Jealous Girl Page 11

  She'd decided to phone Menzie just as soon as she could get to the boarding-house payphone. She wanted to speak to him and wish him happy birthday as early as she could. At 4 p.m. it would be 8 a.m. in LA; if she hurried, she could still catch him before he went to school.

  As soon as her last lesson had finished, Gina rushed back to the boarding house, dumped her things and dialled her long internationally coded home number.

  It rang and rang and rang out. Finally she hung up and tried her mother's mobile, knowing they'd only be able to speak for a moment or two because the credit on her phone card would be used up so quickly.

  'Lorelei Winkelmann,' her mother answered in her most businesslike tone.

  'Hi, Mom, it's me! I just wanted to wish Menzie happy birthday.'

  'Oh, baby, hi!' came the faint voice way down the other end of the line. 'I'm sorry, I've just dropped him off at breakfast club. I have a really early meeting today. I'll tell him you called. He'll be out of school at four, so try him at home then. Baby, I have to go,' her mother added. 'Is everything OK?'

  'Yeah . . . love you,' Gina answered quickly, because there just wasn't time to talk about how nothing felt OK now. She'd have to wait for eight whole hours before she could speak to her brother. It felt terrible! She'd have to ask Mrs Knebworth for special permission to stay up late enough. But what would her mom understand about any of this anyway? Busy, busy Mom and her early meeting.

  'Love you too,' her mother answered cheerfully.

  Click. Then the line was dead.

  Gina replaced the receiver, feeling a hard lump of sadness in her throat. She was homesick. That's how homesickness came – in unexpected tidal waves that washed over you and made you wish and wish that like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz you could click your heels three times and find yourself in your own back yard, surrounded by the people who loved you best.

  It was hard to be so far away from them. But the feeling would pass, Gina knew this. It was like a dizzy spell: you had to close your eyes and breathe deeply for a few minutes and it would pass. So she was startled when the phone began to ring loudly, the sound rattling around the little telephone cubicle.

  She picked up the receiver and gave a husky 'Hello?'

  'Hello, could I speak to Gina Peterson please?'

  There was no mistaking the warm male voice. It was Dermot.

  Gina was caught off guard and wasn't sure what to say next. She was so stunned, she didn't even know if she could say anything. For a moment she thought she'd pretend to be someone else and get out of the phone call.

  'Gina?' she began shakily, trying to disguise her voice and intending to say, Could you call back later?

  'Gina?' Dermot repeated. 'It's you, isn't it?'

  'Erm . . . yes,' she answered awkwardly.

  'Were you trying to pretend it wasn't? I don't blame you,' he went on, before she had to make any stupid excuses for herself. 'I'm not exactly a catch, am I? Boring boy who works in café and rudely storms off when you want to be nice to him.'

  He gave something of a gulp at the end of this and Gina suspected he was just as nervous as she was.

  'I do occasionally make jokes though,' he added. 'That's my redeeming feature. Jokes – though they are usually bad ones.'

  'They're not,' Gina was quick to protest. 'I quite like your jokes.'

  'Quite? You quite like them?' Dermot asked. 'I think I'd better hang up now – there's no way you're going to come out with me, is there?'

  But Gina could hear the warmth in his voice . . . and she was unwinding, relaxing, basking in that warmth as if it was a ray of sunshine beaming out of the receiver at her.

  He was going to ask her out again! If she was really, really lucky. They were going to have another chance at being together.

  'I might,' she told him, teasing a little herself now, 'if you asked me on the right kind of date.'

  'Oh no! No! Don't say that. The pressure!' Dermot joked. 'I can't take the pressure. I'm sweating here.'

  'Well,' Gina broke in, thinking that maybe she could make this easier for him, 'you know that exhibition at the Modern Art Gallery . . . and the cakes?'

  'Oh yes – no forgetting the cakes.'

  'Well, maybe we could do that? On Sunday? And I'll try and come in and see you on Saturday afternoon . . . if that's OK?'

  Suddenly she remembered him telling her coldly to just forget it. 'You're sure you want to do this?' she asked him quickly, because she didn't think she could cope with being told no by him again.

