Sugar Secrets…& Shocks

by Mel Sparke

  Sugar

  SECRETS …

  … & Shocks

  Mel Sparke

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  CHAPTER 1 COMING DOWN TO EARTH

  CHAPTER 2 WHILE MATT’S AWAY…

  CHAPTER 3 BRIGID TURNS AGONY AUNT

  CHAPTER 4 CAT THE CUCKOO

  CHAPTER 5 TEACHER’S PET?

  CHAPTER 6 NOT-SO-HAPPY FAMILIES

  CHAPTER 7 ANNA SMELLS A RAT

  CHAPTER 8 MAYA OPENS HER EYES

  CHAPTER 9 MATT GETS AN EYEFUL

  CHAPTER 10 NICK TALKS SENSE

  CHAPTER 11 THE THINGS KIDS SAY…

  CHAPTER 12 ANNA SEES RED

  CHAPTER 13 CHARITY BASH

  CHAPTER 14 MATT FLIPS

  CHAPTER 15 TANTRUMS-R-US

  CHAPTER 16 HEADS YOU LOSE, TAILS YOU LOSE

  CHAPTER 17 BAD MOODS AND BREAKFAST

  CHAPTER 18 ALL CHANGE…

  CHAPTER 19 MAYA TAKES SOME STICK

  CHAPTER 20 SHOCKWAVES

  Sugar SECRETS … …& Jealousy

  SOME SECRETS ARE JUST TOO GOOD TO KEEP TO YOURSELF!

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER 1

  COMING DOWN TO EARTH

  Matt Ryan yawned.

  His eyes felt droopy; his whole body felt exhausted. He hadn’t had any proper sleep for more than twenty-four hours now. He hadn’t even been able to snooze on the flight home - the kid behind him had kicked the back of Matt’s seat from the moment they’d left the tarmac of Ibiza airport to the minute they’d landed back in the UK. And now he could feel every minute of those waking hours - an aching sleepiness that was dragging at his bones, telling him that if he could just shut his eyes, just for a few minutes…

  A toot from the car behind made Matt jerk into life again. The lights at the junction had turned green.

  “Matt, you idiot!” he snapped at himself, pushing the stubborn gearstick into first.

  For the umpteenth time on his way home from the airport, Matt wished that he’d taken Joe Gladwin up on his offer to drive him there in the first place and pick him up when he came back.

  “But, oh, no,” he muttered as he steered his way along the main road into Winstead, “I decide to take my own car, leave it at the airport car park which has cost me a fortune, and risk getting splattered in an accident ‘cause I’m too knackered to be behind a wheel!”

  The other reason Matt was angry with himself was because he hadn’t immediately gone back to his apartment once Espace had finally closed its doors at four in the morning. Instead, he’d stayed on chatting with the promoters and bar staff, making the most of his last moments.

  It was only when he’d waved everyone goodbye and made his way out into the warm Ibiza dawn that he’d remembered he had to be in charge of a car in a few short hours.

  Matt slapped his forehead in irritation.

  And that’s another thing - I’ve got to remember I’m back in Britain!

  No more diving off the side of boats into the cool blue Mediterranean waters; no more mad moped rides up into the hills with his new mates from work; no more roaring around the bay on jet skis; no more days on the beach, sleeping off hangovers; no more stumbling happily out of the club just as the sun rose, still hyped up from DJing; no more being treated like a hero by all the punters who came to Espace every night of their holiday…

  It had been an amazing two weeks. Two weeks where his dreams had come true, where he’d been able to DJ at a proper club, playing the dance music that he loved, instead of at Betty and Jim’s silver wedding anniversary or any of the other low-rent jobs he did back home in Winstead. It was safe to say that it had quite possibly been the best two weeks of his life…

  Suddenly, Matt felt a twinge of guilt. Right now, more than anything, he wanted to stick his head under the power shower at home, crawl under his duvet and sleep for a week. But that twinge of guilt made him flick his indicator to the right as he came up to the next set of traffic lights, instead of carrying straight on, along the main road that would take him home.

  “Where’s our food? We ordered ages ago!”

