Escape for the Summer (10 page)

“Honestly, I’m fine,” Andi fibbed.

Angel snorted. “You’re a worse actor than Tom. By the way, why is he outside with his arm down the drain?”

Andi half sobbed, half laughed at this image. “It’s a long story.”

“I don’t have to be anywhere,” her sister said firmly. “I’m officially unemployed now, aren’t I?” She sat on the sofa and patted the space next to her. “Come on, spill.”

So Andi spilled. She took a big gulp of her revolting cocktail and proceeded to tell her sister all about the money going missing, Slimy Alan and losing her job – while Angel spat “bastard” and “git” at suitable intervals. But when Andi got to the part about Tom cheating, Angel was so incensed she snorted sludge-coloured liquid all over the sofa and Andi had to slap her hard on the back.

“I can’t believe it! He was shagging fat Gina in your bed? And then he had the nerve to try and blame you?” Once she had got her breath back Angel shook her head in disbelief. “What a tosser! He stole your money
and
he was cheating on you? Bastard! What on earth did you ever see in him?”

Andi swallowed back tears. “I’ve no idea, but from this point on I swear to God that the only man in my life is Mr Kipling.”

“I blame Gemma,” said Angel. “If she hadn’t introduced you in the first place none of this would have happened.”

Andi smiled. “I don’t think we can pin this one on Gemma. Messy flats and bad-for-us food, maybe, but she didn’t force me to go out with Tom.”

“Hmm.” Angel was unconvinced. Andi had met Tom at one of Gemma’s famous parties where the booze flowed, food was piled high and the most eclectic mix of people tended to appear and socialise. Gemma was a brilliant hostess: generous, warm-hearted and so sociable that people she randomly met at the bus stop or in the shops soon felt like treasured friends. They flocked to her like she was a partying Pied Piper. Tom had worked with Gemma on
Heartache High
, a teen school soap that had lasted for one season. He had ended up at one of her parties, where he’d made a beeline for Andi. The rest, unfortunately, was history.

“Don’t blame me!” Gemma had wailed on the countless occasions when Angel berated her for inviting him in the first place. “I hardly knew the guy. He was only in two episodes and he played a teacher, so I didn’t have any scenes with him. Anyway, I’m sure he wasn’t such a tosser back then.”

As far as Angel was concerned the jury was out on this one. In fairness to her friend, Tom had been working steadily in the early days of his relationship with Andi. But as the roles had dried up he’d taken to pitying himself and hanging out with a dope-smoking crowd who modelled themselves on
Withnail and I
– although when it came to work ethics they actually had more in common with the characters in
Shameless.
Angel had been to enough parties where she’d seen Tom stoned and maudlin to have made up her own mind about him. Maybe he had been talented once. Maybe not. In any case, the talent was draining away and all Angel saw was a parasite making her tender-hearted sister feel guilty. How many times had she heard him tell Andi that he’d given up his flat to move in with her and put his career on hold so that they could be together? Far too many times, was the answer, and it was all nonsense.

Angel might have been the younger sister but sometimes she felt about a hundred years older than Andi. Andi still believed in fairy tales and happy endings, whereas Angel was a firm believer that a girl made her own luck. That was why she was so excited about Gemma’s plan to go to Rock.

“Well done for flushing that watch down the bog,” she said admiringly. “Shame you couldn’t stick Tom’s head down after it and hold him under until the bubbles stopped.”

Andi laughed in spite of herself. “Have you been hanging out with Mr Yuri?”

Angel grinned. “There’s more to being a beautician than just giving facials! You’d be surprised what I’ve learned.” She jumped up and, grabbing Andi’s wrists, pulled her sister to her feet. “And one of the things I do know is that when a man does the dirty on her, the last thing a girl should do is sit and mope! Revenge is needed! Can’t we dump tonnes of manure on his doorstep or something?”

Andi smiled. “Nice thought, but if he’s at Gina’s we share the same doorstep!”

“OK, bad idea,” Angel agreed. “Here’s a better one. How about we tip this disgusting drink down the sink, go to the pub and get hammered? Celebrate losing our jobs and having new adventures?”

Andi shook her head. All she wanted was to be left alone and allowed to have a good cry in peace before she started to rummage through the rubble of her life. There was a landlord to appease, a bank to plead with and an employment agency to call. The last thing she could afford to do, literally or metaphorically, was go on the lash with Angel.

