Jealous Girl.

Carmen Reid.

MEET THE ST JUDE'S GIRLS . . .

GINA.

Full name: Gina Louise Winklemann-Peterson.

Home: A fabulous white and gla.s.s, architect-designed beach house with pool on the Californian coast.

Likes: Sunshine (sadly not often found in Edinburgh), swimming, Halloween, pointy ankle boots, Prada or anything Prada-esque, Reece's Pieces, her cell phone, her little brother Menzie (sometimes), coffee, a certain charming part-time waiter at the Arts Cafe called Dermot O'Hagan Dislikes: Slithery octopus-type kisses, the totally gross sludge-green St Jude's school uniform, deadly dull history lessons, Charlie Fotherington-whatsit, boiled vegetables of any kind (I mean, guys, like, haven't you heard of stir-fry?) Would like to be: A screenwriter but absolutely no one in the whole world knows about that Fascinating fact: Gina has three other best friends at her old school in California Paula, Ria and Maddison. They still can't believe she goes to boarding school in Scotland NIFFY.

Full name: Luella Edith Millicent Pethurer Nairn-Ba.s.sett (no wonder she's called either 'Niffy' or 'Lou').

Home: The ancient crumbling ancestral mansion Blacklough Hall in c.u.mbria, England.

Likes: Playing pranks, enormous horses and s...o...b..ry dogs, all team games (especially hockey she's really good) the St J's a.s.sembly game Banshee Buzzword Bingo (which she invented), her big brother Finn, the odd sneaked gla.s.s of expensive red wine, all school food especially pudding Dislikes: Dresses, dressing up, poncy shoes and fussy clothes of any description, make up, fussing with her hair, fussing about anything at all, her real name Would like to be: A professional rider an international show-jumper, or maybe a three-day eventer that way she could do show jumping, dressage and her favourite, cross-country jumping Fascinating fact: She can be fully dressed in all her riding clothes and hat in twenty-five seconds flat.

MIN.

Full name: Asimina Singupta Home: A big family house with a huge garden in a suburb of Durban, South Africa Likes: Running really really fast and winning, being top of the cla.s.s in every single subject, doing homework (it's so interesting when you really get into it), mango la.s.sis, gold bracelets, reading science books, borrowing Amy's clothes, her Mum's home-made curries Dislikes: The sight of blood, Biology lessons, baby-sitting her little brothers and sisters, the food at St J's, wearing her hair in plaits, Scottish grey skies Would like to be: A medical researcher or medical physicist. She has to do something medical because of her doctor parents but it can't involve blood!

Fascinating fact: Min's mother taught herself Italian and went all the way to Pisa to get her medical degree.

AMY.

Full name: Amy Margaret McCorquodale.

Home: An amazing penthouse flat in Glasgow, Scotland, with a terrace and panoramic view of the city Likes: Designer jeans (Iceberg), designer bags (Marc Jacobs), designer boots (Jimmy Choo, but only when her Dad is feeling incredibly generous), Edinburgh's Harvey Nichols (obviously), very handsome boys, diamonds, champagne, dance music, dressing up and going out, her gran's mince and tatties Dislikes: Penny Boswell-Hackett, Mrs Norah 'the Neb' Knebworth, everything in Niffy's wardrobe, French lessons, people teasing her about her Glaswegian accent, oh and Penny Boswell-Hackett (have you got that?) Would like to be: Officially, she's going to do a law degree then join her dad's nightclub business. Secretly, she'd like to be a famous and fabulous actress.

Fascinating fact: Amy's mum and dad were teenagers when she . . . er . . . arrived. She was brought up by her dad, her gran and her grandpa. She hasn't seen her real mum for years.

Jealous Girl.

Chapter One.

'Gina, you cannot go back there! You just cannot leave us again!' Ria was lying back on a lilo in the pool, dangling a tanned arm into the cool turquoise-blue water. She was once again bringing up the subject which had bugged Gina all summer long.

'Ria . . .' Gina warned. 'I don't want to talk about this.'

'But Gina . . .' Paula began now, sitting up on the stripy sun lounger where she had been basting her lean black limbs in the shimmering heat of a Californian August.

'Yeah, Edinburro!' Maddison chipped in from the edge of the pool.

