Bad Apple

Chapter Nine

I told them I didn’t want a fuss.

I was only going for a week but my friends insisted on throwing a little party for me at Karyn’s house. They told me to think of it as a going away party rather than a goodbye party. Because I was coming back. But they all knew that I was seriously thinking about a permanent move.

“What will you do about school?” Alice asked, her blue eyes wide. “Will you get into a high school over there? Like in one of those American movies.”

I laughed at her. “Alice, we’re not going to look at schools or anything. We’re going to see if we like the place and for Marigold’s audition.”

She flicked her pale blonde hair over her shoulders. “The guys in those high school movies are pretty hot.”

“Yes, and they’re all played by actors in their late twenties.” I rolled my eyes.

“Don’t you like older men?” Karyn winked at me.

For a second, I thought she’d figured out my secret.

Alice giggled, “Yeah, remember that bald guy on that night out in London?”

Jordanne, a friend of Karyn’s, laughed with them though I’m sure she wasn’t even there that night. It was my night out anyway, probably for my seventeenth birthday. My friends and I were staying in London with my mum, who was filming something there. Alice and I were underage of course but Karyn was old enough and I could blag my way into any club I wanted.

Or at least, I thought I could. Not everybody actually cares whether you have famous parents or not.

We were all drunk but I was the embarrassing one. The one who got us kicked out of the best night club in London. The one who tried to start a fight with the security guard. The one who snogged some random bald bloke waiting in the queue outside.

That last event is the one Alice was referring to and the reason why Karyn had winked at me when she made that comment about older men. Ordinarily, I would probably have been a bit annoyed with them for bringing that up again but all I felt was relief. I was safe. Karyn didn’t know about James.

I let them laugh about it for a while and then they started asking serious questions about my future. What was I going to do in New York?

The truth was that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I suppose I still wanted fame and drama and everything else that came with it but I didn’t want to be known as ‘Cadence Lyn-Stratford: The Rock Star’s Daughter’ forever.

Instead of giving a proper answer about what my plans for the future were, I gave them a mildly amusing story about how I was going to marry an American billionaire.

As I was leaving with Alice and Jordanne behind me, I felt my mobile phone vibrate in my jacket pocket. Checking the screen, I saw it was a text message from James. The other girls were gossiping about something else so I knew they wouldn’t see if I read it but I didn’t know if I wanted to read it.

I imagined it was going to be something soppy or maybe just charmingly smooth. I wasn’t going to fall for that. Defiantly, I shoved the phone back into my pocket, closing my hand tightly around it as though it was going to jump out at me, begging for his message to be read.

Alice lived close to Karyn and said she would be walking home but Jordanne lived somewhere near Birmingham centre. I silently moaned to myself when she suggested that we share a taxi. I did not want to spend any more time than necessary with someone like Jordanne. She was twenty-four, the same age as Karyn. They had been friends at school or something and Karyn often invited her to our social events. It never made sense to me why she came since she acted like it was so beneath her to hang out with teenagers.

I let her call the taxi, worried that if I got my phone back out of my pocket I would find myself reading James’s message. When it turned up, we both slid into the back of the car and told the driver where we were going.

I hoped he wold be one of those taxi drivers who recognised me and asked me loads of questions that I’d been asked plenty of times before so that I could avoid conversation with Jordanne but there was no such luck.

She started up the chitchat before I even had my seatbelt on. “I think I could be an actress.” She twisted a strand of her wavy caramel-coloured hair around her finger and looked at me for a response.

Jordanne certainly looked like she could be an actress. She was one of those attractive girls who knew exactly how pretty she was. Tall and athletic with amazonian bronzed skin and round hazel eyes.

“Why do you say that?” I asked nonchalantly. I knew why she had said it. Because all my friends expected me to land a career in the spotlight once I was in America and she thought she was so much better than me.

“Or maybe a model.” She ignored my question and started pouting her lips and fluffing her big, bouncy hair.

I rolled my eyes at her and turned to look out of the window. I hadn’t even noticed but we were coming up to the cul-de-sac where James lived. I felt a tight pang in my chest thinking about him again.

It’s up to you New York, New York I sung the old Frank Sinatra song in my head, drowning out Jordanne’s constant self-indulgent waffle. I had to focus all my energy on the big city now.

The taxi reached the hotel first and I had barely said goodbye to Jordanne before I was out of the car and running upstairs to the room we were staying in.

My mum and sister were both there, packing up their things ready for the flight in the morning. It seemed strange really, packing up from one hotel and moving to another. As though our lives were dictated by our possessions.

I had visited my dad again at the house and picked up a few last belongings to take with me and some things for my mum. As far as I was aware, they still hadn’t spoken to each other since my birthday. It seemed even stranger that there was him alone in our big house and we were slowly emptying it.

Anika had piled her stuff up on the other bed in the room we were sharing and was carefully organising it into sections to pack. I flopped down on my bed and automatically reached for my phone to check my messages. There it was. The ominous little white envelope on my phone screen indicating that I had an unread message. I bit my lip and tapped the screen to open it.

I’m really sorry about everything that happened

I stared at the seven words the message contained, blinking a few times as though that would change them. Was that it? Was that all he had to say?

I tossed my phone down onto the bed. Tears pricked the back of my eyes, so I must have been angry. But why? I knew the answer. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.

I was angry because I had expected a full-on romantic text filled with emotions and descriptions of how much he was going to miss me. Not just expected. That was the message I had wanted.