Our “holiday” seems to have fired up Mum. During our first week back she has three job interviews, and by the following week she’s been offered a job at the travel agent’s next to Pet Heaven. “Well done, sweetheart,” Ed says, grinning approvingly as she models her sky blue skirt and blouse, blue high heels and spotted tie.

I have to hold in a bubble of laughter – not because it doesn’t suit her, but because she looks totally respectable and not like my mum at all. The company’s motto, which is embroidered on the blouse pocket, reads: Reaching for the skies, which I suppose is a slight improvement on Smiles cost nothing so we give them for free, which Tony put on the wall at the chip shop and which would be harder to fit on to a pocket, I guess.

The brilliant thing is, she hasn’t had time to do anything about selling Jupe’s guitars and drum kit yet. She’s been too busy doing herself up to start the job – including, at this precise moment, having her hair done at (eek!) the Cutting Room because Drunk Babs is on holiday. “You can’t go there,” I blurted out before she set off for her Thursday morning appointment.

“Why not?” she laughed. “You go, don’t you?”

“Well, just the once…” I could feel myself blushing furiously.

“So what’s the problem?” Mum asked.

I opened and closed my mouth, my heart juddering as I wondered whether to blurt out the truth. “Um … Bernice works there,” I said in a whisper.

Mum stepped back and frowned at me, as if she was about to give me an almighty lecture about keeping this from her. “So what?” she said with an exaggerated shrug. “I’ll go where I like to have my hair cut. I’ve nothing to be embarrassed about, have I? I mean, I don’t have people drawing me with my clothes off.” And off she went, as if almost looking forward to breezing into the salon and freaking out Bernice.

It’s so nerve-shredding, thinking of Mum confronting Bernice in the salon, that all I can do is plug in Jupe’s sunset guitar and play and play, while Lily bashes the hell out of the drums that Ed set up temporarily in our room.

Can you believe that Mum actually complained about Lily’s drumming? “But you love music!” my sister protested. “You play it really loud…”

“That’s different,” Mum argued.

“Why? How’s it different?”

“Because,” she said with a toss of her hair, “you can turn my music off.”

Which, admittedly, you can’t do with Lily Jones.

 

It feels like Mum’s been at the Cutting Room for a hundred years. Lily’s out too, having rushed off to help with a Brownie fundraising stall on the seafront. I check the street from my bedroom window to see if Mum’s storming up the road after a huge row with Bernice. I hope there’s not been any violence. Then I see him: Riley Hart. My ex-friend, who’s supposed to be in France right now. Maybe they’ve all come back early. Or they could have had a furious row on holiday, and his dad had to rush out to collect him… I watch him, trying to will him to cross the road and knock at my door.

He glances at our house and I stagger back from my bedroom window, sensing my cheeks flaming up. Not that he’s looking at our house, of course, so there’s no danger of him seeing me. He’s walking self-consciously, as if it’s taking all his effort not to look, then he marches round the corner out of sight.

Well, I’m not having that. The cheek of it! He can’t stroll down my street, where I’ve lived all my life, trying to make me feel bad. My hands are all sweaty and I can tell I’ve gone blotchy in the face. Why do bodies behave like this? You read in magazines that when you see someone you like, these amazing things happen to make you appear more attractive so that person will fall in love with you. Your lips are supposed to plump up and go pinker and your pupils are meant to turn into huge black saucers so you look totally gorgeous.

I examine my face in our mirror. While my cheeks are sizzling, my lips are washed out, barely visible. My pupils are tiny pinpricks. If anything, I look sick.

I put the sunset guitar away in its scruffy case, place it on my bed and hurry downstairs. Then I grab my keys and head out.

I’m not actually going to Riley’s house. I just seem to swerve in that direction, carried along by my legs with no say in where they’re taking me. Soon his house is in view. It’s a muggy afternoon filled with cooking smells. I want to turn back but my legs won’t let me. Now I’m outside his place, and I can sense that my pupils are as tiny as it’s possible to be. Because, you see, I don’t even like him any more. I don’t even want to see him. It’s just … I need to know why he isn’t in France, what’s going on with him and Skelling, why he didn’t seem to care about cutting me out of his life, just like Jupe did. Then, once I know, I can forget all about him and be normal again, like I was before Riley came to Copper Beach.

