скачать книгу бесплатно
Aunt Tallullah, my lovely Lullah, has an ah-mazing new job that involves her getting all schmoozy woozy with actor-types on a daily basis.
I know.
My aunt is an on-set designer-girl for TV and movies.
I mean, seriously, what’s not to love about that?
And I’m not talking just C-list wannabee actor-types, nope, I’m talking the headline grabbing, pap-toting, turn-up-late-to-work-just-because-I-can A-lister variety.
I know.
But the thing is, with her being all the way over there in Schmooze Ccity, well, it means she’s not here. And here, without lovely Lullah, is like having the hugest, most dee-licious, slice of gooey chocolate cake without lashings and lashings of whipped cream.
Pointless.
Chapter Two (#u14a6954e-9287-59d5-afd9-a2c70183c111)
Things I love Some facts about lovely Lullah:
She’s totally fabulous.
She’s my idol-girl.
She sometimes looks like she’s walked out of 1940s Paris–ooh la la.
She sometimes works monochrome like a 1960s mod girl.
She’s a superhero-girl. Think younger, red-headed sister of Wonder Woman. Although, unlike aforementioned superhero, Lullah would never discard her handbag when changing costume. Evah.
She’s a palm reader.
She smells like candyfloss and jasmine incense.
She gave me a journal to track all my hopes and dreams.
She sprinkles her vocab with crazy made-up words from her favourite films. She’ll say things like, ‘sweetie, that’s simply de-lovely’ or ‘Lola, this chocolate cake s’wonderful, s’marvellous.’
She’s a bright ray of sunshine on a dark, cloudy day.
‘Til recently, Lullah was studying all things fashion and film, her two favourite things, at a fancy-schmancy university in the city of Londinium. To save pennies, she shunned the bright lights of the big city and stayed here with us, in dreary old Dullsville-by-Sea, commuting into the Londinium when she had to do the study stuff.
And she did a lot of the study stuff–that’s why she’s got the schmoozy woozy job of fabulousness–but she was never, ever too busy to hang out with li’l ol’ me.
I loved it best when I’d arrive home from school and instead of finding an empty house I’d find a lovely Lullah sat on the kitchen table–literally, either sewing buttons to a £2 chazza shop bargain or sketching a foofy hoop skirt and flowery décolletage in her notebook.
Lullah just gets it.
She doesn’t care what people think of her, not one little bit and dispenses guru-like advice in every sentence. Like, when we go chazza shoppin’ she’ll say ‘vintage clothes are better than new ones because they have history.’
But what I loved best was that, unlike my mum, she was a superhero-girl. And as a superhero-girl with superhero-girl powers, she was able to sense a major-league sucky event in Lola world at 100 kitten-heeled paces.
At the first sign of trouble, she would throw me the double wink and I knew what I had to do.
In a one swift movement that even ol’ slinky-milinky Catwoman couldn’t have found fault with, I would crack open a tub of chocolate chip cookie dough ice-cream, grab two spoons and put Breakfast at Tiffany’s in the DVD player. And together, we would make a Lola and Lullah-shaped dent in the old battered sofa. Mission accomplished.
“When real-life lacks the technicolour fabulousness of the big screen, Lola Love,” Lullah would say in her best Hollywood-esque vocab, “there really is nothing better to soothe the soul than an idol-girl in industrial strength foundation.”
Tres poetic.
With a flick of the ‘play’ switch and a quick cuddle, I felt safe. Safe in the knowledge, that for the next hour and a half, I could imagine what my life might have been like if I had lived in another time and place–what can I say? I’m an old fashioned girl.
But just like every good movie before it, Breakfast at Tiffany’s has to end. It always does. And in one of those sucky ‘life imitating art’ moments, at the end of our last movie session, so did my life, as I knew it.
I’m super-chuffed that Lullah has got her dream job. She’s my real-life actual proof that dreams come true and if that’s not amazing x 100, then I really don’t know what is.
But at the risk of sounding like a selfish Suzie, I miss her.
A lot.
I miss her tying pretty-coloured ribbons in my hair and calling me ‘kiddo’, I miss her making me hot chocolate with huge pink and white yumsville marshmallows and what I miss most, is that when she was around, the parentals didn’t argue as much.
But that’s probably because when Lullah moved in, dad moved out.
Only temporarily apparently, but if I’m honest, it was a welcome relief because, boy, can those crazy-adult types argue. If there were a gold medal for raised voices and inaudible vocab, my parentals would win it. Hands down.
Just before she got in her taxi to the airport, Lullah read my palm. She traced hear chipped, pretty-in pink varnished nail across a long line that went from one side of my palm to the other, looked up and smiled.
“Lola Love, you’re going to be a star!” she laughed, pointing at my hand.
I laughed back because Lullah always said that. And well, if I didn’t laugh, there was a good chance I was going to cry.
“It’s true!” Lullah promised. “See your life line? Your life will be just like a movie, the very best kind. You will write the script and most importantly you’ll be the leading lady–I absolutely promise!”
“Whatever,” I replied. It’s fair to say I wasn’t completely convinced.
“No, really, Lola,” Lullah wasn’t one to give up easily. “Do you really think I would be going to New York right now if I hadn’t made the decdecision I wanted to? We make our own destinies–if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. But if you want things to change, then it’s up to you to make those changes happen, then I promise, when you do, your life will be an absolute blockbuster.”