  'Yeah, I'm sure,' he said. 'I'm really sorry about that last time. I was just wound up. I didn't mean it.'

  'Sure.' Gina let him off. 'So Saturday at the café . . . if I can make it, and Sunday, say two-thirty? At the gallery?'

  'Yeah! Excellent!'

  Yeah! Excellent! was just what Gina was thinking as she hurried up to Iris dorm after the phone call, a big smile plastered across her face, to tell Amy about this latest exciting development in the Gina/Dermot saga. Scarlett? Scarlett was nothing now. Well, no, that wasn't true: Scarlett was already a pile of notes, dialogue and scenes coming together in a little notebook on her desk in the boarding-house study room.

  When she burst into the dorm, she found Min lying on her bed, nose buried in some textbook, and Amy at her chest of drawers, about to tackle one of her favourite chores: the tidying and rearranging of her lovely luxury items. She even had a little face-cloth in her hand, so she could polish her make-up cases and the expensive gold-topped bottles of cleanser and moisturizer.

  'What's up?' Amy asked, her eyes on the blue and gold leather box that held her prized diamond pendant. It had been quite a few days since she'd worn it last – in fact Amy suddenly couldn't remember exactly when she'd last felt the cool touch of the gold palm tree against her neck. Just to reassure herself, and to cast a satisfied smile on those lovely stones, she took the box in her hand and gently eased open the lid.

  'I've got a date with Dermot,' Gina began excitedly. 'He phoned! We've made up and he wants to go out on—'

  But she couldn't finish her sentence because Amy's sharp gasp cut right across it.

  'Aargh!'

  Both Min and Gina looked over with concern. Had Amy hurt herself?

  She was staring at the box in disbelief. 'It's empty!' she exclaimed, horrified. 'My necklace has gone!'

  'No!' Min was the first to speak. 'It can't have!'

  'Maybe you put it somewhere else?' Gina suggested; then, realizing how shocked her friend was, she offered, 'I'll help you look. Where else could it be?'

  The next twenty minutes were spent in a panicky but nevertheless thorough search of Amy's jewellery boxes, Amy's drawers, the dorm wardrobe, even the pockets of all Amy's clothes.

  Finally they had to admit that the necklace wasn't there.

  Amy was on the verge of tears. 'I loved it!' she exclaimed. 'I just loved it so much. It was the first piece of really special jewellery that my dad has ever bought for me! Oh, God! Where has it gone? Where could it be?'

  After another frantic search of every possible location and hiding place in the dorm, Amy flung herself down on her bed and, in a burst of sadness and fury, cried out, 'Why do I get the feeling that Penny Boswell-Hackett has something to do with this?'

  Chapter Twenty

  Lockers at St Jude's weren't locked, but they were still private. It just didn't do to go looking in other people's lockers. It wasn't a school rule, but it was part of the school code. If anyone ever looked in someone else's locker, they needed the owner's permission and a very good reason – or else serious trouble would follow.

  So the next day, when classes ended, Amy and Gina felt ill at ease hanging about in the Upper Fifth locker room.

  'What are we going to say we're here for?' Gina asked nervously. 'You know . . . if someone sees us.'

  'If someone sees us,' Amy repeated with emphasis, 'then we say we're waiting for someone who's at music practice because we're walking into town with them. Honestly, this will take two
minutes. Don't be such a baby!'

  'I'm not!' Gina snapped, then added, 'If I'm such a baby, maybe you should have got your little mini-me, Rosie, to come and do this job with you.'

  'Oh shut up, Gina,' said Amy. 'Rosie's driving me up the wall.' Almost under her breath, she muttered, 'How do you let someone know you don't want to see quite so much of them without being really mean?'

  'I don't know,' Gina told her snippily. 'I guess it's not a problem I've had: being sooooo popular.'

  'Shut up,' Amy snapped again. 'Just stand at the door and make sure the coast is clear. That's all I'm asking you to do. You aren't going to have your hands in the till; you aren't going to be in trouble if someone comes in . . . If,' Amy repeated when she saw the worried look on Gina's face.

  She had already searched through Penny's desk in the lunch break and now she was going to search her locker.