My mouth’s dry and my tongue feels like a shrivelled-up Jurassic burger as I knock firmly on his front door.

 

For a few seconds, no one answers. Maybe he’s not in. He was probably just passing my house on his way down to the North Cove or something. Then, just as I’m about to turn back, there are soft footsteps in the hall, and the door opens slowly.

“Hi,” Riley says, looking surprised. “You all right?”

“Er, yeah. I … I was just passing,” I start, “and I wondered, I mean… I didn’t think you’d be back from holiday yet. From, er, France,” I add dumbly.

He looks at me and blinks. “So why did you come?” he asks.

“I, um…” Now I’m trapped. Well done, Clover, idiot. “I saw you in our street,” I add lamely, “and I wondered if, er … anyway.” We stare at each other. “Did you have a good time?” I blurt out.

“No, I didn’t,” he says coolly.

“Oh.” I’m starting to sweat now. Nice. “So, er … what happened?”

“I didn’t have a good time,” he says slowly, “because I didn’t go.”

He didn’t go! He didn’t go! “Why not?” I ask.

Riley shrugs. “I just didn’t, OK? Plans changed.”

I nod, and a tiny spark of hope bursts like a firework in my heart. He didn’t go! He didn’t go! I’m grinning crazily and I don’t care.

There was no slathering sunscreen on to Skelling’s bare-naked skin.

No drooling over custard bikinis.

No kissing by the pool in the moonlight.

“Well,” I say, trying to normalize my expression, “I’m back from my uncle’s now, er, as you can see … and he died, did I tell you that? And he, er, left us everything, so we’ve brought back all these instruments…”

“Yeah?” Riley says icily.

“I … I thought you might want to come over. And, um, see them. And play…” Why am I asking him over? This isn’t what I planned to say at all. I was going to be brave and straight to the point. I open my mouth, but can’t think of anything else to say.

He pretends to swipe an insect from his brown, beautiful neck. “Clover,” he mutters, “I don’t want to do music with you any more.”

Crash, goes my heart. Like Lily thrashing Jupe’s cymbal. “But … why not?”

His eyes are cold and hard. “Well, I didn’t think you would after that time you stomped off…”

“I just wanted to know about Sophie and—” I start.

“Anyway,” he cuts in angrily, “why should I hang out with you after what you’ve been saying about me?”

“What? But I haven’t said anything!”

“Don’t lie,” he snaps. “I know what you’ve said. That I’m crap at playing guitar, and it’s so embarrassing when I come round, and you only spend time with me ’cause you feel sorry for me, but really you wish I’d jack it in and save you the trouble of humouring me…”

He’s yelling now, really yelling. A woman pulling a shopping basket on wheels stares at us from across the street.

“I didn’t say that!” I yell back. “I’ve never said anything like that. Who told you?”

His mouth forms a grim line. How can such a sweet, handsome face look so brittle? “Doesn’t matter,” he says airily.

“Yes, it does,” I shout, “because they’re lying!”

He folds his arms. “No, they’re not.”

“How d’you know? How can you be so sure?”

“Because,” he starts, glancing down at his grubby trainers, “everyone knows you’re a brilliant guitarist. And when I thought about it – all those hours you’ve spent trying to help me, when I’ve played the same thing over and over and still couldn’t get it…” He snorts. “No one would do that without getting frustrated.”

My eyes flood with tears. I’d give anything for some kind of Hoover thingie behind my eyeballs to suck them back in. They wobble like mercury on my lower lids and then – dammit – overflow and drip down my cheeks. “You really believe that?” I ask, my voice splintering.

Riley shrugs. “I don’t see any reason not to.”

Furiously, I swipe my tears with a sleeve. “Why didn’t you go to France, Riley? What happened?”

