbourhood, your family had to be able to afford a home worth at least $600,000.

  'These are going to be quite heavy to get onto the bus,' Dermot warned her as they headed for the exit.

  'Bus!' Gina exclaimed. 'We can't take the bags on the bus! Is that how you got here?'

  'Yeah,' Dermot answered. 'I had to get two buses. One from Craigmillar to the city centre, then the airport bus. That's what we'll have to do to get back to my place. I just wasn't expecting your bags to be so heavy.'

  'We can't take a bus,' Gina said, standing there, refusing to take one step further in the direction of any bus. In California she never, ever took the bus. Buses were for poor people who didn't have cars; buses were dangerous.

  'So what are you suggesting?' Dermot asked, palms turned up as if there were no other possible solution. 'There's no train,' he explained.

  'A cab,' she told him firmly, astonished that he hadn't even thought of this.

  'A cab? A taxi!' he spluttered. 'All the way to Craigmillar? Are you mad? That would cost a fortune.'

  'Fine, I'll pay,' Gina told him. 'They're my bags, so my problem. My solution.'

  'Gina, seriously,' Dermot warned her. 'It'll be about forty quid. Maybe even more.'

  'That's fine, honestly.' Gina tried to reassure him, but now she seemed to have made him even more uncomfortable.

  'But it's such a . . . such a waste of money.' Dermot made one final attempt to argue with her.

  'Forget it,' she told him briskly, and strode ahead of him to the taxi rank.

  There wasn't much chat in the cab. Dermot didn't seem to be able to take his eyes off the meter as it ticked steadily upwards, pound after pound. At every stage of the journey he asked the driver which way he planned to go, even recommending a different route – presumably in order to get to Craigmillar more quickly.

  'The traffic's really bad that way,' the driver snapped back at him. 'I've just come from there.'

  Gina looked out of the window because she didn't want to get involved in this discussion. The scenery was changing rapidly, from airport ring roads and dual carriageways to the solid stone houses that lined the roads towards the centre of Edinburgh. Passing the impressive grey buildings, Gina felt just as interested in looking at it all as the first time she'd arrived off the plane from LA.

  It was so different! So grey, so elegant and so old. Just look at those black railings! All the houses so close together, the cars jammed nose to tail in every street. It was so very, very different from the lush modern buildings, huge gardens and gated driveways of her own corner of California.

  And then they had passed through the town centre and were heading back out on the other side.

  'We're going west,' Dermot told her. 'It'll be about fifteen minutes or so.' He gave the taxi meter another outraged glare.

  They drove past scruffier blocks of flats in the more down-at-heel, studenty part of town, then the road opened out a bit and was now lined with small bungalows and pebble-dashed houses.

  Gina had never seen this section of the city before. When she'd been at St Jude's last term, she'd either stayed at school or visited the town centre with her friends. There hadn't been any journeys further afield.

  Now the taxi was turning off the main road and swinging through narrow side streets.

  'How long have you lived round here?' Gina asked Dermot.

  'About eight years,' Dermot replied. 'We used to have this great flat in Tollcross but my parents thought me and my brother should have a garden, be able to kick a ball around, ride our bikes . . .' He gave a roll of his eyes which told Gina that maybe he'd have been happier staying in Tollcross. 'I liked it round here when I was younger,' he added, 'but now it's boring.'

  'You have a brother?' Gina asked him with some surprise. 'Why didn't I know that?'

  'Malcolm? We keep him hidden in the attic – it's better that way,' he joked.

  She dug her elbow into his ribs, glad to see him finally smile again. It was the first time since they'd got into the taxi.

  'No, he's fine. He's just my little brother. You know how it is. You have one!'

  And this was true: Gina had a half-brother called Menzie, who was about to turn nine. Of course she loved him; she missed him when she was away at school, but he also . . . well, if she was totally honest, he could bug her to death.

  'Am I going to meet Malcolm?' she asked.

  'No! He's away with his football team for the whole day, so you're spared,' came Dermot's reply.

  The taxi wound down a narrow road between yellow-brick houses with neat patches of lawn.

  'The second left – it's number three,' Dermot was instructing the driver. The cab made the turn and immediately began to pull to a standstill.

  Dermot turned to Gina; he sounded just a touch anxious as he said: 'And here we are. Mi casa es tu casa.'

  'This is your house?' Gina's astonishment was obvious. But with
just two windows on the ground floor, two on top and a small tiled porch over the front door, this was the tiniest house she had ever, ever seen. How did four people even fit in there?

  Chapter Three

  'Mum?' Dermot shouted out as soon as he'd opened the front door. 'I'm back . . . and Gina's here.'

  For the next few minutes it felt a little awkward in the tiny hallway.

  Dermot manhandled the pink bags in through the front door, where they seemed to expand and take up every available inch of space. Gina was crammed in behind Dermot, trying to close the door behind her. Dermot's mother was squeezing through in front of him, so desperate to meet Gina that she absolutely couldn't wait until they'd made it into the sitting room.

  'Hello . . . hello there.' A woman who looked vaguely like Dermot but with curly red hair took Gina's proffered hand and pressed it between hers. She was chubby, smiley, with Dermot's kind blue eyes, but much shorter than Gina had imagined. Gina, in high-heeled new ankle boots, towered over her.

  'Come away in,' Dermot's mum instructed her in that uniquely Scottish way. A not entirely friendly mix, it seemed to Gina, of 'go away' and 'come in'.

  She was led by the hand into the sitting room, which was minuscule! The ceiling really wasn't very far from her head. But the room was bright white and almost bare it was so tidy, with a small leather sofa and two chairs facing an old-fashioned TV on a stand; a bookcase crammed full of hardbacks, paperbacks, periodicals and magazines lined one entire wall.

  'Long journey?' Dermot's mum was asking her. 'By the way, you're to call me Jane. Shall I bring you some tea? You'll be needing a sandwich – something like that? I didn't expect you back so soon . . . I'm not quite ready. You came by taxi?' She looked at her son in surprise.

  'No, I insisted on the taxi,' Gina said quickly. 'My treat. The bags were really heavy.' Surely that was going to be the last she heard about the clearly outrageous extravagance of a taxi?

  'So, back to Scotland!' Jane began. 'I can't imagine why!' she added bluntly. 'Look at the weather out there – it's as grey as November. You leaving California and all that sunshine and your own pool! Just imagine!'