Dead Romantic (21 page)

‘Uh . . . well,' I began, moving the cool bag over to my right hand so it could take the strain for a bit. We joined up with Mr Sutherland again in the queue for the checkout. ‘I'm a bit busy tonight.'

‘Come on, you can do your homework at mine if you want. I've got nothing else to do.' The queues for the checkouts went all the way back into the aisles. Bored looking people and squawking toddlers shuffled past displays of Halloween decorations, cakes in the shape of pumpkins and cauldron shaped cookies. Mr Sutherland got fed up with waiting and dipped out into the self-service checkout line and we followed him.

‘Do you mean if you had something better to do you wouldn't be asking me round?' I said to Lynx.

Lynx flicked her blonde-and-black-streaked ponytail back from her shoulder and helped her dad pack up the shopping. ‘No, don't be silly. But since we're both at a loose end . . .'

My chest hurt but I kept talking. I couldn't stop my mouth. ‘I said I was busy. What makes you think I'm at a loose end?' I snipped, yanking Pee Wee away from the assistant's ankle, which he was sniffing around.

‘Well, you're never busy, are you?' she laughed. ‘You're either reading your trashy romance novels or hanging out with your parents.'

She was right, I was never busy, and I also never usually passed up the opportunity to go round to Lynx's house. She lived in Plainpalais, the posh part of town, even posher than Clairmont Hills, and her step mum, Urni, was this beautiful Indian lady who made the most yummiest chicken Dhansak in the whole wide land. I never refused to go round. Until now.

‘Well, I'm busy today, I'm sorry,' I said. ‘Biology homework. I've got tons to do.'

‘I can help. I'm not great at Biology but I could try,' she said. ‘Come on, Mills.'

‘You didn't want to know me a couple of weeks ago,' I said. ‘All you wanted was Damian.'

‘Yeah, and look how that turned out,' she scoffed. ‘Has Louis Burnett asked you to the Halloween party yet? I'll ask him if all else fails. He's single, isn't he? Quite cute too . . .'

‘Don't you dare!' I cried, though I hadn't meant to say
it so loudly. ‘Look, Lynx, you can't just pick people up and put them down whenever you want. Louis is worth more than that. And so am I. I think.'

This was me being assertive. This was me stating my case. This was me unpicking another stitch.

Mr Sutherland started beeping through the shopping. ‘Try and do upstairs and downstairs bags, Lynsey,' he said to her as he fumbled in his wallet.

‘I know,' she snapped at him. Pee Wee started snapping at her ankles again. We were all snapping at each other now, like a little gang of turtles. ‘God, Camille, you've got so weird lately. I saw you hanging around Death Watch at college. You want to steer clear of her.'

My eyes flooded with tears. I was so angry. ‘Why? Because she might actually be a good friend who doesn't drop me like a hot rock the second a boy comes along?'

‘Oh don't be ridic,' said Lynx crossly, stopping her packing for a second.

‘I'm not being ridic, actually, I'm being honest,' I found myself saying. I was on a roll now and my mouth was running ahead before my brain sent it the words to say. ‘You and Poppy are as bad as each other. You both dropped me the second Damian and Splodge showed any interest. Even at freshers' you both let me make a complete idiot of myself. You just stood there and laughed. You've both been the worst friends ever!'

I suddenly realised that an electronic voice was going off behind me.

Unexpected item in bagging area
.

I'd put the cool bag down in the bagging area.

‘Oh my god god god!' I said, heaving it off quick and putting it down by my feet. Pee Wee immediately started sniffing it and tugging at the zip. ‘It's fine, it's fine,' I sang, leaning across Mr Sutherland and jabbing the
Skip bagging
button on the screen again and again as hard as I could.

Unexpected item in bagging area
.

‘Oh come on,' I said, stabbing every single button trying to make it go away.

Please wait for assistance
.

‘Oh no no no!' I gasped.

Lynx just stood there, her arms folded, glaring at me like I'd just ruined her chances for the Olympics. ‘That was way harsh, Camille.'

