Kalani took a long, slow breath. ‘He was my tutor at university. I really liked him. Everyone did. He was funny and charismatic and ridiculously clever. So, when he started paying me attention, I was thrilled. Coffee in the Student Union café, an evening in the wine bar where real grown-ups, not students, drank. A private tutoring session in his study. Where he assaulted me. Like anyone with half a brain could probably have seen coming a mile off.’
We all went very still for a moment.
‘Oh, my darling, that’s awful. I’m so sorry that happened to you,’ Laurie said, her arm tight around Kalani’s shoulders.
‘Yeah, well.’ Kalani sat up a bit straighter. ‘It worked out for the best because I dropped out, joined a flat-share in London with my cousin and met a guy at a party who gave me an internship in PR. I ended up making a bloody fortune, moved here and met you lot and never wasted another second falling for a man’s lies.’ She let out a twisted cross between a sob and a laugh. ‘You could say he did me a favour. I mean, the assault wasn’t even that serious…’
‘No.’ Hattie, sitting on a beanbag beside us, spoke softly but her voice was granite. ‘We could not say that, Kalani. Despite you doing such an incredible, courageous job of moving on and creating a new life for yourself, being assaulted is not for the best. Every assault is serious and that evil man did not do you a favour. He stole something extremely precious. Behind that portcullis guarding your heart is a young woman petrified of allowing anyone to betray her like that again.’
‘Yeah.’ Kalani sniffed. ‘I’ve worked pretty hard to keep that girl dead and buried. Looks like you’ve managed to resurrect her.’
‘She doesn’t need to die, just to heal so that she can be free to grow up.’
‘And that means more of this?’
Hattie sat back, her arms wrapped around her full skirt. ‘What do you think?’
Kalani scanned the rest of us, one hand automatically reaching out to grip Deirdre’s.
‘Absolutely.’ Laurie gave her friend a squeeze. ‘I totally haven’t got time for this, you know how hectic things are with the bakery, two teenagers driving me round the bend with their dramas, and now Dad being so ill. Never mind those chuffing pigeons. But I think you need this, Kalani, and if a Gal needs me, you know I’m there.’
‘I don’t want you to be scared inside,’ Deirdre said to Kalani, swiping at her own damp cheek. ‘Idon’t want to be scared any more. Please let’s do this.’
‘You soppy pair.’ Kalani laughed, shaking her head. ‘How on earth did I end up friends with you?’
‘We’re the only ones willing to ignore your offensive remarks,’ Laurie said.
‘Sophie?’ Deirdre asked. ‘You’ll art it out with us, won’t you?’
I took a couple of shaky breaths. The very thought felt as though I were tumbling down a cliff. The last thing I wanted to do was start poking around at my inner feelings. If Kalani and Deirdre had a scared young woman inside them, then mine was absolutely petrified. But being a part of this, witnessing Kalani bearing her private pain, I could hardly be insensitive enough to say no, could I?
‘If you don’t mind me tagging along.’
‘The more the merrier!’ Laurie said. ‘Or should that be, the more the sadder?’
Either way, I was here to do a job. If that now included once a week sticking magazine scraps onto card and finding a vaguely plausible reason for it, then no problem. No one needed to know that I’d be keeping my real pain, my genuine issues, buried deep down inside where they belonged.
* * *
‘Sophie needs a gorgeous gal,’ Laurie said, after Hattie had taken Kalani into her other studio for a longer conversation while the rest of us cleared up.
‘She’s not the only one.’ Deirdre was rinsing the glue sticks. ‘Are you sure you’re ready for that though, Sophie? It’s a serious commitment.’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, so, no, I’m not at all sure.’
Fifteen minutes later, I had my first gorgeous gal in my hand. They’d swept me out of the studio and back to the kitchen, Muffin and Flapjack bouncing ahead of us, and proceeded to plonk me down at the table while Kalani and Laurie flung open the fridge, rifled through cupboards and sloshed and glugged various items into a glass jug, finishing it off with a sprig of mint and wedge of lime.
‘It’s our signature cocktail,’ Deirdre explained, once Hattie and Kalani had joined us. ‘We invented it at what became our first meeting of the Gals. Laurie had invited us to her house for cocktails, but we weren’t very good at sticking to the recipes. It’s not actually that nice, but it’ll make everything else we do seem a bit less bonkers.’
Laurie proudly placed a glass in front of me. ‘Behold, the gorgeous gal.’
A murky, dark-green colour, it certainly didn’t look (or smell) gorgeous.
Hattie waited until everyone was holding a full glass. ‘This is it, Sophie, your official initiation into the Order of the Gals. Membership is for life unless you turn out to be a man-stealing weasel like Heidi Sprag.’
‘May her knickers forever show through her trousers,’ Laurie chipped in.
‘And her mascara always be gloopy,’ Kalani added.
