What a Girl Wants

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublisher 2014

Cover illustration © Bree Leman 2014

Lindsey Kelk asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007501533

Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007501557

Version: 2018-09-24

Praise for About A Girl:

‘Fans of the I Heart series will instantly fall for this gorgeously funny and romantic read’

Closer

‘Perfect for your summer holiday!’

Bella

‘Kelk has a hilarious turn of phrase and a sparkling writing style …’

Daily Express

Dedication

For Audrey Hardware. We never did come running to you when we’d broken both our legs but we did turn up with just about every other ailment on earth and you were always there. If I can find half the love, strength and resilience you had, I’ll be OK.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Keep Reading – A Girl’s Best Friend

Acknowledgements

Q&A with Lindsey Kelk

About the Author

Also by Lindsey Kelk

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

On the one hand, you might have said my day wasn’t going terribly well.

But on the other, I had told Amy that I wanted to make big changes in my life and there weren’t many lifestyle changes more significant than swapping a luxury Italian palazzo for a prison cell.

And my second prison cell in two weeks, at that. Clearly I was going for some sort of record. It was one thing to say you wanted to start over, it was another thing to start over as someone on the ‘no fly’ list because you were considered an international flight risk. I was almost certain the generally accepted way of society was to go the other way.

I took a deep breath, blew it out hard and examined my bitten-down fingernails while trying to remain calm and wait for someone to appear and make this entire mess go away. Ideally someone I knew, accompanied by someone with a working knowledge of the Italian legal system, but at this point, as long as they didn’t have a gun, a pair of handcuffs or a pointy stick, I’d be happy. And if they did have a gun, a pair of handcuffs or a pointy stick, but also came bearing biscuits, I’d probably be just as happy. Did everyone get this hungry in prison? Had I missed dinnertime?

‘This is what happens when you’re too busy working to watch telly, like normal people,’ I admonished myself. ‘If I’d watched Bad Girls or Cell Block H like Amy, instead of doing my homework, I would know these things.’

I traced a shallow line in the cement floor with the bare big toe on my good foot and wondered how it got there in the first place. I’d been thoroughly searched on my way in and anything that might have hacked a seven-inch gash in a concrete floor had been removed from my person. Hairgrips, the belt from my dress, even my bra. I had nothing left on me but my knickers and my beautiful bright pink dress. At least, most of it was still bright pink – there was quite a lot of muck and a few well-placed splotches of blood around the hem. But still, I had told Kekipi not to give me a dress with a train, so this was entirely his fault. Well, apart from all the bits that were my fault. Which was most of them.

Making a noise that sounded a little bit like a frustrated walrus, I rolled myself onto my side, the rough concrete of the bench scratching against my skin. At least they had been consistent in their decorating, I thought. Very clear message: minimalist, spare, modern. And it really only smelled very faintly of piss. However, my hair had not fared well in the evening’s adventures and since no one in the police station had considered serum a basic human right, it was an unmanageable, knotted mess. I attempted to run my fingers through the dark copper curls, working them out slowly. If nothing else, it would pass the time until my fairy godlawyer appeared and made everything OK. I lasted about seventy-four seconds before I got bored and gave up. Plus, I really was hungry.

‘Excuse me,’ I called in a weak but terribly polite voice. ‘Excuse me? Is anyone there?’

Everything had been such a loud, Italiano, excitable mess on my way in that I couldn’t quite recall exactly what had happened. I remembered being pulled out of the car by the overenthusiastic police officer but with my hands cuffed behind my back and my hair flouncing around in my eyes, I had focused all my energy on not falling over, given that I was basically lame on one foot and wearing a full-length ballgown. After that there had been some shouting and some crying, both by me, then a woman police officer had come over, tutted a lot, then taken away my aforementioned stabbier items. At some point, a phone had been thrust into my hands but the only numbers I knew by heart were Amy’s and Charlie’s and there was no way on God’s green earth that Charlie was going to speak to me – which only left me with one option. And of course, Amy’s number went straight to voicemail. The next thing I knew, I was shoved back here with an antiseptic wipe for my foot and two plasters. Apparently you couldn’t kill yourself with two plasters.

I could hear the distant sounds of a busy police station beyond the reinforced walls, lots of doors slamming and distant sirens, but apparently no one could hear me. Or if they did, they didn’t care.

I was starting to lose my English temper.

‘Is anybody even there?’ I shouted from my concrete block. ‘Helloooo?’

Of course. When you wanted some privacy, there was an entire wedding’s worth of people around to witness your felonious behaviour, but when you were wondering whether or not it was possible to get a cup of tea and a biscuit, nothing but crickets.

