Summer of Secrets (6 page)

‘Obvious,’ replied Caitlin. ‘You go as the Little Mermaid. Then he can rescue you from the billowing deep!’

‘Oh, like I’m really going to wear a fishtail!’

‘How about diaphanous blue chiffon with a skimpy thong underneath and little diamantes stuck on you to look like drops of water?’

‘You’re amazing!’ Izzy cried in delight. ‘That is so cool! Will you help me do it?
Pleeease
– pretty please?’

‘On one condition,’ Caitlin burst out eagerly. ‘You have to invite Summer.’

‘I said I would,’ Izzy sighed, ‘but she won’t–– oh my God! Don’t tell me – I mean, you’re not, you can’t be . . .’

‘You fancy her!’ One of the cubicle doors swung open and Bianca, still zipping up her jeans, burst out. ‘Tell me it’s not true!’

‘Oh, grow up, the pair of you,’ Caitlin snapped, glaring at Bianca and turning back to Izzy. ‘You’ve both got totally one-track minds. Just invite Summer to the party and
make sure she brings Ludo. My whole life depends on it.’

‘Ludo? Her brother?’ Izzy gasped.

‘Like how many Ludos are there in the world?
Of course
her brother – isn’t he gorgeous?’

Izzy shrugged.

‘So that was who you were talking to. I thought I recognised him – he’s gone all blond. I guess he’s OK, if you go for the head boy,
butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth type, which I don’t,’ she said.

‘So – it’s
him
you want, not Summer?’ Bianca asked.

‘Of course it’s him,’ Caitlin sighed. ‘Trouble is, I didn’t have time to make any kind of impression – he was too uptight about finding Summer. Something
about their dad being in a rage. What’s all that about?’

‘I don’t think they get on that well,’ Izzy remarked, reapplying her lip-gloss in the mirror. ‘Summer and her dad, I mean. You see, ever since her mother
died––’

‘Her mum’s dead? She never said.’

‘Well, she wouldn’t, would she?’ Izzy added. ‘Not under the circumstances . . . look, must dash – Jamie’s waiting and I don’t want him cooling off,
OK?’

She winked at Caitlin.

‘What circumstances?’ Caitlin persisted, chasing after her as she headed for the door.

‘Tell you later,’ Izzy hissed. ‘Right now, I’ve more important things to attend to. Like your brother.’

Three hours later, Caitlin was lying flat on her back in bed, staring at the fluorescent spider’s web she had painted in the corner of her ceiling during a particularly
bad dose of PMT. She was thinking about Ludo. She re-ran every detail of the evening, punching her pillow in fury each time she recalled her clumsiness with the drink, and then hugging it whenever
she let her mind flash back to those slate-grey eyes and lopsided smile.

Tom had quizzed her like mad on the way home in the car, demanding to know who Ludo was, and saying that in his view he seemed a bit of a loser. And then he asked her to go to Izzy’s party
with him.

And like an idiot, she’d said yes, just to shut him up. But that didn’t matter, did it? Once she was there, she could chat Ludo up and besides, going to a party with someone
didn’t mean anything, not really.

It was what happened when she
got
there that mattered to her.

It was no good; she couldn’t sleep. She threw back the sheet and padded over to her drawing desk, grabbing a stick of charcoal and instantly sketching sweeping lines, her tongue poking out
of the corner of her mouth the way it always did when she was engrossed in design. Within minutes, he was there: Ludo Tilney, smiling up at her from the sketchpad, his mouth slightly open as if he
was about to speak.

Caitlin D Morland.
Caitlin signed her name in the bottom right hand corner and then, in letters so tiny that no one, in the unlikely event of the picture being found, could possibly see
them she added,
C 4 L
and the tiniest pink heart.

  CHAPTER 3  

‘If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad.’

(Jane Austen,
Northanger Abbey
)

‘H
EY
, C
AITLIN, WAIT
!’ S
UMMER RAN DOWN THE STONE
steps from the music block at breaktime on
Monday morning and grabbed her friend’s arm. ‘I have to talk to you.’

