The It Girl: Don't Tell the Bridesmaid

‘What on earth are you doing? Why are you walking down the stairs like a crab?’

‘I am walking down the stairs stealthily,’ I hissed back. ‘Keep your voice down. The slightest out-of-place noise will send Dog investigating and then he will see me with the suitcase and go into a FRENZY. Honestly, Dad, you are so unsubtle. You could never be a spy.’

But just then my arms failed me and the suitcase dropped from my hands, landing with a loud thunk on the stairs and then clonking down every last step before landing at Dad’s feet.

Dad and I froze.

We waited for the sound of Dog barging out of the sitting room. No footsteps came and I breathed a sigh of relief and motioned for Dad to quickly pick up the case and take it out through the door. I helped him get it into the boot, ignoring his grumbling about how I must have packed the kitchen sink and, for goodness’ sake, did I really need enough outfits to last me a year? In his day you would go for weeks with just a shirt on your back.

I didn’t think it was the right moment to remind him that things had moved on since Biblical times.

As we both turned back to the house, I gasped and stopped still. Dog was sitting on the front step watching us.

We were busted.

He must have seen the whole thing. ‘Dog,’ I began in my most soothing voice, ‘it’s not what it seems. I’m just going away for two weeks, but I’m not leaving you and I’ll be right back in no time. Dad’s going to make sure he gives you extra rations every day to make up for the inconvenience.’ Dad snorted next to me so I punched him on the arm. ‘Now, why don’t we just go back inside, sit down and talk this through like adults.’

I saw Dog’s eye twitch.

In a flash he was up on his paws, springing back into the house and flying up the stairs at full pelt. ‘NO, DOG, COME BACK!’ I yelled, bolting after him into the house and seeing the tip of his tail sailing into my bedroom. I rushed up the stairs and skidded to a halt in the doorway. Dog was standing on my bed facing me and in his mouth he was holding my phone.

‘Dog,’ I said slowly and calmly. ‘Let’s not do anything rash. We don’t want to do something we regret, do we?’

His tail swished slowly from side to side.

‘Give me my phone, Dog,’ I said gently, taking a step forward. He took a step back and shook his head in warning. Dad joined me in the doorway and let out a loud sigh when he saw us both in the position of a highly charged stand-off. ‘Dad, this is your fault.’

‘My fault?’

‘I told you that we’d been watching too many John Wayne movies. It was bound to rub off on him.’

‘Enough of this nonsense,’ Dad said, nudging me aside and striding forward confidently towards our Labrador. ‘Dog, drop!’

Knowing he had the upper hand, Dog waited until my dad was close enough and then he leapt down from the bed, dodging him and zooming past me back downstairs. Dad and I chased after him into the kitchen, stumbling to a sudden stop as we saw Dog dangling my phone over his water bowl from his drooly jaws.

‘Hellooooo!’ Helena cheerily sauntered into the house with Marianne and Mum in tow. ‘Anyone in?’

They came into the kitchen and saw Dad and me both standing like statues, watching Dog. ‘Oh dear.’ Mum bit her lip. ‘Did he see the suitcase?’

‘Don’t encourage Anna, Rebecca. The two things aren’t linked.’

‘Of course they are, Nicholas.’ Mum sighed. ‘It’s so like you to dismiss something so obvious.’

‘Dog, it’s just two weeks.’ I knelt down on my hands and knees to attempt a different approach, hoping he might back down if I wasn’t towering over him. ‘I promise I’m coming back. I’m just going to Rome.’

On the word ‘Rome’ there was a big splash as Dog released my phone from his jaw and it plopped perfectly into the middle of his water bowl. I closed my eyes in horror and Dog trotted past me with his head held high to go sulk in the sitting room. Soon enough I heard him chewing away on the Monopoly board just to hammer home how he felt about this situation.

‘Oh, Anna, your phone!’ Mum cried, quickly rescuing it and grabbing a tea towel, desperately trying to dab it dry.

‘You need to put it in a pack of rice,’ Marianne instructed, going immediately to the cupboards to find one.

‘That dog,’ Dad sighed as I clambered to my feet.

‘Don’t blame Dog,’ I said huffily. ‘It’s my fault for not being honest with him. Anyway, it’s about time I got a new phone – that one you got me is ancient.’

