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  I totally wanted to dislike something about her, so I went for the hair. Everyone has better hair than me, so there was bound to be some mileage in Aggie’s hair … But no, dammit! It was … you know, fine. Darker brown than mine, almost chestnutty, but still basically brown. Straight but not swishy, with a tell-tale ridge above her right ear that smacked of extensive use of the GHDs, and shiny but in a clean, healthy way, not a salon-supplied sheen. Actually, now I looked properly, she looked like Dean in a wig, with boobs. Which is funny, because apparently I look like my dad in a wig. No boobs though. And a really bad wig.

  Then suddenly she was staring right back at me (green eyes but sludgy hazel, not bright emerald mermaid gorgeousness or anything), half-smiling, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear and obviously wondering why I was gawping at her like an idiot. Everyone else was looking at me too, and Mum was saying, ‘Aren’t you, Cat?’ like I was meant to have been paying attention and possibly even joining in.

  I nodded and shrugged at the same time, hoping that would cover all possibilities of what I was supposed to have been listening to. ‘Yeah, you know …’ I said vaguely.

  And right then, Aggie revealed her demonic evil side. ‘I’ve got a couple of friends in Year 12 at Trevellyan,’ she said with a quick widening of the eyes.

  Oh, I knew that look. It said: I’ve got you covered. Here’s the thing we were talking about, and you can pick it up from here like you weren’t ignoring everything we said while you weighed me up like someone on Dragon’s Den.

  I was just about to join in and ask her which Year 12s were her friends, when she played her ace. ‘I’d like to have gone to Trevellyan too,’ she said, ‘but it’s way too academic for me.’

  Gotcha, I thought. Now I know your game, lady. She was trying to be nice. Nice! To out-nice me by flattering my braininess as well as handing me get-out-jail cards like Smarties.

  Ha. Nobody can out-nice me. Not even Dolores. And definitely not Miss ‘Let’s-be-sisters’ over there.

  By now everyone was looking at me again as if I was supposed to say something. Mum had practically turned purple trying to send me telepathic messages.

  So I just said, ‘Ah well. It’s not for everybody.’

  Mum nodded quickly, almost sighing with relief.

  And then I added: ‘But they let my friend Dolores in, so it must be possible for not-so-bright people to get in too. Maybe you should try next year for Year 13?’

  I know, I know. I was trying to be nice, really I was. Extra nice, to out-nice Miss Nicely Mannered, but somehow it came out a bit wrong. Aggie paused while she thought about how to respond, a slightly odd expression on her face, then said, ‘Thanks. I’m actually leaving at the end of Year 12 though, I think.’

  Okay, so I probably gawped.

  ‘What, and not go to university?’

  It came out without my permission, but seriously … Not get A levels and A starred this and that and go to open days and do a degree in filling in UCAS applications? This I could not get my head around, and I think I actually stared at her with my head on one side and knitted eyebrows, as if she were in a specimen jar. Aggie: the lesser known Perfectlius Ordinarius …

  Anyway, before I could open mouth and insert foot any further, Mum glared at me, grabbed the bottle of wine from Dean and marched us all into the kitchen. She slugged back a large bucketful at the breakfast bar while she was pouring Dean’s glass and offering Aggie one … Yes, Aggie was offered one but not me. Aggie, seventeen already and in Year 12, about to leave school and go and be officially grown up, versus me, barely sixteen and still in school, about to do exams followed by more exams and then some more exams for the next forty two years. At this rate I might never be offered a glass of wine by my own mother. She’d become an old lady and die before she ever considered me grown up enough.

  ‘Oh, no, thank you, Rachel,’ Aggie said to my mother. ‘I’d rather just have water.’

  ‘Yeah, me too, thanks, Mum,’ I said quickly, as if I had an option.

  ‘Good,’ she said, pouring another half-bucket into her own glass. ‘I’ll have yours then.’

  ‘I’ll have the rest,’ said Dean, holding out his empty glass pointedly. ‘Aggie’s driving.’

  Oh, spare me, I thought, while we young adults eyed each other cautiously and the old adults made overly-bright conversation about work and cars and the weather as Mother Dearest got the pizza out of the oven.