  She didn't hold out much hope. The thing about day girls was that they went home. If they had stolen your prized possessions, they weren't going to leave them hanging around the school for long, were they? No. They were going to run home with them as fast as their little legs could carry them.

  Still, Amy had reasoned, she had to do something. She had ransacked the entire Iris dorm to no avail. She had put up MISSING! posters all over the boarding house. The necklace was definitely stolen.

  'Yes, stolen,' she kept telling her friends. 'Diamond necklaces do not get lost.'

  Penny had it. She was convinced of that! Somehow she must have taken her necklace off or dropped it, and then Penny had got hold of it. Anyone else would have given Amy her necklace back.

  'OK, I can't see anyone,' Gina announced, reluctant to be drawn into this.

  The door of Penny's locker was now open and Amy was surprised to see so many books and stacks of paper in front of her.

  'Oh, mince!' she exclaimed. 'Half the contents of the school library are in here – it's going to take me ages to search through all this.'

  'Well, search quickly,' Gina hissed.

  Amy speedily began to empty the locker. She hated Penny so much, she almost didn't want to touch her things. She certainly did not, under any circumstances, want to be caught doing this.

  'What is all this stuff?' she asked as she began to sort through the papers.

  'Just hurry up – you're looking for a necklace, not reading Penny: The Collected Works,' Gina snapped.

  The locker was empty now. There were books, papers, a hockey stick, a school cardigan and an umbrella on the floor beside it. Amy ran a hand over the shelves just to double check, but there was nowhere that a diamond necklace could be hidden.

  She hadn't really expected to find it though, had she? She replaced the hockey stick, the umbrella and the cardigan. Then she lifted up the first of the books, intending to put them back. It was just something about the words printed on the papers between them that caught her eye:

  An original work by . . .

  She stopped and gave it some consideration. She fanned the papers out in her hand: The Dinner, an original work by Tim O'Malley, and then, on freshly printed sheets beside them, Dinner with Peter, by Penny B-H. Amy began to read. By page two, ignoring the hisses from Gina, she knew that Penny was rewriting some not-very-well-known play to enter into the house drama competition.

  She was cheating!

  'Come and look at this!' Amy instructed Gina. 'C'mon – I'll keep watch at the door. I just need to know I'm not imagining this and that Penny Boswell- Hackett really is cheating. Come on!' She thrust the pages into Gina's hands and took over at the door look-out post.

  Gina turned them over, taking in the similarities between the two plays. Yes, many of the words had been changed but the sense still remained the same.

  'Sit down, Mr Pym, and let me pour you a glass of wine,' for instance, had been turned into: 'Mr Baker, take a seat and let me get you a drink.' And so it went on for the whole page.

  'Ohmigod!' Gina muttered under her breath. 'I can't believe she'd do this. Does she honestly think no one will notice? That no one in the entire school has ever heard of this writer?'

  Amy came over and read out the name of the real playwright: 'Tim O'Malley – well, he doesn't sound that well known. She's hoping she'll get away with it.'

  At that moment Gina looked up into Penny's locker and spied the hockey stick. 'That's a hockey stick,' she said to Amy anxiously.

  'Yes! You're really coming on, Gina. Soon you'll be able to recognize a lacrosse stick too,' Amy joked back.

  'That's Penny's hockey stick' – Gina was pointing at the locker now – 'and didn't Niffy send us an email to say there was a Scottish team hockey practice but she wasn't going to come up to it . . . And wasn't it on Wednesday evening? Which would be today?'

  Amy looked at the stick now. It was very shiny and new. There wasn't a scrape or a scratch or a single graze on the smooth wooden head. It was brand new. A very expensive model. The kind of thing a proud parent might buy their daughter as a present for making it into the Scottish hockey team.

  'OK, I think we should just pack these things away now,' Amy said briskly. 'Just to be on the safe side . . . But I'm sure she's not going to come back here now.'

  As they re-packed the locker hastily, they were startled by the sound of a door opening further down the corridor; and now footsteps were approaching – at a run.

  'Quick!' Amy instructed, snatching the books and papers from Gina and trying to bundle them back into the locker as fast as she possibly could.