‘Let’s discuss it in the car.’ Dad threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘Now, everybody in.’

I let them all pile into the car and Dad stood tapping his foot, impatiently waiting to lock up as I sat cross-legged next to Dog, who was even sulkier now that Dad had taken away the Monopoly board and put absolutely anything of value out of his reach. All he had to distract him from his sorrows was a manky old tennis ball. I gave him a big cuddle and I think he must have forgiven me because he gave me a lick and a loving headbutt.

As soon as we had come through the airport doors and turned the corner to the check-in desk, we were hit by a barrage of shouting and paparazzi camera flashes.

At first I was shocked that they could possibly know which desk to wait for us at, but then I saw that our teacher, Mrs Ginnwell, was standing there holding a big sign that said ‘WOODFIELD CHECK-IN POINT’.

Helena, a paparazzi professional, immediately took it in her stride, guiding me towards Mrs Ginnwell and smiling angelically at the cameras as she swanned past in her wide-brimmed sunhat and billowing summer dress. Marianne clacked along in her heels next to her mum, wearing sunglasses that dwarfed her face, tiny denim shorts and a crisp white shirt, her arms and hands dripping in jewellery. I wish I could look so effortless in front of the national press but, you know, doing something as casual as checking in your luggage becomes much more difficult when you’ve got a hundred flash bulbs going off in your face and people shouting questions at you.

‘Anna, who are you wearing?’ (Actually, funny story – this T-shirt was originally a dress but Dog ate half of it to punish me when I turned the TV off halfway through Homeward Bound.) ‘Helena, any wedding dilemmas?’ (Yes, excellent question. Big dilemma, in fact: she is dressing her daughter and her stepdaughter up as giant purple Moomins.) ‘Marianne, is it true that you and Tom Kyzer are on the rocks?’ (Well, you obviously don’t have the whole moving-in-together scoop, duhbrain). ‘Anna, are you worried about causing chaos abroad after your recent disaster at the London Comic-Con event?’

I froze.

The reporter clearly smelt fear: ‘Anna, do you consider the embarrassment you might cause your friends and family when these incidents occur or do you like the attention? How is your boyfriend coping with the pressure . . .?’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘At HOME?’

All cameras suddenly pointed away from the rest of my family and focused entirely on me.

‘I . . . I . . .’

Suddenly Dad’s arm was round my shoulders, leading me away from the check-in desk and towards the security queue for departures. ‘Here’s your passport,’ he said, placing it in my hand. ‘What have I told you about the paparazzi? Ignore them.’

‘But they were asking about Connor!’ I felt horrible thinking about how Connor would react to being dragged into the latest news story when he wasn’t even here this time.

‘They’re trying to push your buttons – you know that. Don’t let them.’ He gave my shoulder a comforting squeeze as I nodded.

When we got to the queue, the press still swarming around us taking photos, Helena produced a thin box from her oversized handbag that she was now holding out for me.

‘A parting gift,’ she said, smiling. ‘Just a little something.’

‘Thanks, Helena!’ I took it from her nervously as a hush descended on our audience and rippling whispers of, ‘What’s in the box?’ and ‘Make sure you get the shot!’

I undid the ribbon, aware of several lenses focusing on my hands and wishing I had practised an I-love-this-gift expression. I opened the box and peered at the contents. ‘Wow! Great! Is it a fan? That’s . . . handy.’

‘Let me,’ said Helena, and, with a dramatic flourish, she lifted the fan and sharply released it, a cloud of glitter bursting from it into the air and raining down on us.

The crowd gasped and then burst into applause as Helena bowed her head to the flashbulbs in acknowledgement, fanning herself elegantly with my gift and showing me exactly how it’s done. Marianne may have been wearing her sunglasses but I could feel her rolling her eyes behind them.

‘What a wonderful present!’ my mum said excitedly. ‘Very useful for the heat in Rome and it’s so beautiful.’

‘Handmade by a charming geisha in Japan,’ Helena informed her, pointing at the colourful, detailed pattern. ‘I was filming for a few weeks out there once.’

‘Thanks, Helena,’ I said, brushing the glitter off my sleeves.

