About a Girl Read online

‘Oh, Amy.’ I leaned against the kitchen counter, wiping Cheeto dust off my fingers onto my jeans, and stared out of the huge French doors that opened onto my own little patio just steps from the beach. ‘Remember when we were little and I didn’t want to go on Brownie camp so I ran away?’

  ‘Are you under the tree at the bottom of my garden again?’ she asked. ‘Because you only lasted two hours before you had to come in for a wee last time and you’ve already been out all night long. Tell me you haven’t wet yourself.’

  ‘I haven’t wet myself,’ I replied hesitantly, mentally checking that that was in fact true. ‘I left you a note. Didn’t you see the note? I’m in Hawaii.’

  What if Amy hadn’t seen the note? What if burglars had seen the note? What if they’d broken into the flat and stolen my precious … oh. Never mind.

  ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said,’ she said after a moment’s consideration. ‘And bear in mind I was there that time you announced to the entire pub that you were going to win the X Factor.’

  ‘I still think that if I had entered the year the singing binman won—’

  ‘Off topic, Tess,’ Amy shouted down the line. ‘Tell me you are not in Hawaii.’

  ‘I am, though.’ I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince her or myself. A quick peep out of the window confirmed I was not in Clerkenwell. ‘Dead sure about it. I can see the sea and everything. Deffos in Hawaii.’

  ‘You aren’t, though.’

  ‘I am, though.’

  ‘You can’t be.’

  ‘I know. But I am.’

  ‘But you’re not.’

  ‘Amy.’

  ‘Tess.’

  Somewhere halfway around the world, my best friend made a clucking noise in a West London flatshare that echoed down a long-distance phone line all the way to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Sighing in agreement, I pulled off my socks, shimmied out of my jeans and tiptoed across the floor to the patio. The AC kept the tiles cool and I left little half-footprints as I went, footprints that dissipated into thin air almost as soon as I left them behind.

  Bertie Bennett’s bay curved around his property gracefully, the pretty, clear water lapping against the white sand, the white sand giving way to green grass and the green grass hugging the little cottages at the bottom of the hill, each one surrounded by huge, swaying palm trees. It looked like the kind of place Vanessa would hang out. She was last-minute getaway in Hawaii; I was a wet weekend in Brid.

  ‘So you’re actually in Hawaii?’ Amy asked. ‘Why? How? Have you been watching too many romcoms? Because people don’t actually get up and leave the country at the drop of a hat unless they’re Julia Roberts or very stupid.’

  I stepped off the deck and felt the fresh grass against my toes. It was just a hop, skip and a jump to the beach, but I only had a hop and a skip in me. After that, it was a bit of a slog.

  ‘Then by that definition, I might be very stupid.’

  It took a surprisingly short time for me to catch Amy up on my first-ever documented case of spontaneity and/or a psychotic episode. Understandably she didn’t say very much while I was talking, but when she did, it was with great reverence.

  ‘This,’ Amy exhaled loudly, ‘is amazing.’

  Not what I was expecting her to say.

  ‘You don’t think I’ve gone mad?’ I bit my thumbnail gently and made my way towards the sea. It was cool and delicious against my hot sweaty feet.

  ‘Oh, I absolutely think you’ve gone mad,’ Amy confirmed quickly. ‘But it’s about time you went mad. This is brilliant.’

  ‘I’m standing on a beach in my pants pretending to be someone I’m not because I lost my job and, apparently, my mind, and that’s a good thing?’

  ‘Yes!’ she gushed. ‘Like I said, it’s brilliant. Can you see a hula girl? Are there coconuts everywhere? Is there an erupting volcano?’

  As stupid as I knew all that sounded, Amy still appeared to know an awful lot more about my destination than I did.

  ‘Coconuts maybe. There are a lot of palm trees,’ I confirmed, looking past my immediate surroundings for the first time. Oh, what a shock – everywhere was painfully beautiful. ‘Zero hula girls, but there’s a great big fucking mountain behind me. I don’t know if it’s a volcano or not. I hope not because if it is and it erupts, I’m definitely going to die.’

  ‘Where are you exactly? I want to Google it,’ she said, still sounding far more excited than I did. It was oddly reassuring, like maybe I wasn’t completely insane after all. ‘You really have gone completely insane,’ she added. So much for the feeling of reassurance.