Mr Sutherland was a bit more understanding. ‘It's all right, Camille, there's an assistant coming over now. She'll have it fixed.'

‘Oh God, oh no please stop. Stop! Ssssshhhhhh!'

I became breathless and stared down at the cool bag, the Marks & Spencer cool bag with the definitely NOT shopping in it, hoping and praying that what I thought was going to happen wouldn't actually happen or that, if it did, I would soon wake up in bed and it would be morning again and I'd have just had a very bad dream.

A short blonde M&S woman with a bandage on her wrist and belt loop full of keys came bustling over. She swiped a card across the machine and tapped in a few numbers. ‘Try running that last thing through again, the guacamole.'

Mr Sutherland did as he was told.

Please wait for assistance
said the voice.

The woman looked at me. ‘Hmm, it doesn't like it, does it?' she laughed, looking down at the cool bag. ‘I'll have to cancel the transaction and run it all through again, sorry.' She bent down to take the bag and I moved it away with my foot.

‘Um . . . no, this is my shopping, not theirs.'

‘Okay, do you have your receipt? I just need to check what you've got.'

At that second, some God that someone believed in decided to totally do me the biggest favour and make a small child throw up all over the floor at the end of the aisle. The lemon drizzle cakes on the bottom shelf were splattered with a hot soup of chewed-up chicken nuggets and curdled milk.

‘Oh blimey,' said the woman. ‘I'll have to deal with that. Sorry. I've cancelled the transaction. If you go over to customer services, they'll scan it all through again for you.'

Lynx and her dad started putting all their bits back into the basket, both sighing and snippy with each other. I saw my chance to leg it. I darted back out of the food hall and into women's lingerie. I hid behind a bank of massive bras and watched as the Sutherlands noticed I was gone, looked around for me for a bit, and went back to their shopping.

I just ran as fast as I could,
wee wee wee wee
all the way home and when I got there, I stuffed the head bag at the bottom of the chest freezer in our shed and did the bravest thing I could think of doing. I dashed up to my bedroom, closed the door and hid under my duvet.

 

 

 

 

I
love my bedroom. If a room could give you a cuddle, my room would. It's pink and everything's squashy and comfortable and warm, and there're lots of cushions and my dolls' house and cute toys. And that was where I stayed for the rest of the day and night.

In the morning, Mum appeared in my doorway with a bacon sandwich and a glass of orange juice. She set them down on my bedside table and put it on top of two twenty pound notes, a ten and a five. ‘There's your wages too, from Dad.'

‘Cool, thanks,' I said.

‘No college today?'

‘No, I've got a free,' I lied, knowing full well I was missing double English. She went over to the windowsill and
grabbed the crumby plate and coffee mug that I couldn't even remember leaving there. I watched her.

Mum. Help me. I'm in trouble. Please don't leave me
.

I couldn't say it, but I thought it. I thought it until she disappeared back out onto the landing and back downstairs. I didn't feel like eating anything, but I made a start on my sandwich and fed Pee Wee a square of it too. I picked up my TV remote and flicked on the DVD that was in the DVD player. It was
The Little Mermaid
. We snuggled in to watch it together. I had such a pain in my chest though. It was like the feeling I used to have when I saw Damian in the corridor at college. But this wasn't love. No, this was fear. Love and fear were such samey feelings, I realised. I wished I'd been brainy enough to know why.

‘Camille! Your friend's here,' Dad called upstairs.

‘Huh?' I said. An elevator dropped in my chest. I hoped against all hope that maybe it was Lynx, come to apologise, or even Poppy, alive and well and all in one piece and maybe even having dumped Splodge at some service station on the way back from Wales and come to say that she was sorry for ignoring my texts and that she realised now that friends were worth way more than boyfriends.

But no.

It was a tall girl with messy black hair and eyes like icicles, dressed all in black. And I knew exactly why she had come.