‘I’ve got you a little something too,’ Mum said, holding out a bag. I reached for it tentatively. Mum has always had a rather odd taste in gifts because they are mostly relics from far corners of the earth, which isn’t surprising considering she’s a well-known travel journalist, but my standard response of ‘great, Mum, this is so unique’ was wearing thin.

I put my hand cautiously inside the bag, ignoring Dad’s eyebrows, which were wriggling away in warning, and pulled out what can only be described as a grubby, jagged bit of rock.

‘Er – great, Mum, this is so unique!’

‘It is for guidance, wisdom and luck,’ she said knowingly. ‘Particularly useful now that you won’t have your phone on you to contact us when you need to. But at least you have this stone.’

I nodded. ‘Brilliant,’ I said, and shoved it in my pocket. ‘That’s great. Right, well, I better be going through, then. Thanks for the . . . uh . . . fan and the rock.’

I hugged them all goodbye and gave a final wave before joining the queue to get through security. Glancing back at my family, who were waving enthusiastically, the press still buzzing around them, I tried to ignore the whispers and pointed looks too, acting as though I didn’t know the person behind me in the queue was taking photos of my back.

‘See you for the wedding!’ Marianne cried over the crowd.

‘And try not to get into any trouble!’ Dad added.

I handed over my boarding pass, turning the corner and out of sight from them all, the sudden quiet making my worries seem all that bit louder in my head. This was Connor’s time to work on his comic and my time to have a sophisticated Italian experience. Without any embarrassing press stories. Either way, I just had to make sure I didn’t get into any trouble in Rome. Easy, right?

I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out the bit of rock. ‘I hope you work,’ I said under my breath to it, hoping no one was paying attention to me talking to a stone. I had a feeling I was going to need all the luck I could get.

I spotted Jess choking next to the perfume stand.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked as she coughed and spluttered all over the place.

‘I . . . sprayed . . . the . . . perfume . . . in . . . my . . . mouth.’

‘No, Jess, perfume doesn’t go there,’ I said, offering her the bottle of water I’d just bought. ‘It goes on your wrists.’

She gratefully glugged the water and then put her hands on her hips. ‘No kidding. The nozzle was facing the wrong way when I sprayed it. How come it took you so long to get here? Danny, Stephanie and I have already been round all the shops.’

‘My family gave me presents before I went through security.’

‘Going away presents? That’s so cute. What did they get you?’

‘A fan and a rock. Where are the others?’

Jess looked confused for a moment by the going-away offerings but didn’t comment. She was very used to my weird family by now. ‘Everyone’s in the bookshop. We’ve got to meet Mrs Ginnwell in ten minutes by the information point before going to the gate. I volunteered to wait here for you. So, were you OK with all that?’ she added, jerking her head back towards security.

‘Oh, yeah,’ I sighed. ‘I set off the alarm about ten times coming through the scanner and they couldn’t work out what it was. I thought maybe it was the rock, but they used that handheld beepy thing and it kept going off on my right arm.’

I held my arm out to illustrate my story. ‘But I’m not wearing any jewellery so the security woman was weirded out by the whole thing and that got me thinking: maybe I’m actually a product of a scientific experiment that went wrong and when I was little they injected me with an experimental serum just like Captain America, but it didn’t work out so my parents have kept it secret from me all this time and the only way I’ve discovered the truth is because whatever chemical runs through my veins sets off airport security scanners!’

Jess lifted an eyebrow. ‘Yeah, I actually meant were you OK with all the press out there, but thanks for that really long spiel of crazy.’

‘Oh.’ I checked my wrists suspiciously anyway. ‘Yeah, it was fine. Let’s go to the information point.’

As we walked, I filled Jess in on the family dinner.

‘Marianne and Tom are moving in together?’ She looked surprised. ‘I thought he was on tour at the moment.’

‘He is. When he gets back, they’ll sort it.’

‘Ah. More importantly, though, how did you leave things with Connor? Did he give you a passionate goodbye kiss?’ she teased, nudging me with her elbow as I swatted her away.

‘No! Well, you know.’

I felt my cheeks growing hot. It hadn’t exactly been the most romantic setting, what with my whole family in the car behind us as we stood at his doorstep.

‘Well, thanks for inviting me tonight,’ he’d said, as I spotted everyone in the car looking very obviously the other way. Except Dad who was having his head forcibly turned by Helena.