He sighs deeply. “At first I said I’d go,” he mutters, “’cause me and Dad never go on holiday. We haven’t been anywhere since Mum left. But then, when I thought about it – being away for the whole summer – I realized I wanted to be here. With you.”

“With … me?” I croak.

Riley nods.

I swallow hard. He chose boring old Copper Beach over France, because of me? “You mean,” I venture, “even though I’m supposed to have said those horrible things about you?”

“By the time I heard all that, it was too late to go ’cause they’d already booked their flights.”

“Right. So … Skelling told you that stuff, did she?”

He shuffles on the doorstep. “It doesn’t matter,” he mumbles.

“Who was it, Riley?” I’m not crying any more. I’m just mad, mad as hell.

“Just someone, OK?”

“And you don’t think that someone was jealous of all the time we’d been spending together?”

He opens his mouth to speak. For a moment, he looks as if he realizes it’s a horrible, tangled mess, but that it’s too late to unravel it.

“Hey, Riley!” come a shrill voice from upstairs. “I thought you were going to play that song for me? Who are you talking to down there?”

There are footsteps, the clack-clack of heels on the wooden staircase. “Oh, hi, Clover!” Skelling exclaims. She’s wearing teeny white shorts and a bubblegum-pink lacy vest.

“What are you doing here?” I blurt out.

She flashes a syrupy smile. “Had to come back early. Dad was offered this amazing job he couldn’t turn down. He’s getting a company car and everything.”

“Just a car?” I ask coldly. “Not a yacht or a helicopter?” Whoops, that popped right out of my mouth.

She snorts, pony-like, through her nostrils. “Anyway, what were you were saying to Riley? That I’m jealous of you? Why would I be jealous when you’re the one who lives in a scabby house, whose dad’s gone off with some naked model and a mum who—”

“Hey!” Riley cuts in. “No need to—”

“Jealous of your holiday, maybe?” she crows. “I mean, we only went to dreary old France, while you … you went to a dead man’s house, didn’t you?” She throws back her head and guffaws.

“Sophie, for God’s sake,” Riley snaps, whirling round to face her. “That’s … that’s a horrible thing to say…”

She rolls her eyes and simpers. “Sorry.”

“No,” he says, shooting her a furious look. “Don’t speak to Clover like that. You don’t know anything about her.” Riley’s cheeks are burning and even Skelling has the decency to turn a hot shade of pink.

“Of course you’re not jealous of me,” I snap at her. “Why would you be? You’ve got everything.” I turn and storm away, shutting my ears as Riley shouts out my name, his voice fading to nothing as I run.

 

You’re welcome to each other, I fume as I charge home. I hope you’ll be deliriously happy together. It’s not as if Riley’s ever been my boyfriend or my anything at all. Guitar practice, that’s all it was. Someone to try out new songs with, to see if they worked, because it’s awfully lonely playing all by yourself.

So really, Riley could have been anybody.

And he’s right – he never gets any better. His strings buzz and he drops his plectrum and gets frustrated and red in the face. Sometimes I wonder why he persists with lessons at Niall’s. Maybe his dad pushes him into it.

Oh yeah, and there were those kisses. The tiny, blink-and-you’d-miss-it kiss, and the real one. Well, a girl can make mistakes. For a moment just then, I actually thought he was, you know, OK after all. Especially when he said he wanted to stay at Copper Beach instead of going to France. Now I know better. Even if he likes me, Skelling’s always going to be around, trying to ruin my life. I’m not having that any more. I’d rather spend my time washing all the panes in Dad’s greenhouse than hang out with him. I’d rather clean Cedric’s cage with my tongue.

By the time I turn into our road, I’ve come up with some new rules for myself:

 

1. Remember my promise to Jupe. Get better and better on guitar, find a band, rehearse until we’re completely brilliant and make Riley Hart completely, sickly jealous. Ha!
2. And, er, that’s it. I can’t think of anything else. But it’s big enough to be going on with, don’t you think? And it’s working already because it’s taken my mind off Riley for … ooh, about seventeen seconds.