Caitlin eyed her warily. Summer had ignored her totally at registration, hadn’t spoken a word during music appreciation and she wasn’t sure what was coming next.

‘I was a cow on Saturday, OK?’ she gabbled. ‘You know, yelling at you and everything. Ludo told me he practically manhandled you to the door of the ladies’ and forced you
to find me.’

I wish, thought Caitlin. A bit of manhandling from Ludo would make my day.

‘Everything had gone wrong and I was really stressed, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.’ Summer bit her lip and sighed. ‘Friends?’

She opened her arms and looked pleadingly at Caitlin.

‘Of course,’ Caitlin replied, hugging her with relief. ‘And so . . . is everything OK now?’

‘On a scale of one to ten, it’s about minus four,’ she said wearily. ‘But listen – what are you doing for the holidays?’

Caitlin wondered how to make a fortnight in the Isle of Wight sound stunning.

‘Well,’ she began, ‘there’s Izzy’s party – and then my parents have taken a house on the island . . .’

That could mean anywhere, she reasoned. St Lucia, the Windward Isles . . .

‘And you really have to go?’ Summer looked crestfallen.

‘Well, I’m not likely to get a better offer . . .’

‘That’s where you are wrong!’ Summer cried triumphantly. ‘How does a couple of weeks with me at Casa Vernazza sound?’

Caitlin stared at her in disbelief.

‘Me? You’re inviting me to go to Italy with you?’

‘Uh-huh,’ said Summer, grinning. ‘I just can’t hack it on my own. Well, Ludo’s coming, but he’s always . . .’

What he was Caitlin didn’t hear. She was too busy dealing with the images swamping her mind. Ludo and her swimming in the sea, his hand gently brushing her thigh under cover of the water;
Ludo pouring a glass of cool wine and holding it to her lips; Ludo telling her how gorgeous she is . . .

‘You don’t want to come, right?’ Summer’s voice jolted her out of her reverie.

‘
Of course
I want to come!’ Caitlin exclaimed. ‘I can’t believe it – when do we go?’

‘End of next week,’ Summer said. ‘It’s only for two weeks because I’m going on a concert tour with the Music School but it would be so cool if you came.’

‘And what about your dad?’

‘What about him?’

‘Well, I mean I couldn’t help overhearing Ludo saying about his rages and . . .’

‘Quite the little eavesdropper, aren’t you?’ Summer replied acerbically and then broke into a smile. ‘Actually it was Dad’s idea – one of his “sweetness
and light” moments. He does have them occasionally – he’s not all bad. Of course, I was about to say no way . . .’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s doing it to try to soften me up.
“It’ll be a
chance for Gabriella to get to know your friends . . . She’s got
heaps of fun ideas for
you all.
” Vomit making stuff like that.’

‘Er – who’s Gabriella?’ asked Caitlin, although she was rapidly forming a pretty good idea of the answer.

‘His new woman,’ Summer muttered, through gritted teeth. ‘Well, not new at all, really. She’s been hanging around him like a lovesick puppy for ages. It’s just that
now he’s decided to go public about her. And she’s doing all she can to play the “future stepmother” bit.’

Her face clouded. ‘I guess that was her plan all along,’ she muttered. ‘Pretending to be grief-stricken when Mum died and then sucking up to Dad . . . I hate her.’

She shook her head as if to rid her brain of these thoughts and her tone changed.

‘Well, stuff that,’ she went on. ‘She’s going to be there and there’s nothing I can do about it, but if you come with me, it’ll be more bearable. We can bum
off any time we like. Tell them about the art project and say we’re doing the galleries – there are loads of them – then we just go and have a good time. What do you
think?’

‘Sounds amazing,’ breathed Caitlin. ‘Thanks so much!’

‘And your parents will be cool about it?’

