"Do you miss Edinburgh?" Gina asked Niffy.
"Yeah," she admitted.
"Do you miss school?"
"Sort of . . . You know how it is with St Jude"s," Niffy replied. "Can"t live with it, can"t live without it. You don"t really want to be away from home, but then you wouldn"t see any of your friends, who you love just like family" she beamed at them all "so you drag yourself back there term after term."
They"d arranged to meet the Range Rover and Mr N-B at two o"clock in the Co-op car park, when he was going to drive them over to Angus"s aunt and uncle"s place.
As they set off towards the car park through the unending drizzle, the girls pa.s.sed a group of teenagers huddled beneath the arches of the small town hall on the high street. One of them, a girl dressed in tight jeans, a tracksuit top and a baseball cap, called out as they pa.s.sed, "Got your posh friends down for the weekend, have you, your ladyship?"
Amy, Gina and Min stopped in their tracks and looked over at the girl in astonishment. Niffy, by contrast, ducked her head down and carried on walking at a brisk pace.
"We"re not good enough to talk to then, are we, your highness? Lady Toffee Nose?" a second girl, standing beside the first, chipped in with a sneer.
Amy, Gina and Min were still rooted to the spot, staring at the girls in horror.
Now the other members of the group were joining in. The boys were whistling, and there were calls of "Stuck-up cow!" "Snooty witch!" and "Posh bird!"
Niffy didn"t even want to wait for her friends. She just pulled her shoulders almost up to her ears and kept on walking.
Amy, Gina and Min looked at the girls, looked at each other in outrage and looked at the girls again. Gina"s mouth was hanging open in shock: was this how Niffy"s new cla.s.smates were treating her? No wonder she"d described school as "s.h.i.t" and didn"t want to talk about it. Amy"s hands were on her hips; Amy"s face was clouding over with fury; Amy was very definitely about to say something loud and angry.
Gina brushed against Amy"s arm. "Maybe you shouldn"t," she warned. "Maybe it will make things worse."
But Amy was already taking a deep breath. "Just what do you think you"rrrre playing at?" she fired out in her strongest Glaswegian accent. "Our pal is at your school so she can be at home looking after her sick mum."
No one in the group said anything for a moment, so Amy went on, not quite so angry now, "At least give her a chance. She"s a nice person. Some of you could probably be nice too . . . if we gave you a chance."
By this time, Niffy had stopped and turned to see what was going on.
The girl who"d made the first comment spotted her and immediately shouted, "Ooooh, you"ve finally turned to look at us then, Princess Poncey Pants."
"I said be nice," Amy said, slowly and icily.
"Or what?" The girl turned and curled her lip at her. "What ya gonna do? Get the Queen down to have us arrested?"
This caused an outbreak of loud, sneering laughter from her friends.
Amy had been in enough playground sc.r.a.ps to know that it was time to retreat with a parting shot; she could come back to fight another day.
"You"re going to be very sorry," she said loudly and clearly so that everyone could catch each word. Then she took Gina and Min by the arm and marched them away from the group as quickly as she could.
The laughter and whistles of the teenagers were still ringing in their ears as they rounded the corner into the Co-op car park.
"Nice new friends," Amy hissed at Niffy.
"Don"t interfere. It"s best to just keep your head down and stay out of their way."
"No it isn"t!" Amy retorted. "You"ve got to sort them out or this will go on and on all the time you"re at their school. And that could be a while! I promise you, you"ve got to sort it out."
"No I don"t," Niffy snapped.
Mr N-B"s filthy old Range Rover was already in the car park. Without saying anything more, Niffy opened the front pa.s.senger door, climbed in and slammed it shut.
Chapter Sixteen.
The drive from Buckthwaite to Angus"s aunt and uncle"s home through green and twisty country lanes seemed to soothe Niffy. As the car turned into a long tree-lined driveway, she turned and smiled at her friends in the back seat.
"Wait till you see this place I think you"re going to be impressed," she told them.
The driveway seemed to go on for miles, winding through leafy woodland, then past green fields where sheep grazed and enormous oak trees, protected by little wooden fences, spread their graceful branches. At the end of the drive, the rhododendron bushes fell away and they pulled up in front of a vast grey stone building.
There was no way this could be a house, Gina couldn"t help thinking. It looked more like a museum or a school even some kind of castle. Surely this couldn"t be where Angus"s relatives lived! Only royalty could afford a place like this.