  Anna Michaels stared down at the girl who was snapping at her, a girl who sounded very assured for someone who was only just fourteen.

  The girl was very pretty, or at least would have been, without the sneer on her face.

  “Sunny, it’s only been a few minutes,” said Anna, trying to keep her patience intact as she responded to Maya’s younger sister’s demands. “And you might have noticed that it’s very busy in the café today - everyone’s got to wait their turn.”

  Sunita Joshi often came into the End with her schoolfriends and now that the holidays had started, it seemed she was hardly ever out of it. Anna and Ollie Stanton both knew Sunita’s reputation for making life difficult for Maya, often running home and telling her parents stories of what Maya was supposedly up to (usually grossly exaggerated with arms and legs added), so whenever she did turn up at the café, they’d both got into the habit of treating her with distant courtesy and not rising to her bait.

  But lately things had taken a turn for the worse, with Sunita apparently determined to show off in front of her mates.

  “Well, I might have to talk to the manager!” she said cheekily as her friends burst into cackles of laughter around the table.

  This is going to be a long summer… Anna sighed to herself. But suddenly, her heart leapt from gloomsville to happiness.

  “Matt!” she cried, instantly forgetting Sunny and her smart-alec remarks.

  “Hey, Anna!” beamed her boyfriend, standing in the open doorway of the End with his arms outstretched.

  In the split second before she’d reached him and been enveloped in his arms, Anna noticed how handsome Matt looked. It wasn’t just the way his olive skin had tanned and his dark brown hair had lightened in the sun - it was more how alive and vibrant he seemed. Matt looked taller somehow, with his shoulders back and his head held high.

  “You look great!” she told him as he hugged her close.

  “I feel great!” Matt replied, grinning down at her face, his teeth super-white against his tanned skin. “Can you take a break?”

  “Not just now,” frowned Anna. “Irene phoned in sick and it’s just me and Nick trying to run the place till Ollie can get down here…”

  “How is Ollie?” asked Matt. “It was great to see him and Kerry over in Ibiza!”

  “He’s fine,” Anna smiled.

  She wasn’t sure it had been so great for Ollie and Kerry to have Matt gatecrash their romantic week in the sun. Ollie was too tactful to say anything, but Anna was smart enough to read between the lines and realise that Matt arriving unannounced and scrounging a bed in their hotel room hadn’t exactly been the highlight of Kerry and Ollie’s holiday.

  And right now, Anna was smart enough to know something else.

  “Urn, you haven’t been home yet, have you?” she asked.

  “No - ‘cause I wanted to come and see you first and shower you with gifts!” Matt joked, pulling a giant Toblerone out of his inside jacket pocket and brandishing it like a sword.

  “Give it here, you idiot!” Anna giggled, grabbing the huge chocolate bar from him. “But seriously, I have to get back to work and you really should go home…”

  Matt wasn’t usually too good at spotting hidden meanings. Subtlety in any form tended to go right over the top of his head. But with his emotions heightened at the prospect of leaving Ibiza behind and coming back to Winstead, all of a sudden, his powers of perception seemed sharper.

  “What do you mean, ‘I should go home’?” he frowned.

  At that moment, Anna became aware that the usual
banter and babble of customers had died down. Obviously, it was mildly diverting for many of them to watch their waitress being romanced. But right now she didn’t want everyone to hear what was waiting for her boyfriend at home…

  “Nothing!” She smiled brightly, not enjoying having to lie to him, even if it was only a white lie. “I just meant you should get home, get unpacked and everything. My shift finishes at three, so you can come back and meet me then, if you like!”

  “All right,” nodded Matt, not entirely convinced by her assurances.

  “See you later then,” said Anna, kissing him quickly. “And good— um… goodbye!”

  “Er, OK,” murmured Matt, wondering why Anna had gone all formal on him. “See you at three…”

  Anna breathed a sigh of relief as she watched him walk away. She’d nearly said “Good luck!” -and that would really have put the cat among the pigeons.

  Matt slammed the car door shut. The rusty old Lada looked incongruous and uncomfortable, parked as it was on the sweeping gravel drive, in front of the imposing house and landscaped garden.