Caitlin was not about to admit that ‘cool’ and her ‘parents’ were words that normally did not go together.

‘Sure – no probs,’ she assured her. ‘None at all.’

‘But we don’t know these people,’ Mrs Morland protested at supper that night, after Caitlin had poured out her plans. ‘We can’t let you go halfway
round the world with just anybody.’

‘Mum, it’s Italy,’ Jamie broke in, ladling more mashed potato on to his plate. ‘Hardly the African bush. She’ll be fine.’

Caitlin threw him a grateful look.

‘When she goes, can I have her bedroom?’ Anna, her thirteen-year-old sister asked.

‘I’m going for two weeks, not for ever,’ Caitlin told her. ‘And you so much as set a foot inside my room––’

‘This Summer Tilney – isn’t she Magnus Tilney’s daughter?’ her father butted in. ‘The marmalade people? I sat next to him once when he spoke at a Law Society
dinner – seemed a decent enough chap as I recall.’

Caitlin reckoned that he didn’t know the half of it, but that this was not the time to set him straight. When he helped himself to more vegetables and winked at Caitlin, she was glad
she’d kept her mouth shut.

‘Can’t see any problem with that,’ he said with a smile.

‘Hang on a minute, Edward,’ her mother broke in. ‘I’ll want to meet them before I agree––’

‘Great,’ Caitlin interrupted hastily. ‘I’ll ask Summer over.’

‘Not Summer, the parents,’ her mother insisted.

‘
Parent
, singular,’ Caitlin remarked, putting on the most solemn expression she could muster. ‘Her mother died under desperately tragic circumstances. That’s why
her dad wants me to go over there – to kind of cheer Summer up because she’s still traumatised by it all.’

Just as she had hoped it would, this brought about something of a transformation in her mother.

‘Poor lass,’ she murmured. ‘And how awful for the father. But a man on his own . . . no woman to keep an eye on the kids . . .’

‘His new woman–– er, there’s going to be an aunt there,’ Caitlin gabbled, remembering just in time her mother’s view of cohabitation. ‘And Summer said
something about inviting other people too.
Please
, Mum . . .’

‘Lynne, she’s nearly seventeen,’ her father remarked equably. ‘It’s time she spread her wings.’

‘Yes, well, you would say that, you’re a man,’ said her mother. ‘But she’s very young for her years, and naïve and––’

‘Well, I’m not going to get to grow up if you carry on treating me like I’m still in nappies, am I?’ snapped Caitlin. ‘Besides, there’s this art project
we’ve got to do and Italy is just the best place on earth for me to guarantee getting an A star.’

‘Well, I suppose in that case, it would be an experience.’

As Caitlin had hoped, the connection with schoolwork was clearly altering her mother’s perspective. Her parents had not been at all keen on letting her go to Mulberry Court – which
her father called an ‘incubator for the moneyed classes’ – but that didn’t stop them wanting her to shine now she was there.

‘You have to trust me, Mum – I’m not stupid,’ she added hastily, for good measure.

Her mother smiled ruefully and nodded.

‘You’re right,’ she sighed. ‘OK, darling, you go and have a lovely time.’

‘Mum, you’re an angel!’ Caitlin leaped up, nearly knocking over the water jug and hugged her mother.

‘But there is one condition – we arrange to meet her father before you leave.’

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’ Caitlin said quickly. ‘Oh, and just so you know – I’ll be spending all day Friday at Izzy’s house, helping her get ready for the
party.’

‘Oh yes – the party. I’m not comfortable about this,’ her mother said. ‘I’ve heard about these upper-class types snorting cocaine and all sorts. You
are
sure her parents will be there?’

‘Of course they will.’ Caitlin nodded, although she hadn’t a clue where they’d be. ‘And Jamie’s going too.’

‘Oh well, that’s all right then,’ her mother replied, sounding relieved. ‘Jamie’s got his head screwed on the right way. I’m sure everything will be
fine.’