  So that’s Aggie, I thought. Perfectly normal and normally perfect. She doesn’t drink, she drives already, she’s got non-straight hair that can be straightened and shiny, and to top it all off, she’s nice. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. I decided there and then to hate her no matter what. To thwart her, I just needed to find her Achilles heel …

  For a long while I thought it was going to be impossible. We sat on four sides of the pizza, trading niceness for about an hour. During that hour I discovered that she liked ski-ing, making her own clothes (hence the dress) and was studying hair and beauty at college. Aggie and her dad had been on their own since her mum died when she was thirteen – she didn’t say much more about that, other than they’d “worked out how to manage”.

  ‘Maybe you can pass the info on to my mum,’ I said with a wink at my mother, and Aggie actually laughed.

  ‘I’m sure your mum does fine,’ she said.

  Stop right there, madam, I thought. I was not handing her chances to oil up to my mother. It was time to let her know the truth about Mother Dearest.

  ‘I had to get the pizza myself,’ I told her. ‘And put it in the oven.’

  Mum pretend-coughed into her hand. ‘SNITCH!’

  Dean laughed, and I saw instantly where Aggie got her fake niceness from. ‘We parents all have to rely on pizza – and our kids – when we’re on our own.’ And he actually held my mother’s hand across the table.

  Both Aggie and I stared at the entwined fingers as if they were about to explode, and then Aggie broke the tension.

  Of course.

  ‘So Dad tells me you’re a translator, Rachel. That must be interesting.’ Perfect. Smart and nice and perfect. Hate you hate you hate you …

  Mum smiled. ‘It started out being interesting. I’d work on political debates and the like, and we lived in some lovely places around the world. But then Cather … Cat’s dad and I split up and it made sense to be back here permanently. I mostly translate books these days.’

  True enough. When our cosy family unit evaporated, Mum said she didn’t have the heart for more arguments, which was mostly what the political stuff entailed, so she went for other translation work she could do from home as I started at Trevellyan. That’s how she met Dean, translating some PhD thesis that he needed to read for his genitals. Acchh! Darn you, Dolores. Genetics.

  ‘Wow. So where have you lived?’ Aggie turned to me like she was genuinely into the whole thing.

  ‘Dubai. Berlin. Brussels. Jersey.’ I shrugged. ‘Mostly at international schools, and all while I was little so I don’t really remember them much apart from Belgium.’

  Did I say she was only pretending to be interested? Well, now I knew for sure, because suddenly she became all animated and fascinated, and not at the sound of the cooler places like Dubai or Germany. ‘Ooo, the lead singer in this band I like comes from Jersey. Maybe you’ve heard of them …’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘I don’t like bands apart from seventies rock groups.’

  Actually that was pretty much true. Glam rock bands from the seventies, madrigal and choral stuff, and some Simon and Garfunkel duets that Mum made me listen to as we roamed the world.

  ‘Oh,’ said Aggie, obviously disappointed. ‘They’re quite big at the moment. Double Vision. I thought you might have come across them.’

  Aha. That lot. And stupid Jazzy Divine from stupid Double Vision was from Jersey, was he? I’d only been to the weeny island for about six months when I was just starting school. Back then, I definitely wasn’t interested in bands
other than the Wiggles.

  But suddenly, and do NOT ask me how, it came out. All wrong. Too much. I blame Dolores entirely – otherwise, how could I have known about such matters?

  ‘Right, yeah, Double Vision,’ I said casually, nodding as if to say, “oh, them! Well, of course I know about them.”

  And then out it popped. Unbidden. Unprovoked, apart from by the perfectly nice nature of Aggie. ‘And yes, I do know Jazzy Divine. He went to my school.’

  Aggie actually screamed with joy and envy, and for a second I saw how well she’d get on with Dolores. ‘No! You don’t. You know the Divine Jazzy D? Omigod, I can’t believe it!’

  Mum was gazing at me across the table too. ‘Neither can I,’ she said slowly with a small smile, because 1) she always knows when I’m lying and 2) she remembers us being in Jersey better than I do and knew for sure that I never met a Jazzy Divine while we practiced our alphabets.

  What she didn’t know, though, was that I was texting Dolores under the table. The answer to my quick question arrived silently and I checked it while pretending to scoop up my serviette.