In contrast to Blacklough Hall, the front doors were thrown wide open at the sound of the car on the drive. A flight of steps dotted with colourful pots of plants and flowers led up to the ornate marble-columned entrance hall.
Already there were people standing there, a middle-aged couple and, towering above them, waving frantically, a hunky blond figure, which must surely be Angus.
"Hi! h.e.l.lo there! Good to see you great to see you!" He came bounding down the steps towards them, booming out greetings, scattering three tiny yapping dogs as he went.
"Does everyone live in a place like this around here?" Gina asked Amy, only half-joking.
"Erm, no. Don"t think Niffy"s school pals do, for a start," came Amy"s reply.
"But look at it," Min said, staring through the Range Rover windows in something close to dismay. "It just doesn"t feel right that someone should have a house this big. What about the homeless people?"
"You"d fit plenty of them in here," Amy joked. As she stepped out of the car, she watched happily as Angus kissed Niffy on both cheeks which could just have been politeness, though the hands around her waist pulling her towards him definitely weren"t. And while her father wasn"t looking, Angus leaned down and gave Niffy"s ear a quick lick, which caused Amy to utter a shriek of surprise.
"Hey, Amy," Angus said when he could bear to take his eyes off Niffy. "Can I kiss you too?"
"Yeah." Amy offered each cheek in turn, but warned him, "Just no licking, OK?"
He ushered them in. "Come on, meet the rellies."
The rellies, Angus"s aunt and uncle, turned out to be nice. The house was glittering and the unmistakable impression was: rich, rich, rich. It couldn"t have been more different to the threadbare state of Blacklough.
"My uncle is a banker, you know wads of money," Angus explained in a cheerful whisper.
When Amy was shown into the drawing room, she made straight for the beautiful bay window and admired the three gleaming cars parked outside. An Aston for him, a Lotus for her, and an immaculate old-fashioned blue Land Rover, perfectly restored, shining and loved in every way for going into the fields, perhaps?
"Angus, who cleans the cars here?" Amy asked.
"This old boy, Roger, he does all the odd jobs . . . Why?" he wondered.
"He does a blinking good job," she said. Even her dad"s driver, who kept the McCorquodale Jag sparkling, would be impressed. "I need to have a little word with Rog, if that"s OK," she went on.
Angus"s eyebrows shot up. "Fine . . . but . . ."
"Niffy said you"d just pa.s.sed your driving test," she added.
"Yes," Angus confirmed, "but-"
"Good!" Amy told him with a secretive smile. "Because I"ve just had this totally, totally brilliant idea."
Chapter Seventeen.
It was nearly eight p.m. and already growing dark in the village of Buckthwaite. This was exactly what Amy had wanted. Any earlier and there might have been too much daylight to get away with her plan; any later and there was a danger that the people they needed to see would have gone home.
"There!" Amy pointed, feeling a rush of nerves. "There they are . . . That"s definitely her anyway, the ring-leading cow. So long as we make an impression with her, this will work. OK, pump up the ba.s.s."
Molly Haddon that was the name of the mouthy girl in the baseball cap who"d had a go at Niffy earlier that day was one of the first of the group to spot the white Range Rover coming up the street towards the arches of the town hall, where they were still huddled.
How could she not notice it? Amy, Niffy, Gina, Min and Angus had spent hours cleaning it. Mr N-B had agreed, of course, but even he"d been astonished by the degree of effort which they had all put into the task.
Amy had charmed Roger into handing over car shampoo, T-Cut colour restorer (which the Nairn- Ba.s.sett Range Rover had needed, that was for sure), wax polish, chrome buffer, tyre blackener, gla.s.s polisher, even a hand-held vacuum for the seats.
"Come on!" Amy had urged them over and over during the cleaning process. "It"s got to shine! I know how these things are done. It can"t look like it"s ever spent one second outside the inner city."
Once the Range Rover had been polished to perfection, Amy had enlisted Angus"s help to gather together all the other items she needed.
"The car"s CD player works, doesn"t it?"
"Hmm . . ." Niffy didn"t know. "Dad always listens to Radio Three."
When inspection of the CD player had revealed that it did in fact function, Angus had been sent to rifle through his cousin"s old CD collection until they"d found exactly the right thing.
"Shake Da House vol. six perfect!" Amy had declared as she set the CD aside.
Then thin chiffon scarves were tied over three big torches so they gave off glowing purple, blue and yellow lights.