No one was coming. No one cared. Nick didn’t care, Charlie didn’t care, Amy was otherwise engaged, and who on earth knew where she would be by now?

Just as I was considering fashioning a Blue Peter-style pillow out of my frock, there was a loud kerfuffle along the corridor: raised voices, jangling keys and a lot of scuffling. Ooh, maybe I was getting a cellmate.

I sat up straight, my heart pounding.

Shit! Maybe I was getting a cellmate.

Gathering my skirts up around my waist, I stood up and held my breath. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to achieve with my ready-to-pounce pose – I was still in a ten by ten cement cell with iron bars where a door should be – but whatever was coming my way, I was ready for it. Unless she or he was bigger than me, in which case they would be wearing me like a glove puppet by dawn. I was not cut out for life on the inside. I would make a terrible prison wife, I had no discernible crafting talents, and the time Amy tried to give me an amateur tattoo with her compass and a pot of Indian ink she nicked from the art room, I passed out behind the humanities block and missed the first ten minutes of my mock French GCSE.

Before I could work out the appropriate way to greet a fellow criminal in a language I couldn’t speak (not an easy task without my iPhone), two navy-clad officers burst through the door to the cell block, shouting at each other and the blur of arms and legs they held between them. I stepped back into the corner, trying to tie the skirts of my dress into a manageable knot in case I needed my legs free for kicking but there was no time. While I was faffing with the fabric, a third police officer was sliding open the bars so his mates could chuck my new best friend in beside me.

Only it wasn’t my new best friend.

It was very much my old best friend.

‘Police brutality!’ Amy shouted, scrambling to her feet and grabbing at the cell bars as the polizia scarpered as fast as possible. ‘I’m totally writing to my MP about this! As soon as I find out who my MP is.’

‘Amy?’ My skirts slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor with a damp slap.

‘Tess!’ She turned towards me, all wide eyes and filthy face, and flew over, wrapping her arms tightly around my cold shoulders. ‘You’re OK!’

‘I think we’re both pretty far from OK,’ I pointed out, glancing around at our less than salubrious surroundings. ‘What’s going on? Is Kekipi with you? They let me call someone and I called you but I got your voicemail.’

‘Oh, no way!’ She let go of my arms and laughed, before collapsing happily on my concrete block. ‘I called you! How funny is that?’

‘So funny that I might throw up,’ I replied, awkwardly folding myself up on the floor. My knees had decided that standing up was overrated. ‘Where’s Kekipi?’

‘Don’t know; I didn’t see him after they locked me up.’ Amy placed her hands behind her head and closed her eyes, her own floor-length gown having actually fared quite well. At least, hers didn’t have any blood on it. ‘I’m sure he’s coming. I’ve got to hand it to you – you don’t do things by halves these days. No one could accuse you of being boring any more, could they?’

I crawled forward a couple of feet and wrapped my hands around the bars, pushing my nose out as far as it would go and trying not to cry. I thought of Nick and the look on his face. I thought of Al and how disappointed he would be in me when he found out about all of this. And I thought of Charlie and how I could possibly ever make things up to him. Sniffing at the empty corridor and staring up at the full moon through a tiny window across the way, I sighed.

‘No,’ I said to a half-asleep Amy. ‘No one could accuse me of being boring.’

CHAPTER ONE

I stood on the street outside my flat for five full minutes before braving the four concrete steps up to the door.

For five long years I had wrestled with the knackered lock, shoulder-barged the warped wooden door open, and called this place home, but after three short days away I was petrified of stepping over the threshold. Admittedly, it was fair to say I hadn’t been on terribly good terms with my flatmate, Vanessa, when I left. For some reason, she hadn’t taken kindly to me borrowing her life for a week, though I’d done a pretty good job with it, even if I did say so myself. Of course, she had chosen not to focus on the elements of our ‘falling out’ that she was at least somewhat responsible for – like how she’d been passing my photos off as hers for years on end, and how she’d been shagging Charlie, my Charlie, behind my back. That all seemed to slip her mind when she stood screaming in the street that I was the crazy one and if I ever stepped foot in the flat again, she’d have me arrested.

Fingering the key ring in my pocket, I forced myself up another step. She couldn’t actually have me arrested for going into my own flat, I reminded myself, and besides, it was half past eleven on a Thursday morning: she wouldn’t be at home anyway. Given that Vanessa was absolutely shit at her job, her dad had been paying the mortgage on our flat since we moved in and she had a standing Thursday lunch date with him to justify her existence whenever she was in the country. I’d only met Vanessa’s father once, but I had to assume no matter how good he was at making Scrooge McDuck quantities of money, he couldn’t really be that bright because Vanessa had him wrapped around her little finger, even though he was pretty much the only man on earth she couldn’t sleep with to get what she wanted. The whole daddy–daughter thing was a mystery to me. Maybe if I batted eyelash extensions and tossed a long blonde mane at my dad, he would pay all my bills too. Unlikely, given that we hadn’t spoken in almost a decade, but you never know.