Gina, who was walking back out to the tiled pool terrace with a tray of iced drinks in her hands, felt as if she'd been ambushed. Had her best friends been talking about her? she wondered. Had they been planning this little debate while she was in the kitchen mixing up the tall cranberry and grapefruit coolers c.h.i.n.king with ice and soda water?

She knew why her friends were mad at her. Even though they'd all been together since junior high and she knew and loved all three of them very dearly, there were new friends in Gina's life now. There were reasons for Paula, Ria and Maddison to be jealous.

This wasn't about boys . . . well, OK, a certain boy with a wide, mischievous smile was maybe something to do with it. No, this was all because last term Gina had been dragged kicking and screaming by her totally fed up mother to a new school. Not just any new school either. Her mother's old school. Not in California either, or any other state in the whole of the US.

Gina, whose grades had plummeted, whose behaviour had apparently become 'unacceptable', whose all-consuming interest in clothes and occasionally boys was driving her mom wild, had practically been frogmarched onto a plane at LAX airport (though admittedly she'd been sent business cla.s.s to ease the pain).

She'd been flown all the way to Scotland. To a grey, grey, chilly but beautiful city called Edinburgh. To a weirdly old-fashioned girls' school called St Jude's, which she'd pretty well hated for the entire first week at least. But then she'd started to make friends, and the friends were good ones; and then somehow it hadn't seemed so bad; and now, hadn't she promised her new friends, Amy, Niffy and Min not to mention her mother that she would definitely be going back in three days' time for the 'autumn' term and the Upper Fifth.

She might even (she and her mother were still in discussions on the subject) sit exams in Scotland next summer.

Gina approached the table, admiring her slim, brown, bikinied reflection in the huge gla.s.s doors that led to the terrace. Swimming every day, she'd gained sleek, toned muscles and a deep tan. Her hair had been lightened by both the sun and the expert attentions of her favourite colourist, Sandrina.

She set down the drinks and looked out over the pool. Long and deep enough to be really refreshing, it was picture-perfect blue. Ria's hand dangling in the water had set off ripple after ripple, causing the bright sunlight to dapple, wink and break across the surface.

Gina knew she was going to miss California. The daily bright, bright blue of the sky. The warmth that sank deep into your bones. And of course she'd miss these girls. All summer long they had been together: swimming, playing tennis, hanging out, shopping, driving to the beaches, catching up with other friends from her 'old' school. She couldn't quite get used to the idea that she really had left her Californian school; she kept telling herself that one day she might just come back . . . But Scotland and St Jude's was so different. It was hard to explain, but over there she felt like a different person. Here, she was surrounded by people who had known her for years and it seemed like nothing interesting ever happened. She knew what was coming next every moment of the day. But in Scotland it was as if she'd started afresh. Everything was new and she could invent a whole new future for herself.

'I'm going to really miss you,' she told her old school friends now as she went from one to the other, handing out the tangy sunset-red coolers.

'But you must be missing them more,' came Paula's grouchy reply as she took the drink, tucking her thick hair behind her ear.

'Well . . .' Gina began, wanting to explain.

'Yeah, your new Scottish friends are better than us,' Ria grumbled. 'And what about that cute guy? You know, the one who's all over your cell phone.'

'Oh, yeah . . . well . . .' Gina tried to shrug it off.

'Yeah, well, nothing!' Ria teased. 'Have we all seen it, girls? Have we all seen the picture of little Mr Cuteness on Gina's cell phone?'

When the insistent shouts got too deafening and too embarra.s.sing to tune out, Gina went over to her lounger and retrieved her cell from the shade underneath.

She called up one of the photos and her friends crowded round, all jostling for the closest look as she showed them the tiny shot of the boy who had given her an extra-special reason to return to Edinburgh at the end of the summer.

Dermot O'Hagan wasn't especially tall or especially handsome, but he was especially nice and he had a cheeky, friendly, downright disarming charm that made Gina smile, that made Gina relax, that made Gina feel just like herself only better, because he clearly thought she was so great. It just shone out of his bright blue eyes and straight back at her that he thought she was so great.

During her first, difficult-to-adjust-to-it-all term at St Jude's, she had really needed someone who made her feel great. All the handsome boys from the other posh private schools hadn't been worth a second glance. But Dermot, who was sixteen and worked part-time in his dad's Edinburgh cafe, had turned out to be the guy who was just right for her.