  ‘Well, he wasn’t called Jazzy Divine at school, Mum.’ I rolled my eyes as if I was talking to an innocent toddler. ‘His name was Jason Devaney. Two years above me.’

  The second bit was a wild guess based on the fact that Dolores had texted me:

  OMG, you finly get it! Jason Devaney 18

  ... and I figured that 18 had to be his age and not part of his name, as if he was Jason Devaney the 18th from a long line of Jason Devaneys.

  ‘And you met him?’ This was Mum and Aggie together. Dean was well stuck into his third cab sauvignon and looked like he couldn’t care less.

  ‘Sure,’ I drawled. ‘In fact, we’ve emailed each other a little since then.’

  Stop, Cat. Stop now. Cease and desist. Somehow I couldn’t shut myself up. What was going on? Lies were pouring out of me faster than the wine into Dean’s glass …

  ‘You’ve got Jazzy D’s email address?’ squeaked Aggie, sounding more like a twelve year old with every question.

  ‘Well, yes … um, no,’ I said quickly. It was getting out of hand. Next she’d be asking me for it. ‘We talk via his … err … manager.’

  At this, Aggie nearly fainted. Her voice, when it finally came out, was barely a whisper. ‘You’ve got Stephen Scowl’s email address? But nobody gets that!’

  Especially not me, I thought. I’d barely even heard of Stephen Scowl. He didn’t feature much in choral competitions. Now, Gareth Malone I’d have known anywhere. Why couldn’t I have pretended to know Gareth Malone? He’s so chirpy and friendly he’d probably be willing to go along with a big fat lie if it meant getting a choral fan out of trouble.

  ‘I … explained to Stephen that I was an … old friend from Jersey,’ I stuttered, anxiously shredding my napkin and wishing I could tear up the past five minutes as easily. ‘He’s really quite…’

  Fortunately, or unfortunately as it turned out, Aggie had stopped listening. Suddenly she reached across the table and grabbed me by the upper arm. I mouthed ‘Ow’ silently and she loosened her grip a little.

  ‘Cat, you know what’s happening next week, don’t you?’ Her sludgey green eyes were swimming with happy tears. ‘They’re in town, playing at the Zed. Double Vision are right here. Could you … could we meet up with Jazzy Divine?’

  It just got worse. Worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. So much worse. Next she held my hand, as if I was a fairy godmother or something and could grant her wishes.

  ‘Oh my god. I can’t imagine anything more exciting. It would be the most wonderful thing to happen since Mum was alive.’

  Holy sainted mother of Perfect Aggie. What could I say to that? ‘I’d still have to get tickets, and they’re probably sold out …’ I hissed weakly.

  ‘Don’t you worry about that!’ Dean had suddenly revived. Lordy. One mention of his dead wife and he was a laser-focussed scientist all over again. ‘I’ll pull some strings at work. We’ve got some promotional connections with the Zed. I’ll get you a pair of tickets, no trouble.’

  We all stared at each other with tears in our eyes.

  Look at us all, bonding, said the tears in Mum and Dean’s eyes.

  I’m going to meet the Divine Jazzy D to make up for my mother dying, said Aggie’s eyes.

  I am the most miserable, lying human being on earth and utterly in despair, said my eyes. What in the name of Stephen Hawking had I done?

  ‘You’d better get three tickets,’ I said to Dean, as he and Aggie hugged each other with disgusting amounts of father-daughter glee.

  If I was going to do this, I would definitely be needing Dolores.

  Chapter 3: Teenage Dream (Bay City Rollers)

  Dolores, naturlich (that’s German, btw, because I like German from when I lived there. It’s a very logical language where many small words slot together like Lego to make long words and the scientist in me just liebes it. That’s German for love, btw – liebe. Ich for I, liebe for love, Deutsch for German … though it’s normally “Ich liebe dich” which means I love you and similar dross and is rank, vomit-worthy and utterly unacceptable) … Gott in Himmel, where was I going with all that?

  Ach, ja.

  Dolores, naturally, thought the whole thing was completely brilliant, mainly because she was going to get a free ticket to the Double Vision gig. She tried pretending she cared about meeting Aggie and seeing how the “step-sisters” got along, (‘Badly,’ I told her) while all the time reminding me that I’d ignored every comment she’d ever made about the band and the Divine Jazzy D, so I must really really really want to impress Aggie.