‘Thank you for coming,’ I replied. ‘I hope my family weren’t too overwhelming. They can be.’

He laughed. ‘They were great.’ He paused, pushing his fringe back. ‘I’m going to miss you, Spidey.’

I blushed at the nickname he’d given me on discovering that we were both big Marvel geeks.

I opened my mouth to say something along the lines of how I wished so badly he could come with me to Rome and was there any chance he could forget about the comic book for just two weeks. But I stopped myself, swallowing my words. It wasn’t fair. I should be proud of having such an intelligent and motivated boyfriend who was willing to give up his summer holidays to work on something he was passionate about.

‘I’ll miss you too.’

‘By the sounds of things, I’m not sure you will,’ Connor joked, looking slightly uncomfortable.

‘What are you talking about?’ I said, taken aback.

‘Oh, you know.’ He jerked his head towards the car before looking down at his feet. ‘What Helena said . . . You’ll be having too much fun.’

‘I’d have way more fun with you there.’

Connor smiled and reached across for my hand.

‘HOOOOOONK!’

I jumped round at the embarrassingly loud car horn just in time to see Helena giving my dad a reproving whack across the head.

Oh my God. Just let me curl up and die in a hole in Outer Mongolia right now.

‘Haha. I guess we should be used to having an audience by now.’ Connor laughed nervously. ‘At least they don’t have cameras.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m not sure a car horn is much better,’ I muttered, glaring at my dad.

‘It will be nice for you to escape the press in Italy. Plus,’ he smiled, ‘I’ll be shut away in my room most of the time working on The Amazing It Girl so they can’t use me as an excuse to hound you. I’ll be away from it all.’

‘Sure,’ I said, trying to match his enthusiasm. ‘Although, you know, it would have been better to get away from it all together.’

‘I know. It would have.’ He nodded. ‘But we’ll speak and message all the time, though.’

The car honked again and my dad gestured for me to hurry up, pointing at his watch. I felt a little better when I saw Helena give him yet another thwack over the head.

‘I better go!’ I sighed. ‘Good luck with the comic.’

And then that had been that.

‘That’s it ?’ Jess looked unimpressed.

‘What were you expecting?’ I laughed. ‘A pledge of his undying love?’

‘That would have been nice,’ she said before getting overexcited at all the headphones on display in the electrical store. She ran over to try them all on and I followed, picking up the first pair and shoving them over my ears, immediately shutting out all the busy airport noise with a tragically slow romantic ballad about heartbreak. Not quite what I needed right now, but I wasn’t going to show that in front of Jess.

I sighed. The truth was that I was a little disappointed at my goodbye with Connor. I don’t think some signs of a little more pain and heartbreak at having me leave the country for two weeks would have gone amiss. A little tear? The exchange of romantic tokens, perhaps? Obviously nothing gross like in the olden days when they exchanged lockets of hair, which, you know, probably would have creeped me out, but something.

I comforted myself with the reminder that Connor was shy and I wasn’t exactly the smoothest of operators. And that my dad seemed to have lost control of his senses when it came to what’s appropriate in a seeing-your-daughter’s-boyfriend-safely-to-the-door situation.

And they say that distance makes the heart grow fonder. Just like Arwen and Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings for example. Or Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson . . . Anyway, he had definitely said we’d speak every day. I’d probably even have an email from him waiting for me as soon as I landed telling me how much he regretted not being able to have a proper goodbye . . .

Suddenly my headphones were yanked off my head. ‘Hey!’ I spun round to find Jess was standing right next to me.

‘Didn’t you hear me say your name like a hundred times? It’s time to go join the group,’ she said, placing the headphones back on their stand. ‘You were in some sort of weird daydream.’

‘No, I wasn’t,’ I said, feeling my cheeks going hot and picking up my bag.

‘Oh, really?’ She raised her eyebrows and put my headphone to her ear. ‘I can’t imagine what you were thinking about.’

We came round the corner and saw Mrs Ginnwell waiting for everyone by the information point. She was now holding up a large yellow sign that said ‘WOODFIELD ASSEMBLING POINT’ and was waving a Union Jack with her other hand.

‘May I commend you, Mrs Ginnwell, on your variety of signs,’ Jess said, as we approached her.