He had been deliciously shy about asking her out it had taken him weeks and weeks. In fact, he'd left it right until the last day she was in Scotland. So although they'd been emailing and phoning all vacation long, they'd only spent three whole hours together on an official date.

'So you're going back just for him?' Maddison asked, a smile on her face.

'No!' Gina insisted, but then she didn't say any more: she didn't want to hurt their feelings by talking about her new friends and how much she was looking forward to seeing them again.

'Going back for him? For him who?' Gina's mum, Lorelei Winkelmann was up on the wide balcony above them.

Wearing a blue and white striped summer dress and sungla.s.ses, her hair swept back in the breeze, her arms stretched out on the railing in front of her, she looked like an old-fashioned movie star. Not that she was though. Lorelei worked in computing. She was a super-smart big-shot. Gina would always boast that Lorelei and her partner, Mick, 'practically invented the Internet'.

'Gina, do you have a boyfriend in Edinburgh?' Lorelei asked with unmistakable disapproval. 'All summer long I've heard nothing about a boyfriend and now-'

'Grades, Mommy I'm going back to Edinburgh to get good grades. Better than yours.' Gina looked up with a smile as she clicked her mobile shut.

She knew there was a weakness here. Her mother would not want Gina to go on about the lousy grades she herself had got when she was sixteen. Lorelei was a top business executive now: she drove a Mercedes convertible; she wore Armani. It would never ever do to admit to any past failures or weaknesses. These were things she had tried, unsuccessfully, to hide from her own daughter.

'Good grades! That's what you know I want to hear.' Lorelei smiled at her. 'OK, look out down there, I'm about to come and join you.'

But as soon as Lorelei stepped back inside the house, Gina's friends started up again: 'Don't go! Don't go back!'

'You can't leave us!'

'What about all the cute guys over here?'

'And the Halloween party!' Paula exclaimed in tones of total melodrama. 'You'll miss the Halloween party!'

Now this was true and kind of terrible. The Halloween party at Gina's Californian high school was a near legendary event. Costumes were planned months in advance; the entire hall and all the corridors leading up to it were elaborately decorated. The school paths and driveways were lit by no less than 150 intricately carved pumpkin lanterns. And there were loads of best costume prizes although pets were no longer allowed.

'Tiber Flitberry isn't going to be allowed back in after what happened last year,' Ria reminded them.

'Oh yeah,' Maddison agreed, and they all cast their minds back to the screeches of horror when, from under his Dracula cloak, he'd released a real bat.

'What do you think they do for Halloween in Scotland?' Ria wondered.

'My aunt was in London last year,' Paula replied. 'She said they hardly do anything. The shop windows weren't even dressed up.'

'Scotland isn't exactly in London,' Gina reminded her with a roll of the eyes, 'but maybe I'll have to try and get them excited. Have a plan. Have a party even.' She tried to imagine the imposing stone steps to the boarding house decorated with pumpkins, girls dressed up as witches and vampire victims, and boys . . . maybe they'd even be allowed to invite some boys?

'Do you realize, Gina' Paula turned to her, and even the extra coatings of Clinique waterproof mascara couldn't hide the distress in her big brown eyes 'we aren't going to see you again until Christmas!'

'Christmas? No way!' Ria and Maddison chimed in together.

'Well, there's only one thing you can do about that . . .' Gina began.

When her three friends turned to look at her expectantly, she told them, 'When my mum comes over to see me in November . . . you've got to come too!'

Chapter Two.

Gina had plane hair. There was no other way to describe it. Her straight and usually well-behaved blonde locks were all frizzy and full of static.

Crammed into the tiny aeroplane toilet cubicle trying to apply concealer, then blusher, then lip gloss, while someone was rapping on the door and asking: 'Are you nearly finished?' was not exactly easy.

She pulled her hair up into a ponytail, but the more she fiddled with it, the frizzier it got. Pressing her lips together, she took one last look at her face. Despite the tan and the artful blonde highlights, she was hardly looking her best. No wonder this was her eighteenth hour of international plane travel.

But when she stepped off this flight, she would be in Edinburgh, Scotland, local time 9.45 a.m. She glanced at her dainty silver watch: 9.23. Her stomach lurched with nerves because although it had been eight whole weeks since she last saw him, Dermot had promised he would be at the airport to meet her.