  But the locker-room door had now flown open, and although Amy tried to slam Penny's locker shut, there were too many things in the way and it just bounced straight back open again.

  'Just what the hell do you think you're doing?' came the enraged shout.

  Both Gina and Amy were horrified to see the one girl they did not want there, staring at them in shock.

  'What are you doing?' Penny Boswell-Hackett repeated furiously. 'That's my locker! You sneaky little thieves!'

  Amy immediately went over to confront Penny. 'How dare you?' she stormed back. 'Something very valuable has been stolen from me. I looked in your locker because I was sure you'd know something about it.'

  Now Penny looked even more furious, her face flushed and her eyes flashing at Amy. 'Why would I want to take anything from you?' she stormed. 'What on earth do you think you've got that I would even want!'

  'A beautiful diamond necklace,' Amy replied.

  At this, a quite genuine look of surprise crossed Penny's face. 'I don't want your necklace. I don't have your necklace. I don't know anything about it,' she said coldly. 'And I'm going to report you for going through my locker.'

  'No, you're not.' Gina spoke up for the first time.

  'Keep your nose out of it!' Penny snapped at her.

  'Yeah, but you're not,' Gina continued steadily, 'because we've found something of yours that proves you are still a thief.'

  'What are you talking about?' Penny came towards her, frowning.

  'Here . . .' Amy reached into the locker and brought out the incriminating typed pages. She thrust them in Penny's direction.

  Both girls could see Penny recoil in shock.

  'Wh-what? What do you mean?' she stammered, then recovered. 'That's just homework.' She snatched the pages out of Amy's hand.

  'I don't think so,' Gina told her. 'I think you'll find that's plagiarism. Ever heard of it? Go look it up.'

  'What are you talking about?' Penny continued to defend herself.

  'I think you know exactly what I'm talking about. You're taking quite a chance, aren't you, that Mrs Parker has never ever heard of Tim O'Malley?' Gina kept her voice steady.

  'What are you talking about?' Penny repeated, desperately clinging to her pretence of ignorance. She brushed past them, flung the papers into her locker and got out her hockey stick. 'I'm late!' she shouted.

  'Fine!' Amy said, her voice also raised. 'You don't mention our locker search to anyone and we won't mention O'Malley.'

  Pe
nny turned on her heel and left the room without another word.

  When the door had slammed behind her, there was silence until Amy turned to Gina and admitted, 'OK, I don't think it was her.' With an angry glare, she added, 'But then who was it? I've got to find out!'

  Chapter Twenty-one

  'Just a coffee is fine for me,' Gina insisted as she and Dermot stood at the counter in the Modern Art Gallery café. She'd had to tell the Neb she was gathering research for a project Amy and Min weren't doing so she could meet him here.

  'No cake?' Dermot protested. 'You can't come here and not eat the cake! It's not humanly possible.'

  Gina looked once again at the glass-fronted shelves of food in front of her. The cakes, she had to admit, looked great. No, the cakes looked fantastic. There was carrot cake weighed down with a thick layer of cream-cheese frosting. There were fat blueberry muffins bursting out of their paper cases. Most tempting of all was the dark, shiny, downright sinful chocolate cake.

  Dermot had already ordered a thick slice but Gina was wearing tight, tight jeans for this date and she had to think about how she was going to get into them – not just today but in future.

  'Erm, no . . .' She hesitated. 'I'll just have a mouthful of yours.'

  'Oh, you will?' Dermot asked playfully.

  Despite her protests, he insisted on paying for her coffee, teasing, 'It's OK, I know I don't have my own swimming pool, but I can afford a round of coffees.'

  A comment that made her blush right to the roots of her hair. 'Don't,' she told him off. 'Don't go on about that stuff. It doesn't matter.'

  They'd already spent nearly an hour and a half touring the white rooms together, admiring the works of art, and this was the first time Dermot had made any reference to Gina being from a family that was so much wealthier than his.

  It didn't matter, Gina saw now. She had made it into a much bigger deal than it was.

  When they sat down at a table for two, Dermot pushed his cake towards her and she saw that he had picked up two forks.