I gasped as she walked in my room. My lovely cuddly pink room that suddenly looked as though someone had chucked black paint over it. ‘Zoe . . .'

‘I haven't got time to explain,' she said, closing the door behind her. ‘I just need the head.'

I scrambled up the bed towards the headboard as my plate launched off the bed onto the floor, sending my sandwich all over the carpet. Pee Wee made short work of what was left of it. ‘What head?'

‘You know what head. Now where is it?' she said, coming further inside the room and frowning as she knocked her head against the hammock full toys suspended from the ceiling.

‘Um, um,' I said, pressing my head back into the headboard. I wanted to melt into the wall where she couldn't see me. Couldn't get to me. My chest clenched.

‘You were in my house yesterday afternoon, Camille. You were fairly obvious.'

‘Uh . . .'

‘And Pee Wee's drool was all over my chewed-up mannequin.'

‘Your Aunt Gwen, you mean?' I said, trying to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth like the dentist always told me.

‘Yes – a cunning ruse to keep Social Services off my back,' she explained, coming closer to the bed. ‘Gwen has her own bank account, her own signature. The dummy can be very effective. Sometimes I even get it to wave at visitors from the upstairs window. You know, for show. I have to pay a homeless woman when they actually want to meet her. That woman in the shopping precinct who eats chips off the floor?'

I cuddled into my duvet. ‘Okay. I was at your house. I
came to tell you something.'

‘And to take something,' she said. ‘The head. May I have it back now, please?'

I rubbed the silk edge of my pillow for comfort. ‘What do you mean, I did you a favour?' I tried sending a telepathic message to Pee Wee to bite Zoe on the ankle so I could make my escape but he was too busy golloping my bacon sandwich.

‘I had an impromptu visit from a solicitor and a man from the building society. We've defaulted on some payments and there's a court bailiff coming to the house on Saturday morning to take formal possession of our house.'

‘What? You have to leave the house?'

‘Yes.'

‘But where will you go?'

‘I don't know,' she replied. ‘But our conversation could have been very awkward if they'd seen the bag on the table.'

I frowned, remembering how I'd been hidden in the pantry when the doorbell rang and Zoe went to answer it.

‘That was why you took it, wasn't it? To stop me getting into trouble?' she said.

‘Yeah, that's why I took it,' I said, looking anxiously round for a weapon.

Pee Wee, my guard dog, had trotted off to the rug to watch the end of
The Little Mermaid
.

‘So where is it?'

‘At the bottom of our chest freezer in the shed.'

‘Good, good. I knew you wouldn't let me down, that's great,' she said, breathing out. ‘Excellent.'

And I took th . . . this,' I said, scrabbling round in my pockets for the tube ticket. ‘This proves you were in London when that male model went missing. This links you to him.'

‘What male model? I went to King's College, Camille, where my father used to lecture,' she said calmly. ‘I got the head from their cold storage. I'm sorry you couldn't be there to pick one out, but I did my best, from what was in the freezer. Or rather, who. And now I need it back. I simply have to attach the head and insert the brain tonight. Time is of the absolute essence. You can still help me, if you want to.'

Okay, I thought. The thing about her visiting King's College would add up. Maybe she hadn't killed the model after all. I wanted to believe her. But . . .

‘I thought you hated me. The way you spoke . . . on the bus . . . at college . . . you were in such a bad mood. You were acting really . . . psycho.'

‘I wasn't,' said Zoe, flapping her hand and sitting down on the blanket box at the end of my bed. ‘You've never seen me in a bad mood.'

‘But . . . why?' I said. ‘I thought . . . we were friends.'

‘So did I,' she said on an out-breath. ‘But then I realised perhaps this experiment didn't mean as much to you as it did to me and I became frustrated. Your mind is on other things, as it probably should be. And the way you looked at me in Biology the other day, it was the way everyone else looks at me. Like I am some kind of monster. And I thought, perhaps you'd gone cool on the idea. You seemed to be taking more of an interest in
the living than the currently dead.'