  Failing to turn the key in the sticky car door lock, Matt swore and gave up.

  It’ll just have to stay unlocked! he thought darkly as he frantically searched around in his pockets for his front door keys. Stupid old wreck is hardly worth nicking anyway!

  It was funny: all that Matt had been worried about as he drove to the End-of-the-Line café had been his own sense of guilt for having had such a fantastic time while poor Anna was stuck at home slaving away over a greasy stove in dreary old Winstead. But since his brief conversation with her, he had more serious things to worry about.

  There’s something wrong with Dad! I know there is! he’d managed to convince himself on the drive home. He’s ill and Anna didn’t want to break it to me. God, he left me a couple of messages on my mobile while I was away - why didn’t I get back to him?

  Matt knew the answer to that and was disgusted with himself - he’d been having too good a time to bother with domestic duties like calling his dad. He hadn’t even managed to phone Anna as often as he’d promised.

  His hand trembled slightly as he slipped the key in the front door and his voice was higher and sharper than usual as he bellowed, “Dad? Dad?” from the hallway.

  There was no answering shout. The only sound was a blaring rock track coming from the living room, while a woman’s voice - American -yelled, “And lunge! And lunge! And lunge!”

  A puzzled frown lining his tanned forehead, Matt pushed open the door.

  What he wasn’t prepared for was the unforgettable vision of Catrina Osgood’s bum in a pair of white cycling shorts and a deeply unflattering pink thong. In front of her, on the huge widescreen TV, Cindy Crawford was grinning in the Californian sun and yelling, “lunge!” again.

  For a split second, it all seemed so surreal that Matt couldn’t work out what was going on or quite what to say.

  What on earth was his friend doing jiggling around to a keep-fit video in his front room? Had she broken in?

  Sensing someone’s presence in the room, Cat turned round sharply, the look of surprise on her face turning to shock.

  “Matt!” she gasped. “You frightened the life out of me! What the hell are you doing here?”

  Just for the briefest of moments, Matt decided that he must still be on the plane and his disturbed sleep had plunged him into a bizarre nightmare.

  “Well?” demanded Cat, her hands on her Lycra-clad hips.

  A nightmare? No such luck. Whatever was going on, Matt realised, this was for real.

  CHAPTER 2

  WHILE MATT’S AWAY…

  “Sure you don’t want any? I can always put another box in…” said Cat, shoving a carton of chips in the microwave.

  If Matt hadn’t been in shock, he would never have wasted such good opportunity to have a go at Cat. After all, there didn’t seem a whole lot of point in sweating away in front of a fitness video if you were going to stuff your face with chips the second you’d turned the tape off.

  But he said nothing and continued to sit motionless at the kitchen table as if he’d been struck by lightning.

  “There you go!” said Cat, cheerfully plonking a steaming cup of coffee down in front of him. “Or would you rather have a straight whisky? For the shock?”

  Matt couldn’t raise a smile. This was no laughing matter.

  “So what about you and me, eh?” Cat grinned, settling herself down opposite him. “Who’d have thought we’d have ended up flatmates? Or should I say housemates, considering the size of this place…”

  “How did this happen?” said Matt, finally finding his voice.

  It wasn’t every day that you went away for two weeks and came back to find your Dad had moved his girlfriend and her daughter in without telling you.

  “Well, your dad only started talking to my mum about it a month or so ago,” Cat explained, absently yanking up the straps of her sports bra. “Mum wasn’t too keen at first. She thought it might spoil things and, you know, she’s still pretty wary of making any commitment to a man after my dad managed to make such a spectacular mess of their life together.”

  “So, you knew all this?” asked Matt, feeling hopelessly left out.

  “God, no! Don’t go thinking I was in on everything - I’ve been kept in the dark almost as long as you!” Cat laughed wryly. “I knew something was up, though. I spent a whole week spying on my mother, trying to figure it out!”

  Matt knitted his dark, thick eyebrows together in a frown. He was totally confused. But Cat carried on regardless.