  I held my hand over my eyes to get a better look at a small black rock that popped up out of the ocean like a sombrero and vaguely wondered whether or not I could swim it. I couldn’t.

  ‘Is it bad that I don’t actually know?’ I said, closing my eyes. I needed a break from all the ridiculous natural beauty that was burning my retinas because ? oh, bugger me ? as soon as I opened them, there was some more. Every time I turned around, I got another eyeful of gorgeousness. Hawaii did not have a bad angle. Hawaii was the Ryan Gosling of destinations. ‘I flew into Honolulu, and we didn’t drive that far. Somewhere near there, I suppose?’

  ‘Find out ? I want to know everything. Text me every second. Or email me. Or Facebook me. Or all of those things. In fact, get on Twitter. TWEET.’

  ‘I thought I might have a shower before I work out what the actual fuck I’m doing first,’ I said, squinting at the sunshine. ‘I’m knackered and I smell. Oh!’

  As I turned back to the cottage, a sweaty shirtless man appeared from nowhere and almost knocked me to the ground.

  ‘I don’t know about knackered, but you could smell sweeter,’ he grunted, half out of breath. He grabbed my shoulders and stood me up straight. ‘Nice knickers.’

  Without another word, the topless man spun me round so that I was facing the ocean again and sprinted off.

  ‘What was that? Was that a man?’ Amy screeched down the phone. ‘You’re on a freebie trip to Hawaii, sticking it to Vanessa, and there are men there? I’m getting on the next plane.’

  ‘Unlike me, you’ve got work,’ I reminded her as I watched the man’s back, and backside, run away from me. My forearm shone with a slight sheen of his sweat, left behind after our brief collision. Gross. ‘Actually, I’ve got to work too. For a job I don’t know how to do. I should go.’

  ‘Extreme Makeover: Life Edition,’ she sighed. ‘But, um, actually … about the me having a job thing. I might have got fired again. So I could totally come.’

  ‘Oh, Aims,’ I said with as as much sympathy as I could muster for her third job of the year. ‘One quarter life crisis at a time?’

  ‘Whatever. I hated that job anyway.’ She gave me a verbal shrug down the phone, her voice painfully carefree. ‘By the time you get back, I’ll be all sensible and employed again. Or I’ll have fucked off to Cuba masquerading as a spy.’

  ‘And I’ll probably be in handcuffs,’ I muttered. The man had completely vanished from sight. ‘Are you all right? Do you need anything?’

  ‘A drink and a ticket to Hawaii?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘I was thinking help with your rent?’ I felt horrible for being so far away. Amy needed me. ‘You’re sure you’re OK?’

  ‘I’m sure I am,’ Amy shushed me and clapped down the line. ‘You’re doing your bit right now. Go and roll around in the waves for me. I’ll talk to you later on.’

  ‘You bloody well will,’ I agreed. ‘Daily sanity checks needed. For both of us.’

  Hanging up, I looked out at the stupidly beautiful ocean one more time.

  ‘Oh, just shut up, Hawaii,’ I muttered at no one in particular.

  Maybe hourly sanity checks.

  Back inside the cottage, I plugged in my phone with the lead I had bought at the airport and placed it carefully on the bedside table, the same spot where it lived at home. It felt good to do something normal. Looking around the bedroom, I
shook my head and felt my heavy curls flap around the back of my head in a limp ponytail. If this was the guest cottage, I was almost too scared to see the main house. It was all so perfect. I’d been impressed by the living room and kitchen ? they were so shiny and neat ? but they weren’t even the half of it. A small hallway led through to an open, airy bedroom filled by a huge bed made up with the softest white linens I’d ever had the privilege of rubbing my face against and giggling into. Off to one side was a small, dark-wood dressing table, a matching desk with accompanying squishy white leather office chair, a huge MacBook Pro and a very swanky-looking printer. Oh yeah, I was here to work. On the other side of the bed was a wall of fitted wardrobes, all white wood, no sticky fingerprints or evidence of a late-night Dairy Milk binge to be seen. Resting on a white floating shelf was a bright pink ukulele. I fought every urge in my body to pick it up and start playing it badly. That time would come.