“I don’t feel like going out.”

Her sister put her hands on her hips and fixed Andi with a determined look. It was the same look that over the years had seen Andi part with her dolls, do Angel’s homework and, lately, dish out money. “There’s no way I’m leaving you here breaking your heart over a knob-end like Tom. You’ve given him nearly two years. He doesn’t deserve another second.”

It was a valid point. Besides, what was left of Andi’s misery cocktail was curdling in the jug. Goodness only knew what it was doing to their stomachs. Suddenly the idea of a cold glass of white wine was very appealing.

“Maybe just one then,” she agreed.

“Fantastic!” Angel said. “Grab your purse, sis: I’m skint. I’ll text Gemma and she can meet us. I think it’s time we all put our heads together. Look on this as your lucky day – how do you fancy joining us in Cornwall?”

Andi stared at her. Could she really do it? Leave London and the flat, and step away from everything for the summer? At the thought of going back down to Cornwall her heart rose like a paper lantern. A break by the coast promised mental elbowroom, bright light and the sting of sea salt against her skin.

“Come on,” urged Angel. “You know you want to be a Rock chick!”

Andi’s bank account was empty, her boyfriend had left and she’d lost her job. Why on earth not? What did she have to lose? At that moment a Rock chick was
exactly
what she wanted to be.

Chapter 10

“Oh my God! Oh my God! I can see the sea!”

Angel’s shriek in Andi’s left eardrum was just about enough to make her weep. Her head was already pounding from listening to Gemma’s Lady Gaga
CD all the way from London to Cornwall; now it was ready to explode. By the time they’d joined the M4 Andi already knew the lyrics so well that she was confident she could put on a meat dress and double for Gaga should the star ever require a break; by the Tamar Bridge she was starting to wonder whether it was a new kind of torture. Death by “Poker Face”. Add to this the roaring Beetle engine only inches behind her backside and the constant squeals and giggles from Angel, and it felt like a pneumatic drill was boring into Andi’s brain. She’d popped so many painkillers she was in danger of developing a Nurofen addiction.

“The sea! The sea!” echoed Gemma, bouncing up and down in the driver’s seat and craning her neck to glimpse the small slice of glittering blue nestling between hills that resembled Jordan’s boobs.

“I can’t believe we’re nearly there!” Angel cried. She pogoed in her seat, the glimpse of Atlantic blue whizzing her back to her six-year-old self faster than you could say “tardis”.
Andi couldn’t help but smile even though her neck was aching and she probably had deep-vein thrombosis. It was hard to move when you were sharing the back seat of a car with three suitcases, a hatbox and more pairs of shoes than you could count. And that was before she added in the endless chocolate wrappers, empty cans and sweet papers that had been constantly lobbed into the back seat. It had been like sitting in a skip for five hours.

Turning to her, Angel said excitedly, “Oh my God, Andi! We’re back after all this time! Can you believe you’re going to be in Rock for the whole summer?”

The short answer to this question was a resounding and heartfelt
no,
because Andi couldn’t quite believe that she was in Rock
.
Normally on a Wednesday morning she was sitting at her desk, frantically hoping Zoe would leave her alone for just one day and trying to wrestle figures into submission. By lunchtime she would be cross-eyed from staring at the screen and only able to make it through the day by emailing PMB for a chat. Andi wondered who had taken over her role and whether PMB would miss chatting to her? Probably not, she told herself sternly. He probably had a life.
She hoped Zoe hadn’t told him that Andi had been sacked for taking credit for another colleague’s work. That thought made her skin prickle with mortification. Apart from the fact that it was untrue, she couldn’t bear the idea of him thinking badly of her. Somehow she had to clear her name. Maybe once she was away from the city and had some thinking space she’d come up with something? At the moment, though, her brain felt as if it had turned to cottage cheese.

As the car began the descent towards the seaside town, Andi thought about how her life had taken a very odd turn. A week ago she was an accountant at a prestigious company, working on the figures for Britain’s answer to Microsoft and living with her long-term boyfriend in a small but comfortable flat. Fast-forward a week or so and here she was, suddenly homeless, penniless, unemployed and on her way to Rock to share a caravan with her sister and her sister’s bonkers friend.

Even Russell Grant couldn’t have seen this coming.