I figured that was a pretty big promise and one she wouldn’t make unless it was definitely true, but now she’s gone, well, I’m not so sure. But it definitely got me thinking.
Thing is, Lullah’s never, ever wrong. She’s just magic like that.
Which is probably why, when I was busy making the most of my last Lullah hug–that I made last for an entire forever, I agreed to look out for THEM.
IM to self: In future, under no circumstances, make NO deals with Aunt Tallulah. Not unless they involve ME going to live in NY with her. Indefinitely.
Meet ‘Them.’
Her cat–imaginatively named ‘Cat’ in homage to Holly Golightly’s feline friend in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Not unlike the movie version, this Cat has ’tude. I have the multiple scratches on my arm, thigh, shoulder, back and hand to prove it.
And her older, substantially less fun sister–Scarlett.
My mother.
Like Cat, she too has ’tude, along with a permanent, judgemental frown where her mouth is meant to be.
Like I said before, welcome to my life, Welcome to Sucksville.
Chapter Three (#u14a6954e-9287-59d5-afd9-a2c70183c111)
To: princess.lullah@email.com
From: lola@lolasland.com
Subject: I’m a starlet, get me out of here!
Lullah, you’ve got to save me!
There is a severe, 99.9% chance that I’m about to die of a not-even-cureable case of boredomitis.
No, really. I’m not even joking. What is a joke is that in my journal, after our little talk before you left, I have laughing titled this summer vacay ‘the summer of re-invention’ after our little talk before you left. Ha.
Well, I am three whole weeks into the summer holiday, a time that is meant to be filled with fun, adventure and memory-makin’ moments, yet my life, as I know it, is still very much the same old, lame old.
I have no friends and I have no ‘thing’.
I want friends and I want a ‘thing’.
My ‘something’. At this point, my anything.
Lullah, I am beyond frustrated.
I’d also really like Mum to cheer up, Cat to stop chewing everything in sight and to move to NY. Like, this afternoon, if possible.
Until then, please provide me with tales of your muchos glammy life so that I can feel even more sorry for myself, take to my bed and watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s for the 127th time.
Miss you. A lot.
L oxoxox
Hmpph.
I really do want a ‘thing’.
Something that makes people go ‘Wow, Lola Love is cool’ because cool and Lola Love are words that are never, ever mentioned in the same sentence.
Weirdo, loser girl and Lola Love however, are mentioned on a near daily basis, thanks to Eva Satine.
Eva Satine is a toxic girl.
Oh, there’s no doubting the girl’s ability to throw an outfit together or her ‘just-stepped-out-of-a-salon’ silky soft blonde hair, but with all that superficial stuff comes the most horrible of insides, all knotty, angry and self-obsessed.
She’s very clever though.
Eva has fooled the entire school with her butter-wouldn’t-melt, snake-like charm and has won herself the much coveted, Miss I-am-Popularity-Personfied title.
I, on the other hand, have become her very own official torment toy. And it’s not as though Eva is not alone in her quest to make my life considerably difficult on a daily basis. Nope, because like every popular-girl-in-the-playground before her, she has the obligatory, plastic-looking hair-flickin’ clique. Me and Angel call them ‘The Negative Ninas’ (but I don’t think they’re losing any sleep over it) who are the girls at school who arrive everywhere in a stinky mist of Eau Du Nasty, have the same outline as Eva but fade into insignificance compared to the real thing. If they weren’t so rude and obnoxious I might even feel sorry for them.
But ‘The Negative Ninas’ are rude and obnoxious.
They use cuss words that would make a trucker blush and they have a never-ending supply of put-downs.
So I don’t feel sorry for them. Not one little bit.
And just in case you were worried that they weren’t super mean enough, they don’t just stop at name-calling either. Oh no, these girls are premier league. They’ve read every script of every high school teen movie ever made and are completely up to date with their roles as popular-girls-who-make-lonely-weirdo-girl-feel-really-bad.
Now, before I press play on this particular scene of shame straight from the life of me, you absolutely need to know that if I had my way, for the sake of self-preservation, it’d be on the cutting room floor.
Deleted.
Forever.
But for some reason the delete button won’t work and this scene is on constant rewind, play and repeat in my mind.
You will soon see why…
Chapter Four (#u14a6954e-9287-59d5-afd9-a2c70183c111)
It was about six months ago, it was PE and I had no kit.
This was bad.
Really bad.
At our school you don’t forget your kit. Not ever. Because only a fool would risk the utter shame and humiliation that comes with forgetting your kit–wearing The Spare Kit.
Except I hadn’t forgotten my kit.
My kit had been stolen.
Which is why I was stood in Miss Appleby, the gym teacher’s office, while she rummaged around in a spectacularly stinky box, looking for a suitable ensemble. An active source of embarrassment since the 1970’s, the Spare Kit box is home to the most hideous of ill-fitting, never-been-washed items of clothing known to mankind.
“You can wear these,” Miss Appleby, the sadistic (aren’t they all?) gym teacher barked. (I should point out that as a gym teacher, she is almost as evil as Eva.)
I could have wept. The shorts were navy blue with off-white piping. Now, navy is a great colour if you can wear it, but against my milky whiter than white complexion, it was just rude and really, really wrong.
They were also a size too small.
Of course they were.