"And now for our disguises," Amy had announced, causing the four faces of the others to turn to her in disbelief. She still hadn"t told them what she had in mind. She was worried that if she told them, they would refuse to play along and simply think that she was out of her mind. But somewhere, deep down, she just absolutely knew they could pull this off.
"OK, now we need baseball caps, puffy anoraks, sungla.s.ses, and lots and lots of gold chains," Amy had told them.
"What?" Angus had demanded in astonishment. "Where the h.e.l.l are we going to get all that? And why? Why don"t you just tell us what"s going on?"
"Look at the size of this place!" Amy had insisted, refusing to be put off. "If we start looking round here, I promise you we"ll find everything we need. We"ll raid the fancy-dress boxes, the backs of wardrobes even the Christmas decorations if we have to! Come on!"
"Look at that." Molly Haddon was now nudging the girl next to her, and most of the others turned to look in the direction of her pointed finger. "That"s pretty flash."
Now all eyes were fixed on the white Range Rover as it drew closer. All four of the 4X4"s side windows were half-open so that the teens standing on the wet pavement could hear the loud music thump, thump, thumping from inside.
"That is flash," one of the boys agreed with Molly.
They were looking at the cool coloured lights that seemed to glow from the car windows, lighting it from within.
"It"s a customized one," the boy added. "Special light and sound system," he muttered with a hint of longing. "That is unbelievably cool."
Now the car was drawing closer, slowing right down; to their surprise, it was pulling to a halt right beside them.
In the pa.s.senger"s seat they could see an incredibly glamorous blonde, heavily made up, wearing dark gla.s.ses, flashing with diamonds, her hair falling loose about her shoulders. In the driver"s seat was a ma.s.sive guy in a big padded anorak, baseball cap and large dark gla.s.ses. He looked very blond and very serious. In the back seat was another seriously padded guy, also in a baseball cap and shades. In his hand was some sort of thick wooden stick like a bat or something.
"Maybe they"re Russians," the boy wondered out loud. He sounded almost nervous. But then this was Buckthwaite: exotic strangers in customized Range Rovers weren"t exactly common around here.
When the pa.s.senger window slid down, the group of teenagers instinctively took a step back.
The blonde girl in the front seat turned to face them. She raised her sungla.s.ses so that she could take a better look at them all.
"Remember me, then, guys?" she asked in clear, unmistakably Glaswegian tones.
It took a moment or two, but then Molly and her friends realized that this was the same girl who"d been in the high street earlier with that stuck-up Luella Nairn-Ba.s.sett girl. Every one of them was now too nervous to make any sort of reply to Amy.
"Do you know who my dad is?" she began. "No, I don"t think you do. Well, let me tell you. My dad is one of the hardest men in Glasgow. No!" she scolded. "Don"t look in the car. He"s not in the car. You think he"d drive around in a tin can like this? No, he drives a really nice set of wheels," she went on, not even remotely nervous now.
When she was ordinary Amy McCorquodale, she wasn"t a very good liar, but when she was in costume, playing a part, it was a different story. She was an actress now, speaking her lines with conviction, just like she"d practised all the way here.
"He"s a businessman," she said darkly. "I don"t think I need to tell you what kind of business. Let"s just say he has a lot of security men . . . ready to provide security" she paused and looked at them meaningfully "at a moment"s notice."
Then Amy carefully opened the tiny, but oh-so-obviously- labelly handbag on her lap and took out her d.i.n.ky little phone. "I could just give him a wee call and my two security men here might have some new orders."
Molly was now looking at her with undisguised terror, her mouth open. "I"m . . . I"m . . . I didn"t . . ." she stammered, unable to get the words out.
"It"s very simple . . ." Amy had to admit she was almost enjoying this now. "Just be nice," she instructed, "or at the very least polite to my friend Luella. Or else I might have to get some of my friends to give some of your friends a lesson in manners. And you wouldn"t like that. Do you understand?"
There was an outbreak of unanimous nodding amongst the group on the pavement.
At that, Amy pressed the b.u.t.ton on the Range Rover"s electric window and felt a rush of relief when the gla.s.s slid up. Angus put the engine in gear and drove off as smoothly as he could, his palms sweating at the thought of accidentally stalling the car at this critical stage.
The three had barely made it round the corner before they collapsed into hysterics with relief. Both Niffy, heavily disguised, in the back seat and Angus in the front pulled off their baseball caps and whooped with laughter.
"You were brilliant," Niffy told Amy. "For goodness" sake!" she instructed. "Go left, Angus! Left just here, otherwise we"ll be back on the high street and they"ll see us!"