One more deep breath in and I was at the top of the stairs, face to face with my knackered red front door. Keys in hand, I rested one palm against the glass pane and pressed my ear against the wood, just to make sure. Hmm. Could I hear something? I should have brought Amy with me. Yes, my best friend was small in stature but she was very big on violence and I did not relish the thought of opening this door to a furious former flatmate without her by my side. Why was I here? Maybe I should just turn tail and run back to Amy’s house, get back under the covers, watch the rest of Step Up 3 and pretend I didn’t need any of my old things. And then I looked down at the T-shirt I had borrowed from Amy that morning. A five-foot-ten woman should never borrow clothes from a five-foot-nothing girl. I loved unicorns as much as the next girl but neon pink unicorns on a cropped black T-shirt? The world wasn’t ready to see my belly button and neither was I. I needed my things.

That was, provided Vanessa hadn’t burnt all my clothes, chucked them in the street or used them as tea towels and toilet paper. I let out a quiet laugh and shook my head: what a silly thought. She hadn’t used a tea towel in the five years I’d known her, so that was hardly about to change. But without me there to buy bog roll, that was a definite possibility.

‘You’re being stupid,’ I whispered to myself as I pulled my sad phone with its broken screen out of my pocket and forced it to shuffle through my contacts until I found the number for our landline. This was a telephone no one but my mother and the world’s finest telemarketers had attempted to call since 2007 and yet, every time it rang, Vanessa had the receiver in her hand within three seconds, ‘just in case’. I had to assume she had once given Brad Pitt that number in a bar and was still waiting for his call.

I listened as the line connected, the two long bleats on my phone translating into two short rings inside. It was fair to say I felt something of a twat, stood on my own doorstep, dialling my own landline from my own mobile, but I figured it was better to feel like a bit of a bell-end than to get into another public slanging match with a psycho. But when the phone inside stopped ringing and I heard the lovely lady from BT invite me to leave myself a message, I hung up and forced my key into the lock and merrily kicked the door wide open.

‘Home sweet home,’ I said with a sigh.

Even though it had only been three days since I’d left, the flat felt strange. The last time I’d left it, I’d been freaked out by the fact that nothing at all had changed in my absence. I wished I could say the same this time around. My keys always lived in the empty bowl by the door and I dropped them gently, listening to the familiar clatter before I stepped into the living room. Fuck. Me. Either Vanessa had started shagging the Tasmanian Devil or we’d been visited by seven very angry burglars. It was difficult to say which was more likely. The floor was covered in broken plates, broken glass and assorted empty bottles; picture frames had been pulled off the wall and dashed on the floor, which I figured explained the glass; and, most heartbreaking of all, my beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs had been hurled around the room like mini Frisbees. She really knew how to hit a girl where it hurt. Picking my way through the debris, I grabbed handfuls of copper locks and tethered my hair back into a ponytail before I braved my bedroom, preparing myself for the inevitable devastation.

Pausing, I closed my eyes, pushed the door open and stepped inside.

‘Oh. Wow!’

If I’d walked in on a family of baby elephants having a tea party with Julia Roberts and the Queen, I couldn’t have been more surprised. My room was exactly as I had left it.

Closing my bedroom door behind me, I did a quick visual check. My suitcase was still sitting by the door, the bed sheets still rumpled from mine and Amy’s sleepover on Sunday night, the mug full of tea still on the nightstand, albeit a bit scummier than I had last seen it. My clothes were still in the wardrobe, unhung pictures still propped against the wall. Whatever madness had possessed Vanessa while she trashed the rest of the flat, she must have run out of steam before she could take my room apart.

Or she booby-trapped it … I froze for a second, taking another look around and searching specifically for anything explosive-looking.

Once I was satisfied there were no landmines hidden under my Ikea rug, I got down to business. Whatever had gone on while I’d been camped out in Shepherd’s Bush at Casa del Amy, all I wanted to do was get my things and go. Unzipping the still-full suitcase by the door and dumping the contents on my bed, I swapped out the dirty clothes for clean ones, mentally shaking my head at my wardrobe choices. To the left of my case, a sea of colourful silk lay on the bed – the clothes I’d borrowed from my friend Paige – and to the right, a regimented tumble of black trousers, white shirts and the odd navy jumper – my everyday outfits. I didn’t half love a V-neck. The wildest item of clothing in the right-hand pile was a houndstooth-check pencil skirt, and while I could try to pass that off as Mad Men chic, in reality it was something my mum had bought from the M&S outlet in Doncaster that didn’t fit her when she got home and she couldn’t be arsed to take it back. Surely there had to be some middle ground between a cropped neon unicorn T-shirt and the adult equivalent of a particularly crappy school uniform?

