The It Girl: Don't Tell the Bridesmaid. Katy Birchall

at the embarrassingly loud car horn just in time to see Helena giving my dad a reproving whack across the head.

      Oh my God. Just let me curl up and die in a hole in Outer Mongolia right now.

      ‘Haha. I guess we should be used to having an audience by now.’ Connor laughed nervously. ‘At least they don’t have cameras.’

      ‘Yeah, well, I’m not sure a car horn is much better,’ I muttered, glaring at my dad.

      ‘It will be nice for you to escape the press in Italy. Plus,’ he smiled, ‘I’ll be shut away in my room most of the time working on The Amazing It Girl so they can’t use me as an excuse to hound you. I’ll be away from it all.’

      ‘Sure,’ I said, trying to match his enthusiasm. ‘Although, you know, it would have been better to get away from it all together.’

      ‘I know. It would have.’ He nodded. ‘But we’ll speak and message all the time, though.’

      The car honked again and my dad gestured for me to hurry up, pointing at his watch. I felt a little better when I saw Helena give him yet another thwack over the head.

      ‘I better go!’ I sighed. ‘Good luck with the comic.’

      And then that had been that.

      ‘That’s it ?’ Jess looked unimpressed.

      ‘What were you expecting?’ I laughed. ‘A pledge of his undying love?’

      ‘That would have been nice,’ she said before getting overexcited at all the headphones on display in the electrical store. She ran over to try them all on and I followed, picking up the first pair and shoving them over my ears, immediately shutting out all the busy airport noise with a tragically slow romantic ballad about heartbreak. Not quite what I needed right now, but I wasn’t going to show that in front of Jess.

      I sighed. The truth was that I was a little disappointed at my goodbye with Connor. I don’t think some signs of a little more pain and heartbreak at having me leave the country for two weeks would have gone amiss. A little tear? The exchange of romantic tokens, perhaps? Obviously nothing gross like in the olden days when they exchanged lockets of hair, which, you know, probably would have creeped me out, but something.

      I comforted myself with the reminder that Connor was shy and I wasn’t exactly the smoothest of operators. And that my dad seemed to have lost control of his senses when it came to what’s appropriate in a seeing-your-daughter’s-boyfriend-safely-to-the-door situation.

      And they say that distance makes the heart grow fonder. Just like Arwen and Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings for example. Or Spider-Man and Mary Jane Watson . . . Anyway, he had definitely said we’d speak every day. I’d probably even have an email from him waiting for me as soon as I landed telling me how much he regretted not being able to have a proper goodbye . . .

      Suddenly my headphones were yanked off my head. ‘Hey!’ I spun round to find Jess was standing right next to me.

      ‘Didn’t you hear me say your name like a hundred times? It’s time to go join the group,’ she said, placing the headphones back on their stand. ‘You were in some sort of weird daydream.’

      ‘No, I wasn’t,’ I said, feeling my cheeks going hot and picking up my bag.

      ‘Oh, really?’ She raised her eyebrows and put my headphone to her ear. ‘I can’t imagine what you were thinking about.’

      We came round the corner and saw Mrs Ginnwell waiting for everyone by the information point. She was now holding up a large yellow sign that said ‘WOODFIELD ASSEMBLING POINT’ and was waving a Union Jack with her other hand.

      ‘May I commend you, Mrs Ginnwell, on your variety of signs,’ Jess said, as we approached her.

      ‘Thank you, Miss Delby,’ she replied, gesturing for us to wait by her side. ‘Any more of that cheek and you’ll be making notes on the architecture of the hotel while everyone else is at the end-of-trip party. Understand?’

      Jess scowled and I pursed my lips, trying not to laugh. I had to give it to Mrs Ginnwell, she was taking her job very seriously, making sure the students were all under control. Unlike the other two members of staff, Miss Lawler and Mr Crowne, who were having a heated debate in the bookshop over the best crime writers, and Mr Kenton, who I spotted in the arcade playing on a zombie game with James Tyndale.

      I laughed when I saw James throw up his arms in victory after destroying the zombies, forcing a grumpy-looking Mr Kenton to declare him the winner and earning a congratulatory high-five from his best friend, Brendan Dakers. James has a competitive streak, which admittedly had been very handy when he was on my team last term for Sports Day, but also, it turns out, can be really quite tiring when he regularly shows up at your door in the summer holidays expecting you to join him for a ‘casual jog’.

      Clearly I tried to refuse every time because (a) Sports Day was over and we had won so there was no point in doing physical exercise any more and (b) I’m not an insane person who runs for fun.

      But he forced me to go running with him and then kept yelling stupid stuff at me that was meant to be motivating, like ‘keep those knees up’, and ‘winners don’t take breaks’ and ‘Anna, try not to fall in the pond this time’.

      So it really didn’t come as any surprise that he would be taking zombie games very seriously indeed.

      James caught my eye and shot me a triumphant grin. I was giving him one back when Jess elbowed me in the ribs, gleefully drawing my attention to the whining voice nearby coming from the Queen Bee of our school, Sophie Parker. This time she was pompously demanding to know from Mrs Ginnwell where she could make a formal complaint about the airport.

      Danny wandered over with Stephanie. ‘What’s all the fuss about this time?’ he whispered, keen not to put himself in the way of Sophie Parker’s latest angry tirade.

      It didn’t work. She fixed him with a death stare. ‘They took my water at security.’

      ‘Just buy a new drink,’ Jess snorted.

      ‘It wasn’t just any drink,’ Sophie hissed, flicking her hair back dramatically behind her shoulders. Sophie was not Jess’s biggest fan. She wasn’t particularly fond of either of us, but at least she wasn’t threatened by me. In her eyes, I was just one big loser who kept getting in her way. Jess, on the other hand, being beautiful and sporty, was Sophie’s biggest nightmare.

      ‘It was an incredibly expensive, special type of flavoured water that regenerates your skin cells from the inside out,’ parroted Josie Graham, sounding like a really bad TV advert. Sophie’s minion, Josie, was never far from her Queen Bee’s side and hated me more than anyone else in the school. Probably because I once set her on fire and then another time hit her in the face with a discus. They were both accidents, but it is really bad luck that she should be the victim on both occasions. She looked down her nose at me. ‘The water is imported – from Italy.’

      ‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,’ Jess laughed, causing Sophie to puff up angrily. ‘Where do you think we’re going today?’

      ‘Thank you, girls – that’s enough,’ Miss Ginnwell interjected, before a full-on brawl could ensue. ‘Sophie, you know you can’t bring liquids through security. It’s your own fault for not checking the rules. Right, I think everyone is here.’ Mrs Ginnwell put her sign down and clapped her hands together. Looking furious about being so easily dismissed, Sophie folded her arms and shot daggers at a smug-looking Jess. ‘You will all have an allocated seat on your ticket,’ Mrs Ginnwell continued. ‘That is where you will sit on the plane. I don’t want anyone swapping or complaining. Is that clear? It will just cause a lot of fuss and make things much more difficult for the members of staff to keep track of you all.’

      There was an immediate burst of chatter as everyone rummaged around for their ticket and conferred with their friends.

      ‘We’re