Party Girl

  About the Book

  Exams, exams, exams … no wonder the St Jude’s girls are desperate for a PARTY!

  Gina’s new boyfriend may be an AMAZING dancer, but is he really as nice as he seems?

  Amy wants to track down her real mum, but she’s SCARED of what she might find out.

  Niffy’s romance could be getting too HOT to handle.

  And as for Min – she needs to be dragged from the study room, even if she SCREAMS!

  Time to buy a FABULOUS new dress, grab a CUTE pair of shoes and join the girls for an UNFORGETTABLE night out!

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Meet the St Jude’s Girls

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Also by Carmen Reid

  Meet the Author

  Copyright

  MEET THE ST JUDE’S GIRLS …

  GINA

  Full name: Gina Louise Winklemann-Peterson

  Home: A fabulous white and glass

  architect-designed beach house

  with pool on the Californian coast

  Likes: Sunshine (sadly not often found in

  Edinburgh), swimming, Halloween, pointy

  ankle boots, Prada or anything Prada-esque,

  Reese’s Pieces, her cell phone, her little

  brother Menzie (sometimes), coffee,

  Dermot O’Hagan … and Callum Cormack

  Dislikes: Slithery octopus-type kisses, the totally

  gross sludge-green St Jude’s school uniform,

  deadly dull history lessons, Charlie Fotherington-

  whatsit, boiled vegetables of any kind (I mean

  guys, like, haven’t you heard of stir-fry?)

  Would like to be: A screenwriter – but absolutely

  no one in the whole world knows about that

  Fascinating fact: Gina has three other best

  friends at her old school in California – Paula,

  Ria and Maddison. They still can’t believe

  she goes to boarding school in Scotland

  NIFFY

  Full name: Luella Edith Millicent Pethurer

  Nairn-Bassett (no wonder she’s called

  either ‘Niffy’ or ‘Lou‘)

  Home: The ancient, crumbling ancestral

  mansion Blacklough Hall in Cumbria, England

  Likes: Playing pranks, enormous horses

  and slobbery dogs, all team games, (especially

  hockey – she’s really good), the St J’s assembly

  game Banshee Buzzword Bingo (which she

  invented), her big brother Finn, the odd

  sneaked glass of expensive red wine, all school

  food, but especially pudding

  Dislikes: Dresses, dressing up, poncy shoes

  and fussy clothes of any description, make-up,

  fussing with her hair, fussing about anything

  at all, her real name

  Would like to be: A professional rider – an

  international show-jumper, or maybe a three-day

  eventer – that way she could do show jumping,

  dressage and her favourite, cross-country jumping

  Fascinating fact: She can be fully

  dressed in all her riding clothes and

  hat in twenty-five seconds flat

  MIN

  Full name: Asimina Singupta

  Home: A big family house with a huge

  garden in a suburb of Durban, South Africa

  Likes: Running really, really fast and winning,

  being top of the class in every single subject,

  doing homework (it’s so interesting when you

  really get into it), mango lassis, gold bracelets,

  reading science books, borrowing Amy’s

  clothes, her mum’s home-made curries

  Dislikes: The sight of blood, Biology lessons,

  babysitting her little brothers and sisters,

  the food at St J’s, wearing her hair in plaits,

  Scottish grey skies

  Would like to be: A medical researcher or

  medical physicist. She has to do something

  medical because of her doctor parents but

  it can’t involve blood!

  Fascinating fact: Min’s mother taught

  herself Italian and went all the way to

  Pisa to get her medical degree

  AMY

  Full name: Amy Margaret McCorquodale

  Home: Recently forced to downsize

  from an amazing penthouse flat in

  Glasgow, Scotland, with a terrace and

  panoramic view of the city

  Likes: Designer jeans (Iceberg), designer bags

  (Marc Jacobs), designer boots (Jimmy Choo, but

  only when her dad is feeling incredibly generous),

  Edinburgh’s Harvey Nichols (obviously), very

  handsome boys, diamonds, champagne,

  dance music, dressing up and going out,

  her gran’s mince and tatties

  Dislikes: Penny Boswell-Hackett, Mrs Norah

  ‘the Neb’ Knebworth, everything in Niffy’s wardrobe,

  French lessons, people teasing her about her

  Glaswegian accent, oh and Penny

  Boswell-Hackett (have you got that?)

  Would like to be: Officially, she’s going

  to do a law degree, then join her dad’s

  nightclub business. Secretly, she’d like

  to be a famous and fabulous actress

  Fascinating fact: Amy’s mum and dad were

  teenagers when she … er … arrived.

  She was brought up by her dad,

  her gran and her grandpa. She

  hasn’t seen her real mum for years

  Chapter One

  ‘THIS PLACE IS a complete and utter dump! We have to do something. Now!’ Gina exclaimed, and just to make her point she kicked at one of the great heaps of stuff on the floor of the cramped dorm.

  ‘Ow!’ she yelled, as her big toe made contact with something hard. ‘Are we collecting rocks in here now?’ She knelt down in her cute pyjamas, burrowed into the pile and found a dumbbell – an actual metal dumbbell. No wonder her toe was smarting. ‘Why are there dumbbells on the floor?’