Once my suitcase was full of my depressingly few essentials, I sat myself down on the bed beside it and stared at my room for a moment. Now what was I supposed to do? Leave the rest of it and never return? I couldn’t stay with Amy much longer. Six people to one toilet was already madness and adding a seventh really seemed to have pushed a couple of her flatmates past their tentative grip on sanity, but moving into a new flat would mean finding the money for a deposit, furniture, toilet paper, washing-up liquid and Sky Plus, and I was completely broke.

I stared at the small rubber duck I had rescued from the bathroom and waited for a response. He usually had a lot to say for an inanimate object but in this instance he was uncharacteristically quiet.

‘Suppose I don’t have any choice,’ I said out loud, to break the eerie silence of the abandoned room. ‘Back to Amy’s it is.’

‘Or you could go to Milan,’ the duck pointed out. ‘That’s an option.’

‘Shut up, duck,’ I said, unzipping the suitcase and shoving him deep inside. That would teach me to look to a bathroom accessory for advice. ‘What do you know?’

Milan.

Sitting on the edge of my bed, swinging my legs back and forth, I pulled on the end of my ponytail. Milan, Milan, Milan.

And that was when I heard someone kicking the door open.

‘Shit bollocks bastard!’ I leapt to my feet, panicking at the sound of Vanessa’s voice right outside my bedroom. I looked left. A shoddily constructed wardrobe that would not hold an elf, let alone me. I looked right. Wall.

‘Yes, Daddy, I said I know.’

The front door slammed behind her and her keys clattered in the bowl beside the door: the bowl that I had dropped my keys into ten minutes earlier.

‘But I’m having a shitty week and I’m not in the mood for lunch,’ Vanessa whinged. ‘Why can’t you take me out for dinner instead?’

Without a better solution, I dropped to my knees and rolled underneath my bed, pulling my spare winter duvet over my head. Trying my best to splutter silently through many months of dust, single socks and poorly disposed of chocolate-bar wrappers, I shuffled backwards until my feet hit the wall. As I swiped loose strands of hair and dust bunnies away from my face, I felt something sharpish scratching against my skin. I grabbed at it, hoping that whatever it was, it had the power to grant wishes, only to discover it was, in fact, a condom – an out-of-date Durex condom, still in its shiny, promising wrapper.

And there we had it: I was twenty-eight years old, with my freezing cold tummy bared to my filthy bedroom floor in a two-sizes-too-small T-shirt, with a duvet over my head, being physically attacked by expired prophylactics.

There was no way to sink any further.

‘Somewhere nice …’ I listened while Vanessa continued to barter with her father, wondering whether or not I could pull the condom over my head like a stocking and charge out the front door without being recognized. ‘Nobu?’

I wanted to go to Nobu. Cow.

‘No, Daddy,’ she whined from the living room. It seemed the shithole she had created didn’t bother her nearly as much as it did me. ‘I have a headache. I need to stay home and rest this afternoon. I know, I’m probably working too hard.’

Well, that wasn’t brilliant news, was it? How was I supposed to get my case of clean knickers out of the flat if she wasn’t going to sod off back out for lunch? For the sake of my sanity, I forced myself to ignore the ‘working too hard’ comment.

‘OK, make it for eight. I’ll see you there.’

On the upside, it seemed as though she hadn’t seen my keys in the bowl by the door and so there was a chance I could get away with this if I stayed very quiet and didn’t attempt to move for the next seven hours. As unlikely as it sounded, that option did actually seem preferable to trying to get out of the flat while Vanessa was still in it, despite the fact I was suddenly desperate for a wee. My bladder had a terrible sense of humour. I imagined this was exactly how Anne Frank felt. Only worse.

I hated not being able to see what was going on. I hated lying underneath my filthy bed, clutching a broken phone in one hand and a condom that had gone off in 2012 in the other. I hated that this was how I found out that I was apparently claustrophobic. Hyperventilating ever so slightly and trying to ignore my as-yet-undiscovered claustrophobia, I concentrated on the sounds outside of my bedroom. A dustbin lorry in the street, high-heeled pacing in the other room, some muffled swearing. Then, after what felt like forever, I heard the shower running.