  Peering out of the bedroom window, I saw a narrow path that wound its way through the gardens and up to a huge, tented terrace and the back of the main house. Aka Bertie Bennett’s palace. The only people who could legit live in a house like that were Bond villains, the final six in America’s Next Top Model or P. Diddy. If I got up there for dinner and Beyoncé was a house guest, I was going to lose my shit.

  After tearing myself away from the view, I tore myself away from the rest of my clothes and locked my skanky self in the bathroom. Thanks to Boots at Heathrow I had some bare essentials in my suitcase, but there was no need to bust out the miniature Pantene. Mr Bennett had supplied everything a lady could ever need ? Molton Brown toiletries, Diptyque candles and even a proper girl’s razor, not the individually wrapped things you get in hotels that slice your legs to ribbons. A proper lady’s razor. He had to be gay.

  After the world’s longest and most delicious shower, I settled down in the leather chair with my laptop on my knee. Having been trapped on a Wi-Fi-less plane for the best part of twenty-four hours, I hadn’t been able to do nearly as much research into Mr Bennett as I’d have liked. I’d bought every fashion magazine and photography journal on the stands at the airport, read every single one cover to cover, and by now I knew that my battered H&M denim jacket should be a luxe leather bomber, my loose linen trousers should be cropped cotton, and everything else I owned should be neon. Most of the items I’d plundered from Vanessa’s wardrobe were as far away from my conservative clothing collection as I could stomach, not that there weren’t an awful lot of monochrome options, but I’d been brave and pilfered all of one bright yellow dress as well. Glancing over at the case full of stripey T-shirts and skinny jeans, I sighed loudly. I’d been pitching for a continental chic sort of look, left-bank sophistication and all that jazz. According to Marie Claire, Elle, Vogue, InStyle, Gloss, Belle, Grazia and even GQ, which I’d picked up by accident, I’d dropped a major bollock. Shocker.

  Once I was connected to Bennett’s Wi-Fi network, I clicked through my emails as quickly as possible. I ignored the four Lolcats from Amy, pretended I didn’t care that there was nothing from Charlie, and opened the brief that Agent Veronica had sent over. It was nearly ten pages long. Suddenly I got the impression that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t consider Vanessa to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Not that I was complaining. In this instance I needed all the help I could get, and she really did make the job sound relatively simple. Cue sense of epic relief. Scanning the info from the magazine, I saw that the art director from Gloss was going to be here to direct the actual shoot. I was literally in charge of pointing the camera at the right spot, pressing a button. The only thing that made me sweat was the portrait of Bertie Bennett. What if he was a complete bastard? Not that I hadn’t managed more than a few of them in my time. And given that my only other option was to fess up, go home and face Charlie, King of the Bastards, I figured I’d stay here and take my chances. After all, it was only taking a few pictures. How hard could it be?

  With a new sense of confidence, I stretched out on the bed and looked at the itinerary, biro between my teeth. So, Monday. According to the official document from Gloss, I was to arrive in Honolulu, get to the Bennett compound and meet Bertie. According to Agent Veronica’s notes, added in a bright red font, I was to get to Honolulu, get to the house, ‘keep my fucking mouth shut and my fucking knickers on’. Neither of those had ever really been a problem for me. Tuesday morning I was to meet with Paige, the art director, to discuss the shoot, and then Bertie, Paige and I were supposed to go over the clothes he wanted to shoot for the main spread. Again, Veronica had added her own note that advised, ‘Do not piss him off.’ Harsh but fair. On Wednesday, I’d be shooting the fashion spreads, locations TBC. Thursday was set aside for the portrait of Bertie, and then we had Friday open ‘just in case’ before we all flew home on Saturday night. Agent Vanessa had added a couple of other general asides in what had to be at least a 32-point font ? mostly motivational statements like ‘Fuck this up and I’ll destroy you’ and ‘Even a chimp with a camera phone could do this.’ Perhaps a chimp with a camera phone could do this, I thought, but chimps had also been sent into space and could count cards if they put their minds to it. I couldn’t do either of those things. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