  ‘It’s where we keep everything else,’ Niffy, the owner of the dumbbell, snapped. Niffy’s real name was Luella Nairn-Bassett, but she’d been nicknamed Niffy at school for so long that she now felt surprised whenever people called her Luella.

  ‘Well, it’s got to stop! Right now! We need to clean up or I am going to go crazy!’ Gina added in her unmistakable Californian accent.

  The Iris dorm, right up on the top attic floor of St Jude’s boarding house, could probably hav
e been quite a nice room. It had pale walls decorated with flowery wallpaper, and windows set into the sloping ceiling which looked out over the school’s playing fields and tennis courts and towards the imposing main school building.

  But the dorm was completely jam-packed with four beds, a large wooden wardrobe, four chests of drawers, four teenage girls and all their stuff, including backpacks, bags and suitcases, because these girls were all boarders who didn’t leave school until the holidays.

  It was 9.45 in the evening and all the members of this dorm were in the room because it was time to get ready for lights out at 10.15. Niffy, tall and lanky with shortish curly hair which was dotted here and there with gingery clumps – a bad home-dying experiment – was already in her dressing gown; she was reading on top of her bed.

  Min, an interesting combination of a pretty Asian girl with a singsong South African accent, was brushing out her long hair and thinking about having a shower. The fourth girl in the room was Amy McCorquodale. Just like Californian Gina, Amy had blonde hair, blue eyes and an unusually pretty face, but unlike her friend in her beautiful silk pyjamas, Amy was still dressed in the dreaded St J’s uniform, and it was hard to look lovely in a grey skirt, sludgy green cardigan and – horror of horrors – sludgy green knee socks.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ Niffy complained. ‘If you want to do a big tidy-up, then you’ll have to wait until tomorrow.’

  ‘I do not want to do a big tidy-up. It’s not just my stuff!’ Gina protested. ‘Everyone in this room needs to help. We can’t close the drawers; we can’t even see the floor. The stuff has taken over!’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Niffy replied. ‘I’ve shoved everything I own under my bed and it’s perfectly fine there.’

  Gina glanced over to Niffy and saw that this was true. A great jumble of books, sports kit, bags and clothes filled the entire space under the bed. There was even a tennis-racket handle poking out as a nice trip hazard.

  ‘Now that is just a total mess,’ Gina said, pointing at it all. ‘How are you ever going to find anything in there?’

  ‘Using the traditional Niffy method,’ Amy chipped in.

  ‘And what’s that?’ Niffy wondered.

  ‘Rummage and swear,’ Amy replied.

  ‘I don’t know why you two are having a go at me,’Niffy protested. ‘We can’t close the wardrobe door because of Gina’s in-line skates, which by the way she has never used and probably never will. And as for the top of your chest of drawers, Amy, that is a paper avalanche just waiting to happen—’

  ‘Could we all stop having a go at each other?’ Min broke in. ‘Gina just wanted to say that we need to tidy up. And she’s right.’

  Min’s words immediately changed the atmosphere. Min – Asimina Singupta, to give her her full name – was a quiet, studious and kind person. For her to intervene, sounding a little bit cross, was so unusual that the three others immediately fell into a guilty silence.

  ‘It’s only twenty-five minutes till lights out.’ Niffy made one last attempt at an excuse.

  ‘Lame,’ Min said. ‘You know perfectly well that Mrs Knebworth would be delighted to find us tidying up, even if we are late for lights out. C’mon, I’ll help you tackle the mountain under your bed so that Gina and Amy can get on with their own things.’

  With a big sigh, Niffy knelt down and began by pulling out the tennis racket. Amy sat beside the pile of paperwork on her chest of drawers, and Gina went to the wardrobe to see if she could rearrange some of the things in there so that the door would actually close.

  ‘The skates are from my dad, Pieter – you know, my new dad …’ Gina explained. ‘Well, my real dad … but it still feels kinda new to me because we’ve been out of touch for so long.’

  ‘Yeah, we know,’ Amy assured her.

  ‘I’ve only had them for a few weeks and I haven’t had a chance to use them because—’

  ‘There’s no skate park around here?’ Niffy offered. ‘Due to the fact that you go to school in Edinburgh, Scotland, as opposed to Malibu, California. Maybe your new dad doesn’t know that much about you?’

  ‘He knows about plenty,’ Gina snapped back.

  She was a little touchy on the subject of her new dad and she knew it. But he had only really been back in her life for a few weeks and it was taking some getting used to. Gina had a stepdad, Mick, who had been ‘Dad’ to her for as long as she could remember, and she’d almost forgotten about her other ‘real’ dad until he had suddenly turned up, completely unexpectedly, in California when she had been over there for the recent Easter holidays. Now, this term, she’d been emailing him, calling him, and Facebooking his three children – and she was getting gifts from them. It was very exciting. She had this whole other family in her life – twin halfsisters and a half-brother – who she hadn’t even known about before.

