Diamonds Are a Teen's Best Friend (15 page)

Again, what? How can this be happening? This isn’t right. This isn’t what’s supposed to happen. We’ve had the complicated bit. This is supposed to be the end of the complications. This is supposed to be where everything works out. The unravelling.

No. No, no, no, no, no.

Marc pauses for a second as he sees my dad in front of him. And then he starts walking again. Faster this time. Trying to catch up.

I’m really not breathing now. I may never breathe again, in fact.

What should I do? What should I do?

I watch the scene unfolding before my eyes as if it’s a real film. A real film shot in lurid Technicolor. There’s my dad, approaching Holly’s door. A few more steps and he’ll be there. There’s Marc, hot-footing it up behind my dad,
who’s completely unaware there’s anyone behind him. What’s going to happen?

‘Out!’ The voice makes me jump and I wonder for a second if I’ve spoken out aloud.

It makes Dad and Marc jump, too. They both stop walking at exactly the same moment and their heads swivel, trying to locate the noise.

‘Out! Get out!’ the voice screams now. It’s Holly, I realise. The voice. It’s not me at all – it’s Holly. It’s Holly and she’s … scared.

And it’s in that instant, hearing that scared voice call out, that everything comes together and I realise what I’ve done. What I’m doing. The past week flashes before my eyes – as if I’m seeing my life, Holly’s life, my dad’s life, Marc’s life – like a movie as well. Like I’m a bystander looking on. Watching. Except this isn’t a movie. And I’m not a bystander.

I’m an
actor
. The villain, even.

My mouth drops open in horror.

Because what I’ve done, there’s no escaping it. What I’ve done is terribly, horribly, awfully wrong. What have I done? Well, I’ve planted some loony paparazzo in Holly’s room for a start. I’ve lied to my dad, lied to Holly, lied way, way too
much to the guy I like. I’ve ignored my best friend (who I’m now, um, thinking may have been right after all). I’ve tried to force Holly onto some guy she’s not really all that interested in, otherwise she would’ve asked him out eons ago. And I’ve pushed her away from my dad at every opportunity.

I’m an idiot. An
idiot
.

I look down, feeling something rumble. Oh, my gut. Yes, I remember that. I remember lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling and … ignoring my gut. Ignoring Marc’s words. Ignoring Alexa’s words. If only I’d stopped myself then. How could I be so stupid? How could I have betrayed Holly? That was what she’d said to me on my first visit to her cabin, wasn’t it? That she felt like I wouldn’t betray her. She
trusted
me.

‘GET OUT!’ the voice screams once more and I jump again. Holly! I wake up to myself to see Dad and Marc already pushing open the door to the suite and running inside. Holly! I don’t even stop to think what’s going to happen when I get in there. When everyone finds out what’s going on. What I’ve been up to. All I think about is Holly.

Holly needs me.

I race into the suite, not stopping until I see Holly herself. She’s standing, clinging on to my dad, wrapped up tightly in a bathrobe with ruffled, wet hair. Unbelievable. She must be the only woman in the world who could look good with half a head of shampoo dripping onto her shoulders. Ted is across the room, pushed up against the wall, Marc’s finger digging into his chest.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Marc yells at him. ‘Who invited you in here?’

Uh oh. I turn and look at the still open door, wondering if I’ve got time to make a break for it, now I can see Holly’s okay. Probably not. Anyway, I don’t think the ship, as big as it is, is big enough to hide out on when everyone finds out what I’ve been up to.

‘Well?’ Marc’s finger digs in again and now Ted pushes himself up and off the wall and crosses his arms.

‘Do you want to calm down? I was
invited
. That’s what I think I’m doing here.’

Holly clings to my dad a little more. ‘I certainly didn’t invite you.’ She looks first at Marc, then up at my dad. ‘I was in the shower …’

‘I hope you didn’t take any photos of Holly in the shower.’ Marc crosses his arms, but doesn’t move away.

Ted snorts. ‘Pretty hard without a camera. And if I wasn’t invited, what’s this?’ He pulls something out of his pocket. A piece of paper. He passes it to Marc, who reads it. Then reads it again, frowning. He then gives it to Holly. ‘This is your handwriting.’