  “Yeah, Mum was up to all this weird stuff, like taking a day off work - sacrilege to her - and hanging out with your dad, and then having all these guys in power suits coming to the flat. I was going round the twist worrying what was happening.”

  “And what was happening?” asked Matt.

  “Like I was saying, they were still at the stage of just talking about the possibility of moving in together - which is why they hadn’t said anything to either of us. Then your dad persuaded my mum to take some time off and go round a load of estate agents and ask them how much they thought she’d get if she rented our flat out.”

  Cat paused and looked hard at Matt to check he was keeping up. He said nothing, but Cat seemed satisfied enough with his attention levels and took up her story again.

  “So the blokes in business suits that I saw coming round, they were from the estate agents. They were giving our place the once over, so they could tell Mum how much it was worth.”

  The microwave pinged off and Cat wandered over to get her snack.

  “But then everything happened so fast - and it must have been in those first few days you were gone. All of a sudden, my mum gets a call from one estate agent saying they can rent out our place for this, like, silly amount of money. The only snag was, the people with the wads of cash wanted to move in straightaway, that weekend. Want one?”

  Matt shook his head at her offer of a chip. Even if the news hadn’t zapped his appetite, there was still something faintly disconcerting about the idea of eating when your whole life had been turned upside-down while you weren’t looking.

  “Whatever,” shrugged Cat, pulling the carton of chips closer to her. “Anyhow, next thing it’s like BIG dramas with your dad and my mum - all ‘should we’, ‘shouldn’t we’ stuff - and the upshot of it all is, here we are!”

  “But why didn’t Dad tell me?” said Matt, in a hurt, little boy voice.

  He was used to being excluded from his mother’s life - he hardly ever had contact with her or his little half-sisters - but it was something else to feel so shut out from his dad’s.

  “He tried to,” Cat assured him through a mouthful of chips. “He called you a few times but your mobile was always off.”

  “But why didn’t he leave a message?” protested Matt. “I mean, the couple of messages

  he did leave were just ‘Hi, it’s Dad, give me a call sometime…’. How was I meant t
o know it was important?”

  “Come on, Matt! You don’t tell people big news like that on a fuzzy answering service,” Cat snorted. “And when you didn’t get back to him, he decided he’d tell you face to face when you got home.”

  “Huh! That plan worked well, I don’t think!” said Matt sarcastically.

  “It would have, if he hadn’t got the day you were coming home wrong,” Cat tried to counter. “That’s why I was so surprised to see you just now. Anyhow, your dad’s arranged a day off work tomorrow - he was planning on meeting you at the airport and everything.”

  Matt was momentarily touched at his dad’s concern. Then blind anger at his dad moving two women into his home without consulting his own son took over again.

  “Does Anna know about all this?” he asked, knowing full well that she must do, considering the slightly odd way she’d acted that morning in the café.

  “Yeah, everyone knows,” said Cat breezily. “I mean, I could hardly hide the fact that I’d just moved, could I? Can’t exactly keep that kind of information secret from my mates!”

  “But why didn’t Anna tell me when I rang her from Ibiza?” wondered Matt indignantly.

  “Because your dad specifically wanted to tell you himself,” Cat explained in a slow, patronising tone. “He asked me to tell all your friends -including Anna - that, if they spoke to you, not to mention anything. So Anna didn’t. Anyhow, from what she’s said, you weren’t too great at keeping in touch with her either!”

  Another wave of guilt washed over Matt. He should have returned his dad’s calls; he should have phoned Anna more often. Being too caught up in having a crazy, amazing time was no excuse.

  “Anyway - stop looking so sulky and moany about it all!” scolded Cat. “Come up and see what I’ve done with my room!”

  Before he could protest, Matt found himself grabbed by the hand and hauled towards the staircase.

  “I haven’t painted it yet - I can’t decide what colour to go for,” Cat rattled on as she bounded up the stairs, dragging him behind her.

  Matt didn’t respond. He didn’t feel much like gabbing on about the finer points of home decoration, considering the enormous piece of news he was still trying to digest. And it was taking all his willpower to drag his eyes away from the thong that was so dangerously close to his face at that precise moment.