‘Thank you, Miss Delby,’ she replied, gesturing for us to wait by her side. ‘Any more of that cheek and you’ll be making notes on the architecture of the hotel while everyone else is at the end-of-trip party. Understand?’

Jess scowled and I pursed my lips, trying not to laugh. I had to give it to Mrs Ginnwell, she was taking her job very seriously, making sure the students were all under control. Unlike the other two members of staff, Miss Lawler and Mr Crowne, who were having a heated debate in the bookshop over the best crime writers, and Mr Kenton, who I spotted in the arcade playing on a zombie game with James Tyndale.

I laughed when I saw James throw up his arms in victory after destroying the zombies, forcing a grumpy-looking Mr Kenton to declare him the winner and earning a congratulatory high-five from his best friend, Brendan Dakers. James has a competitive streak, which admittedly had been very handy when he was on my team last term for Sports Day, but also, it turns out, can be really quite tiring when he regularly shows up at your door in the summer holidays expecting you to join him for a ‘casual jog’.

Clearly I tried to refuse every time because (a) Sports Day was over and we had won so there was no point in doing physical exercise any more and (b) I’m not an insane person who runs for fun.

But he forced me to go running with him and then kept yelling stupid stuff at me that was meant to be motivating, like ‘keep those knees up’, and ‘winners don’t take breaks’ and ‘Anna, try not to fall in the pond this time’.

So it really didn’t come as any surprise that he would be taking zombie games very seriously indeed.

James caught my eye and shot me a triumphant grin. I was giving him one back when Jess elbowed me in the ribs, gleefully drawing my attention to the whining voice nearby coming from the Queen Bee of our school, Sophie Parker. This time she was pompously demanding to know from Mrs Ginnwell where she could make a formal complaint about the airport.

Danny wandered over with Stephanie. ‘What’s all the fuss about this time?’ he whispered, keen not to put himself in the way of Sophie Parker’s latest angry tirade.

It didn’t work. She fixed him with a death stare. ‘They took my water at security.’

‘Just buy a new drink,’ Jess snorted.

‘It wasn’t just any drink,’ Sophie hissed, flicking her hair back dramatically behind her shoulders. Sophie was not Jess’s biggest fan. She wasn’t particularly fond of either of us, but at least she wasn’t threatened by me. In her eyes, I was just one big loser who kept getting in her way. Jess, on the other hand, being beautiful and sporty, was Sophie’s biggest nightmare.

‘It was an incredibly expensive, special type of flavoured water that regenerates your skin cells from the inside out,’ parroted Josie Graham, sounding like a really bad TV advert. Sophie’s minion, Josie, was never far from her Queen Bee’s side and hated me more than anyone else in the school. Probably because I once set her on fire and then another time hit her in the face with a discus. They were both accidents, but it is really bad luck that she should be the victim on both occasions. She looked down her nose at me. ‘The water is imported – from Italy.’

‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,’ Jess laughed, causing Sophie to puff up angrily. ‘Where do you think we’re going today?’

‘Thank you, girls – that’s enough,’ Miss Ginnwell interjected, before a full-on brawl could ensue. ‘Sophie, you know you can’t bring liquids through security. It’s your own fault for not checking the rules. Right, I think everyone is here.’ Mrs Ginnwell put her sign down and clapped her hands together. Looking furious about being so easily dismissed, Sophie folded her arms and shot daggers at a smug-looking Jess. ‘You will all have an allocated seat on your ticket,’ Mrs Ginnwell continued. ‘That is where you will sit on the plane. I don’t want anyone swapping or complaining. Is that clear? It will just cause a lot of fuss and make things much more difficult for the members of staff to keep track of you all.’

There was an immediate burst of chatter as everyone rummaged around for their ticket and conferred with their friends.

‘We’re miles away!’ I exclaimed, as Jess and I compared.

‘We’re two rows away, Anna,’ she smiled. ‘I’m sure you can cope.’

‘Hey, I’m in the row in front of you,’ James pointed out, looking over my shoulder.

‘Cool! We can pass messages!’ I exclaimed without thinking, causing Jess to cover up a laugh by pretending to have a coughing fit.

‘Can we paint each other’s nails too?’ James grinned.

Swallow me up now, please, ground.

But if I thought that situation was awkward it was nothing compared to the plummeting in my stomach when I boarded the plane and saw just who I was sitting next to.

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