She inspects it, frowning, and then realisation slowly dawns. Her eyes flick to mine, looking slightly confused, then at my dad, at Marc and back to Ted. I can tell she’s not quite sure what to say. She can’t admit, after all, that the note was meant for Antonio. Especially not with my specially ordered oysters–champagne combo sitting over there in the corner, looking like they’re just dying to be included in a romantic rendezvous. ‘It wasn’t meant for
you,’ she says, shaking her head at Ted. ‘It was meant for … for William.’ She looks up at Dad. ‘I thought he might like an early dinner. And I know he loves oysters.’

Nice save, Holly. One of my eyebrows raises. She really
is
a good actress.

‘Oh, yeah? Is that so? Then how come a steward gave the note to
me
?’ Ted sighs, his eyes moving to meet mine.

Double uh oh. Thanks for nothing, Ted.

There’s a pause.

And then everyone else’s eyes follow Ted’s to mine.

Damn.

‘Nessa Joanne Mulholland,’ my dad starts. ‘Did you have something to do with this?’

I try to think of a nice save, like Holly’s, but I can’t come up with anything fast enough. Anyway, there’s something inside me that just wants to come clean. I’m tired of lying, of telling half-truths. I want everything out in the open once and for all. I want a clear conscience. What did I think I was doing? All I want now is for Marc to like me again (if he can), for my dad to be happy (and the way he’s holding Holly protectively over there, I think he might already be quite happy – though he may have to let go
of her for a bit to give me the lecture of the century, which I know for sure is coming) and I want to be able to talk to Holly like I used to (that is, if she’ll talk to me ever again when she finds out what’s been going on). I just want that happy ending where everything works itself out. The one I’d thought about so much. And wanted so much I’d been kind of blinded as to what I was doing.

‘Nessa Joanne Mulholland?’

‘Um.’ I’m not quite sure what to say. Where to start. In the mirror opposite me, I see myself shrink until I look like I’m about eight years old. ‘I just thought that … I mean …’

‘Yes, Vanessa?’ My dad gives me a stern look and I know I’m really in trouble. Vanessa? I haven’t heard that for quite a while. Marc frowns, looking at me. But not like he hates me anymore. Now he just looks kind of concerned.

I bite my lip, thinking, then turn to Holly. It’s Holly, after all, whom I need to apologise to the most. ‘I’m really sorry, Holly. It’s just that when we got on the boat and you knew that line – from
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
– and then you needed to find Perfect Man and Ted was here and he was like Ernie Malone, well, I started to think that you were a bit like Dorothy and I was a bit like Lorelei and …’
I trail off, seeing that absolutely no-one has any idea what I’m talking about. Well, except my dad, that is.

‘Nessa Joanne Mulholland!’ He steps forward now, closer to me and then groans. ‘Oh, Nessa. Not this again. I thought we’d put all of this behind us.’

Behind my dad, Marc steps forward as well. ‘Um, I’m sorry, but I don’t get it.’ He looks around, at Ted and then over at Holly. ‘I don’t think any of us do. You’re going to have to explain …’ His eyebrows are practically meeting in the middle, he looks so confused. Finally, he looks over at my father.

Dad sighs now and turns around, facing Marc, Holly and Ted. ‘Nessa has a bit of a thing, I guess you could call it, about Marilyn Monroe. She can get a little caught up with it sometimes, for a fourteen-year-old. She has what you’d call an overactive imagination and sometimes she thinks the plots from Marilyn Monroe’s films are happening. In real life.’

Oh no. I just want to die. There it is. Clear as day. For everyone to see. Not only do I think like I child, now everyone believes I am one, too. Oh, god. I want to spontaneously combust and have my ashes settle into the
shag-pile carpet and be vacuumed up by one of the maids and be transported out of the room in a brown paper bag, never to be seen again.

Across the room, Marc is staring at me, kind of white-faced. ‘Fourteen?’ he says wordlessly, looking first at me, and then at my dad.

I shrug a small shrug. ‘Almost fifteen!’ I mouth back, then bite my lip. What else can I do?

Silence.

I sneak a peek at Holly. Her face reads confusion as well. ‘Fourteen, huh? That’s, um, interesting … But what’s it all got to do with Ted?’ she finally asks, glancing over at him.

Good question, I think. Everyone’s eyes turn to me again. ‘Um, in the film, Ernie Malone, he’s kind of like a private detective and he takes photos and he falls in love with Dorothy, who I thought was kind of like you,’ I remind Holly. ‘And I thought that you might be happy, like Dorothy, if you could just see that Ernie, I mean, Ted, was right for you and …’ I trail off again. Now I really
do
want to die. How could I have thought that? I may as well be five, not fourteen. But it seemed so … not logical,
but magical at the time. Magical and perfect and right and wonderful – like a movie moment. Please, someone, institutionalise me, lock me up and throw away the key. I think I’ve lost it. I’m a danger to society. Who knows who I could try to marry off next?