Gina didn't have to be back at the St Jude's boarding house until 4 p.m., so she and Dermot could spend almost the whole day together. Not that her mother knew anything about this of course. Her mother had been told that Gina would drop her bags at the boarding house early, then meet a girl friend for lunch, before heading back well before the four o'clock curfew.

When Gina and Dermot had planned their day together, on emails pinging their way back and forth across the Atlantic, it had sounded incredibly romantic and exciting. But now that Gina could hear the clunk of the undercarriage being lowered for landing, it felt . . . there was no other word for it: terrifying.

What would they do all day? What would they talk about? The plan was to go back to Dermot's house, so she could off-load her luggage and meet . . . his mom!

Gina thought there was a possibility that she might actually puke with fear. She checked in the seat pocket in front of her for a sick bag just in case.

'Welcome to Edinburrrrrra,' the air hostess announced with the soft Scottish burr that Gina had come to know during the summer term.

'Set your watches back ten years,' Gina muttered to herself. Because that was how it had felt the first time she'd arrived in Edinburgh from glittering all-new California. Like she had stepped back in time. Like she had boarded not just an aeroplane but a time machine that had taken her back to a place where everything was built of grey stone over a hundred years ago. Where people still wore tweed skirts and sensible shoes, minded their manners and used the mail to send letters. Where people, especially at St Jude's, talked about 'young ladies'. Where the 'young ladies' still wore ball gowns at least once a term and were expected to know how to do a formal Scottish dance.

It was weird, like a whole different world. Had she really liked it enough to come back? she wondered. Looking out of the window to see a steely grey-white sky above her and a drizzle of rain coating the gla.s.s, she wasn't so sure. Had she really wanted to come back to this? Maybe she'd just needed the adventure. Gina, who'd lived in the same neighbourhood since she was four, who'd had the same friends since for ever. Maybe Gina had needed something new and totally different.

But there was no denying that she was desperate to see her St Jude's friends again: Amy and Min. The other girl they had shared a dorm with last term, lovely, funny Niffy, was not coming back to school for a while but they had all promised to go and visit her.

And then there was Dermot . . . the lurch of nerves gripped her stomach again: of course she couldn't wait to see Dermot again. Could she?

As the plane came to a standstill, the FASTEN SEATBELT signs clicked off and the pa.s.sengers began to stand up and collect their belongings together. Overhead lockers were opened and a scurry for bags and coats began, then the push and shove to get out onto the tarmac first.

Gina felt in her small but genuinely Prada handbag (a spoiling goodbye present from her mom) for her mobile phone. Opening it up, she registered the low battery warning and studied the photo of Dermot on the screen. She couldn't help smiling back at it. He was lovely! Of course it was going to be fantastic to see him again. Look at the way his long, sandy-coloured hair flopped into his face. She loved that. She loved the way he was always shyly pushing that forelock of hair out of his eyes.

Gina pulled her pink backpack down from the luggage compartment and joined the hustle for the door, then the long trek through the snaking corridors. She was walking quickly now, her legs just about keeping pace with her hammering heart.

Her fingers dipped into her back jeans pocket for her gloss and she coated her lips just one last time before fixing them into a smile. Then she pushed through the double doors and out into the arrivals hall.

As she cast a quick glance around the crowd, her first thought was: Oh! He's not here yet!

But then a boy stepped forward, waved and called out: 'Gina!'

She looked at him in bewilderment. It took an embarra.s.singly long moment before she recognized him. 'Dermot?' she asked hesitantly. He looked so different. A few photos on her mobile phone and a summer full of daydreams somehow hadn't prepared Gina for the reality of Dermot.

Here he was, standing, breathing, right in front of her, and she was suddenly so nervous she couldn't speak. He felt like a stranger.

His hair, for one thing! It was cropped close to his head. And he was in a scruffy red and green T-shirt and beaten-up jeans. She realized she'd only ever seen him in his cafe waiter's uniform of white or blue shirt, black trousers and ap.r.o.n.

'Gina!' he repeated with an infectious grin across his face.

'Hi,' Gina managed shyly.

Then he was enthusiastically wrapping his arms around her; he was moving in for a kiss!

She let his lips land on hers, but then pulled quickly back before he could get any more smoochy. Especially out here, in public. She felt as if he was someone totally new, rather than the boy she'd been emailing and texting all summer.

'You look great,' Dermot told her, keeping his arms wrapped around her waist.