  ‘I told you three months ago that they were on at the Zed,’ she said as we navigated the corridor towards the biology lab, with me sending evil stares to any male who got distracted by her bazoomas. ‘You took no notice whatsoever.’

  ‘You did not tell me that; I would have remembered.’

  With a sigh, Dolores recounted the incident. ‘You were talking about chemical symbolism or something and all the different letters and you mentioned Z for something and I said that Double Vision were on at the Zed and you said you’d be more interested in a double … something. Double heels?’

  Ah. Now I remembered. ‘Double helix. Heeeeelix, to rhyme with Feeelix. It’s a DNA thing. Science, you know. In fact, if you— ̕

  ‘AND AND AND,’ said Dolores, holding up a finger as she thought of something else, ‘I told you last week that Jazzy D was being interviewed in Hotso, saying how happy he was to be coming to our town.’

  ‘You know I’d never read Hotso.’

  ‘You didn’t have to!’ said Dolores, sweeping off to the left down the bio corridor with her bosom leading like the prow of a ship. ‘I read it aloud to you during lunch. You kept saying mm mm mmm, like you were really listening.’

  Oh yeah. Well, she had me on that one, too. ‘I think I was just enjoying my sandwich.’

  Dolores spun around in the laboratory doorway and stuck her finger practically up my nose. ‘Well, you’d better listen to me now, Miss Clever-Clogs,’ she said fiercely in a teacher voice. ‘Remember, I’m the brainy one where Double Vision and Jazzy D are concerned. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’ Wowsers. She was feisty when I’d got her annoyed. ‘Okay, okay. So where do we start?’

  She plonked her files down on the desk and whipped out her phone. ‘Google, of course. We need to know where he went to school, when he was there, if he might possibly ever have even met you. And then we go on Facebook, Skype, YouTube, Tumblr and the DV website to see if there’s any way to contact him and pretend you actually know him. Oh, and we’d better do the same for Stephen Scowl.’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ I said, and I meant it. Blimey, Dolores sounded really bright and in-chargey when she was discussing stuff she actually knew something about.

  Unfortunately, though, it was bad timing, as just then Miss Sargeson strode into the lab looking all clinical in her white
lab coat, and barked at Dolores to put her phone away.

  ‘She wasn’t calling anyone, Miss, honest,’ I said. ‘Just Googling.’

  ‘Not helping,’ muttered Dolores under her breath.

  ‘Dolores can Google on her own time, thank you, Ms Andrews,’ said Miss Sargeson sharply – to me – and then she strutted over and plucked the phone out of Dolores’ hand. ‘You can get this back at the end of the day. Now, please get your lung out and dissect it.’

  ‘Ca-at,’ moaned Dolores, but she stopped abruptly when Teach glared at us again.

  ‘Lungs! Now!’ she barked.

  Sighing deeply, we trooped over to the bloody pile of innards that were on the front bench (yeah, she wasn’t actually asking us to slice open our chests, rip out an organ and cut it into little pieces – though if she had, I reckon one of Dolores’ lungs would probably have gone round the whole class). I selected a particularly handsome specimen that looked like it had come from a good, strong, opera-singing cow, and hoiked it back to our lab bench.

  From that moment on, I must confess, I was pretty much back into ignoring everything that Dolores was saying – something about blood and how heinous her period was at the moment, followed by more drivel about Jazzy D and boys in general and the new guy she’d bumped into on the steps. I was far, FAR more interested in literally dissecting the actual lung as we were literally meant to be doing, so didn’t really notice that Dolores was nattering non-stop and casually turning on and off the Bunsen burner as she did so.

  Eventually I noticed the smell of gas. ‘Don’t do that.’

  ‘Why? Is it annoying you?’ Dolores grinned nastily and switched it right back on again.

  ‘No. Well, yes, but that’s not the reason I said don’t do that.’

  ‘It so was,’ she said, and spun the little wheely cog thing backwards and forwards.

  The smell of gas was getting really strong. Any minute now I’d be able to extract Dolores’ wisdom (ha!) teeth without her noticing.

  ‘It’s not because it’s annoying, though it really, really is,’ I said, pointing at her with my scalpel and reaching across to the Bunsen burner. ‘It’s because playing with it is dangerous.’