I’ve got to explain myself better. Right. Here goes nothing …‘The Nessa’s Lessons in Love thing. I mean, I worked out pretty fast that was the wrong way to go. So, I thought that maybe if we followed the plot of the movie properly, you’d meet Perfect Man, like you wanted. And then you said you’d met PM and that his name started with a T – and I thought you meant Ted, because he was just like Ernie Malone and Dorothy fell in love with him even though he wasn’t right on the surface, just like Ted wasn’t right for you, so I kept trying to get you together because you looked so happy and …’ I thought I’d be able to explain myself better, but I can’t. Wow. I
really
can’t. Waiting to die. Really wanting and waiting to die now …

‘Can you explain the Nessa’s Lessons in Love thing for me? What’s that?’ Ted asks and we all turn to see him standing there, pencil and pad in hand, jotting down notes.

‘Hey!’ Marc leans over and grabs the notebook off him. ‘Cut that out!’

‘Damn.’ Ted snaps his fingers.

Silence again. Around the room, eyes meet and brows crinkle.

But it’s Holly who speaks first. ‘Right. Let’s try to clear this up a bit. Now, you thought that Ted and I would be perfect together?’ she says.

I nod a tiny nod.

‘Oh, Nessa,’ my dad groans again.

‘Ted. And me,’ Holly says again, unbelievingly.

An even tinier nod from
moi
.

More silence.

But then, in the quiet, there comes this noise from Holly’s throat. A gurgle. A chuckle. It grows and swells and she starts laughing, still looking at Ted.

Ted starts laughing, too.

‘Ted. And me,’ she says, once more.

‘Holly. And me,’ Ted says, from across the room.

Oh, god.

Their laughter gets louder and louder as they egg each other on.

‘Holly. And me. As if!’

‘Ted. And me. Not likely!’

I stand and watch as they laugh so hard I think they’re going to be sick. They keep laughing and laughing and laughing until Holly’s laughing so hard she’s clutching at her sides. Hey! My mouth hangs open, as Marc and my dad both stare at me and then at Holly and Ted alternately. Hey! Cut it out! I want to say. I’m in trouble here. This is
serious
. And I think that Marc and my dad must see what I’m thinking written all over my face, because Marc starts laughing then as well.

‘I thought you were from some tabloid,’ he says to me, before turning to the others. ‘I thought she was a
journalist
.’

‘A journalist?’ My dad turns to Marc.

‘I thought she was a really young-looking nineteen, not almost fifteen, or fourteen!’ Marc says to my dad. ‘And I thought you were, like, her editor or something!’

‘Nineteen? A journalist? Editor?’ my dad repeats like a parrot, but then he looks back at Marc again, who’s now joining in with the others, laughing himself sick, and he starts up too. ‘Nineteen? A journalist? Editor?’ he laughs along.

Oh, great. Laughing at Nessa disease. I’ve encountered it before. It’s contagious and highly infectious. I stand and watch. And, not surprisingly, I’m immune. If only I could be quarantined, maybe for about twenty years. I might have recovered from the embarrassment symptoms by then. Maybe.

In front of me, the laughing continues. For what feels like forever.

All four of them have tears running down their faces now. Only Marc manages to get it together for a second or two to ask me a question. ‘Let me get this straight,’ he says. ‘You thought that all Holly’s problems would be solved if you could just get her and Ted together. That’s why he’s been turning up everywhere?’

I nod that small nod again, feeling more and more stupid by the minute, if that’s possible. In the mirror, I see that my face is now beet red. Hey, maybe I
will
spontaneously combust after all.

‘And, let me get this straight as well, you thought that this was all like
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
. Because we’re on a cruise ship and Holly recognised some line from the film and because she’s been unlucky in love?’

‘Hey!’ Holly stops laughing for a second, taking the heat off me.

‘Well, isn’t that true?’ Marc looks over at her.

‘Yes, but …’

‘But, what?’ Marc asks.

‘But …’ Holly pauses and then looks up at my dad, who’s by her side again. She smiles up at him. That big, wide smile she’s so famous for. ‘It used to be true. It used to be
very
true. But I think my luck may have changed …’