  After printing out the itinerary and sticking it to the mirror above the desk with a tiny roll of invisible tape I found in the drawer (swoon, stationery), I gave my host a quick Google. In just two minutes and three clicks, I had discovered that Bertie Bennett was (a) a mental and (b) the owner of a super-cool department store in New York called Bennett’s. Fact (b) was easy to find out. Bennett’s had a huge web presence and pretty much every fashion site referenced it. I imagined that if I’d ever been to New York instead of just watching a lot of Friends and all of Sex and the City, that would be something I might know. Fact (a) was easy to ascertain due to the photos I’d found of Bertie dressed in ridiculous costumes and doing ridiculous things. There were far fewer pictures than I’d anticipated, but the ones I found were corkers. The three years he’d spent dressed as a ringmaster every time he left the house in the late seventies was quite well documented. I hoped he was still wearing the top hat ? he looked very dapper. The five-month stint he’d spent masquerading as an astronaut in the sixties was barely documented at all, which seemed a shame. For such a major figure in the world of fashion, Bertie really had managed to keep a low profile: there was basically nothing on him at all after the mid-seventies. Times really had changed. If he’d been starting out now, he’d have had a reality show and a ‘Designers at Debenhams’ deal by now. All of the shots I did find showed a young, vibrant man with a penchant for a bit of fancy dress and a Barbra Streisand show. Incredibly well turned out and definitely what my mum would call a ‘dandy’. Possibly what my nan would call a ‘confirmed bachelor’. Why northern women over fifty-five couldn’t just say ‘gay’ was beyond me. But there was nothing after he started to turn a wee bit grey. I did find his name in a few society features, mostly schmoozing at Fashion Week events all over the world, but that didn’t surprise me ? fashionistas flocked together, didn’t they? That’s why I didn’t know any. Gnawing on the barrel of my pen, I wondered what had changed his mind about sitting for a photographer again. Maybe he’d been on the Just For Men and wanted to show off. And I was the lucky snapper. Eeep.

  After re-reading the brief another seven times, I opened up Facebook, clicked on Charlie’s page and felt my newly acquired balls slip away completely. He hadn’t posted anything for days ? he rarely did ? and so the screen was mostly filled with pictures uploaded by his friends. I clicked the ‘pictures of you and Charlie’ button and choked up faster than you could say ‘emotional cutter’. It was like I was seeing every single one of the photographs with fresh eyes, and not a single one made me feel better. In almost every picture, I was leaning into him or staring up at his face with big shining eyes. In almost every picture, he was looking at someone else or staring at the camera with happy, beery ambivalence.

  I remembered every
last moment of every last minute we had ever spent together. I remembered going to the cinema to see one of the Bourne movies and barely being able to breathe for nearly two hours because it was so warm out that we were both wearing shorts, and every so often our legs would touch and the skin-on-skin contact took my breath away. I remembered all the times he would walk by my desk and throw a packet of Skittles at my face without speaking because he knew they were my favourite. I remembered going over to see him when his granddad had died, him opening the door with red-rimmed eyes and spluttering sobs. We didn’t even say anything, just sat on the sofa watching episode of Top Gear after episode of Top Gear until we both fell asleep. I woke up in his bed in the middle of the night and found him passed out on the sofa surrounded by photos of his family. He never really talked about them and it broke my heart to see him in so much pain, but I just covered him with a blanket and went back to bed. When I got up the next morning, he was business as usual. The photos were gone and his sore eyes put down to a bad case of hay fever.

  It was still incredibly early, barely ten in the morning, but my jet-lagged brain could not process any of what was happening. I slapped my laptop shut and rolled under a soft white blanket, pulling it up to my chin. Either I had never been this tired in my entire life or this bed was made out of clouds. Before I could even turn over and check my phone, I was fast asleep.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It is a little-known fact, but when you combine jetlag and stomach-churning terror, it’s quite possible to sleep through an entire day. When I eventually woke up, the sun was already starting to dip below the horizon. The sky was a soft pale blue painted with broad strokes of gauzy pink and orange, a world away from the cloudy grey sunset I’d watched over the village duck pond just two days before.

  It was already almost seven, which gave me just under an hour to get myself together for dinner with Mr Bennett. My first real test. Every time I closed my eyes and every time I opened them, this seemed less and less plausible. The craziest thing I’d ever done was call in sick in 2004 because Amy had tickets to see Justin Timberlake and I was scared that if I didn’t go with her, she would end up in prison or at the very least with a restraining order. Plus it was Justin.