  She picked up one of the skates. It was big, clunky and purple. She hadn’t even tried it on, let alone tried to skate. To be honest, the thought of skating scared her. She remembered trying a few times when she was about ten years old, and getting bumped and hurt and scraped. Pieter was just trying to be nice – all his other kids loved skating – but by giving her skates, he’d just proved that he didn’t know her very well yet.

  She pushed the skate towards the back of the cupboard, where it joined the heap of boots, sandals, shoes and hockey sticks. Really, it wasn’t just tidying up which was needed in this dorm, it was throwing out. Everyone – apart from Min – seemed to have way too much stuff.

  ‘Maybe we could put some of the things you don’t use much on top of the wardrobe?’ Min suggested to Niffy. The pile being dragged out from under Niffy’s bed seemed to be growing bigger and bigger, but still there was more stuff to be brought to light.

  ‘What on earth is that?’ Amy asked.

  Gina looked round. Amy was pointing to a huge, navy-blue rugby shirt which Min had just pulled out from Niffy’s pile.

  Niffy blushed a little, shrugged a little, then confessed: ‘Angus gave it to me. I got cold when we were out … I borrowed it and he said I could keep it.’

  ‘Woohoo,’ Min teased.

  ‘The rugby jumper of romance,’ Gina added, just for the fun of seeing Niffy blush a little more.

  ‘Eurgh! You’ve got to be joking! You wore his cheesy old rugby jumper? I would rather go naked than wear some smelly boy’s honking old jumper!’ Amy exclaimed.

  ‘Mind your own beeswax,’ Niffy ordered, rumpling the jumper up in her hands and shoving it into a drawer.

  Meanwhile, Gina and Min laughed at the thought of precious Amy in a stinky rugby top, because when she wasn’t in school uniform, Amy was always beautifully dressed and perfectly turned out.

  Just then there was a brief knock and the dorm door opened.

  ‘Girls, bedtime. Oh, my goodness! Just what is going on in here?!’ The boarding housemistress, Norah Knebworth, was standing in front of them with a very disapproving look on her face.

  The Neb, as she was known, was a short, solid and quite frankly terrifying lady around about the fifty-something mark. She disapproved of just about everything, and was never afraid to let her disapproval show. She had a way of glaring at St Jude’s boarders which made them feel as if their innermost thoughts and all their secrets were plainly visible on their faces.

  Min immediately shrank down, and Gina and Amy were stopped in their tracks; Niffy was the only one who risked the cheeky reply: ‘It’s just what it looks like, Mrs K: we’re having a spring-clean.’

  ‘At five minutes to ten?’ she asked, drawing in a sharp breath and crossing her arms under the bosom equivalent of a tank.

  ‘Well, we started ages ago,’ Amy began, ‘but it’s taking us longer than we expected.’

  ‘Amy McCorquodale, you’re not even changed! You’re not even in your pyjamas!’ Mrs Knebworth exclaimed.

  ‘I am,’ Niffy pointed out.

  ‘Yes, you are, but you’re sitting in front of an entire evening’s worth of clearing up!
’

  ‘Well, we had to do something. This room was a disaster,’ Gina said, going to Niffy’s defence.

  ‘Was a disaster?’ Mrs Knebworth asked. ‘It is a disaster. Twenty minutes,’ she decided. ‘I’m giving you a twenty-minute extension. If you’re not sorted out by then, I’ll have to wake you at six in the morning to carry on with the clear-up.’

  She went out of the room, leaving the girls to glare at each other accusingly.

  ‘This is all your fault,’ Niffy said, to no one in particular. She reached over into her pile and pulled out two hockey boots caked in dried mud. The movement caused the pile to shift. A tube of tennis balls fell down, along with a fat brown envelope with Amy’s name on the front. ‘This isn’t mine. What’s this?’ she asked, picking it up.

  Amy looked, saw the envelope and immediately snatched it up. ‘How did that get in there?’ she asked.

  ‘No idea,’ Niffy replied.

  ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for that,’ Amy told her.

  ‘I don’t know how it got there,’ Niffy said. ‘Maybe if your paperwork wasn’t in such a state …’

  ‘What’s in the envelope anyway?’ Gina asked.

  ‘This is the letter my dad sent me. You know … about my mum. This is all the information he has about where she is, what she’s doing and how I might be able to get in touch with her.’

  ‘Oh, my gosh. Are you going to do anything about that?’ Gina asked. ‘I mean, I know you were thinking about it … but maybe you’ve changed your mind?’

  Amy gave a sigh. ‘It’s difficult,’ she admitted. ‘It really is difficult. My dad doesn’t want me to do this. But it’s my mum. I mean, I’ve never known my mum, I’ve never had a mum. Don’t you think I should be allowed to meet her? Even just the once?’

  Chapter Two

  GINA AND AMY were at the back of the queue to get into the classroom the next morning for French, and as soon as they entered the room Gina could see there was going to be a problem.

  The desks had been re-arranged, with everyone shaken out of their usual seating positions, and now the only two chairs left were one in front of and one beside the only girl in the whole school who Amy just couldn’t stand: Penny Boswell-Hackett.