Andi was just contemplating, for the umpteenth time, the horrifying and gut-churning discovery that Tom had not only cheated physically but also emptied all her accounts and maxed out her credit cards to boot, when Gemma slammed on the brakes with such force that several bags flew off the parcel shelf and walloped Andi on the head.

“Ouch!” she gasped. There was something really hard in that fake Louis Vuitton holdall. There was probably a dent in her skull now. Maybe she had concussion too? She could hear a really weird buzzing sound…

“Gemma! Don’t look at the sea! Look where you’re going!” cried Angel, her hands over her eyes. “We’ve got all summer to look at the view!”

“Oops! Sorry!” giggled Gemma. She ground the gears; the Beetle kangarooed forwards and another bag smacked Andi on the head.

“I can hear buzzing,” Andi said, wrestling the holdall back into position. “Either I have a head injury or else your electric toothbrush has been set off.”

Gemma chuckled. She caught Andi’s eye in the rear-view mirror and winked.

“I hate to break it to you, but that is not my
toothbrush
!”

Andi recoiled from the bag as though scalded while her sister and her best friend cackled with mirth. She felt about a hundred and ninety. She was thrilled to be back in Cornwall, and the moment they had crossed the Tamar her stomach had pancake-flipped with excitement – but for the life of her she just couldn’t summon up the exuberance and energy that fizzed from the other two. Andi supposed this was hardly surprising. She’d just broken up with her long-term boyfriend, and although she wasn’t breaking her heart over him she was bound to be a bit flat.

Andi had never seriously intended to join the girls on their westerly pilgrimage to find sunshine, fame and millionaires. It had been a wonderful slice of escapism for a few hours on that blackest of black Mondays to listen to Gemma and Angel planning their summer and how they would be bound to find Callum South in one of the cafés or maybe running along the water’s edge. As the white wine had flowed and the pain of the day had begun to blur around the edges, Andi had almost believed that she too would be journeying westwards and spending the summer by the ocean. In her mind’s eye she’d seen herself wearing frayed denim cut-offs and deck shoes, her hair caught up in a simple knot at the nape of her neck; she’d be sitting on the edge of the pontoon, bare legs dangling as she watched the flotilla of boats bobbing on the estuary. She had almost felt the warm sunshine on her skin and heard the slap of waves against hulls. But of course reality was different. Deep in her heart Andi had known that she would have to wake up the next day, take two Alka-Seltzers and then deal with the car crash of her life. She’d ended up moving in with Gemma and Angel because she’d shortly afterwards discovered that landlords didn’t take “my cheating bastard boyfriend stole all my money” as a valid reason for not being able to pay the rent.

Living with the girls had certainly been an education. Slugs roamed free in the kitchen, dirty plates festered in the sink and all Andi could find in the fridge was nail varnish and rotting veg. When she lay on the sofa at night, alternating between sobbing over her finances and worrying about Tom’s threats, she could practically hear the listeria and E. coli having a chat from the sticky work surfaces. After a week with the girls Andi felt as though she needed to bathe in disinfectant and dreaded to think what they’d do to a caravan. Public Health would probably condemn it after a week. But she didn’t have a choice.

Andi had no money and no job. Tom had been given access to her banking details, so the bank wasn’t obliged to compensate her – and there was no hope of ever seeing a penny back from him. It was a truth universally acknowledged, that a young woman in possession of sod all must be in want of a place to live. Andi couldn’t afford the Balham/Clapham flat, Tom had nicked her cardboard box on his exit, and so she had ended up on the sofa at Angel and Gemma’s place. A bed of nails would have been more comfortable, but at least she’d had somewhere to go while she attempted to decide what to do next.

Andi sighed. It had probably been easier for Einstein to figure out his theory of relativity. At the moment she couldn’t see much further than either panicking or ranting or, when she wasn’t engaged in those activities, eating all the cakes Gemma insisted on baking. For a girl who was always on a diet Gemma had some very odd ideas about what was healthy. Andi was pretty certain that carrot cake couldn’t really be classed as one of your five a day. Still, there was no doubt about it, Gemma Pengelley was an amazing cook and Andi had enjoyed comfort-eating every calorific mouthful. She figured she deserved a lot of comforting. She might as well add getting fat to her list of woes. Maybe Callum South could hire her for his show? Andi smiled in spite of herself: if you couldn’t beat them, join them.