The slimy one sighed as he closed Cherry’s front door.  “Is it me, or is Cherry Hughes the most amazing girl on the face of the planet?”

Joe is now “the slimy one.”  And yes, this is exactly how teenage boys talk about the girls they fancy.  On Saved By The Bell, that is.

I rolled my eyes. I’d been suspicious of Joe for nearly 24 hours now.  He didn’t seem to notice, and that was annoying me. 

Those three sentences do a neat job of summing up exactly how much impact Anja has on the world around her.  You can imagine her spending an entire day glaring at the back of Joe’s head and trying to communicate her distrust through sheer telepathy. 

“Knock it off, Joe,” I snapped, “If you really like her, what’s wrong with asking her out?”  Maybe then she’d stop flirting with Gary, I thought. 

Joe shook his head.  “Do women as beautiful as Cherry usually give guys like me a second glance?  No they don’t, so why should they start now?” 

Everything we’ve heard so far indicates that Joe is quite attractive and Cherry likes him already, so, really, this is just angst for the sake of angst.

“Women!” Mr Daly snarled, “Trust me, you’re better off without them, Mr Foster.  All they do is blind you with their beauty, then throw you away when they’ve no further use for you.  We don’t need them.”

This will be the last chapter in which Mr Daly will appear, so we’ll never find out whether the “all women are evil seductresses” philosophy he’s expressed in the last couple of chapters is based on any real-life bitterness and heartbreak, or if it’s just another aspect of Straw Daily Mail Readerhood.  Personally, I think we could easily have skipped some of Gary’s backstory to allow room for Mr Daly’s.  As it is, his first name has only been mentioned twice.

I was about to go into a colossal rant about Mr Daly’s misogyny, but Gary beat me to it.  “For your information,” he snapped as those icy blue eyes flashed with fury, “If it hadn’t been for one specific woman giving up her life, my stepbrother would have killed me.  So I need women.”

“Oh, and my dad says that one of them gave birth to me, but that might just be an urban legend.”

“We all know what you need,” Mr Daly replied bitterly.  I would probably have hit him if Cherry hadn’t rushed out of her door and chased us. 

“How dare you have heavy-handed conversations about sexism where my neighbours can hear you!  You’re for it now!”

Her shocked, tearful face made my heart jump.  Something absolutely terrible had happened, and I only had ten more seconds of safety left before I found out what it was.

“Joe!” she sobbed, “Your mum just phoned.  Your aunt’s had an accident- they don’t reckon she’ll pull through.  I’m really, really sorry.”

It’s probably for the best.  She was far too intelligent to be in this story.

Joe wasn’t the only one who was horrified by this news.  Even though I’d only met Jean the day before, the sharp, doubting woman’s image stuck in my head.  She could probably have brought James to justice in half an hour if we’d told her all we knew. 

…I’m pretty sure they did.  In fact, Jean seemed to know everything they told her in advance.  Why wasn’t she the protagonist, again?

And now, we’d never get to tell her anything.  She had only confirmed my suspicions, and added something about someone called Violet, who I was too wary to ask Joe about. 

Despite Jean specifically telling you to do so.

Worst of all, James had finally succeeded in killing someone.  Not Mark or Joe, who had been his main targets, but someone who’d known too much.  The only person clever enough to work out exactly what was going on.   If Jean could get killed, we didn’t stand a chance.

“What happened?” Joe choked.

“She fell off a balcony,” Cherry replied. 

Pfft.  Yes, James truly is a criminal mastermind to be reckoned with.  Only a true genius could work out how to shove people off balconies!

“Well, I say fell, but Mel said she might have jumped…” She knew as well as I did that none of this was true.  Jean hadn’t fallen or even jumped.  She’d been pushed, and we all had a good idea of who’d done the pushing.

At that point, Gary put his arm around me, reassuring me that we weren’t doomed.   

Joe might have lost the only person in his family who truly cared about him, but it’s Anja who needs to be comforted!

As I looked at him, I saw the hidden pain that always seemed to be on his face…

“Hidden,” she says.  That’s a laugh.

…and I remembered what had happened to the last girl he’d loved.  I started to panic.  Maybe I’d end up as dead as Topaz.   

“We will all end up sacrificed to serve his tragic backstory!  Nooo!”

Fragility was an important part of him, but maybe Gary was too fragile to stop something happening to me. 

Girls are completely incapable of defending themselves, you see.

Or maybe he was too fragile to stop something happening to himself.

SPOILERS- Yup!

(Paragraph break.)

“This is the last will and testament,” the lawyer had read, “Of Eugenia Beatrice Foster.”

I hadn’t been there…

“…but I know what the lawyer said, on account of the fact that the author started to write this scene with me present, but then rapidly became aware that she didn’t actually know anything about will-reading.”

…but for some reason Cherry had been invited, along with Joe’s family.  I could guess why.  The lawyers had invited the people who had been mentioned in the will. 

Understandably, I started to vaguely wonder what Cherry had inherited as I sat in the hotel restaurant. 

“If I’d been in the swimming pool, of course, I’d have wondered about something else.  Maybe about why sharks don’t go to the dentist.”

With me were two people I didn’t trust as far as I could throw them, and one person I loved.  Guess what?  I was talking to Gary.  Not that Joe would have talked much anyway.  He’d been very quiet since Jean’s death, and all his sliminess seemed to have worn off.  But I still couldn’t forget that he’d done something unforgivable to Leah.

Anja could comfort him in his obvious shock and grief, but she vaguely heard that he’d done something wrong in the past, so that’s out.

(Rereading this, I’m pretty sure I initially planned for Anja, Joe and Gary to end up being a love triangle, but then got over-invested in Anja and Gary’s EPIC LOVE.  This may explain Cherry’s existence.)

“I hate waiting,” I moaned.  Gary looked up from his pad and smiled at me.  “You also hate November, tulips, people who make assumptions about your love life, Mr Daly, and apparently Joe.  What do you like?”

Heh.  Even Gary’s starting to get fed up.

“Apart from you, you mean?”  Gary smiled.  “I’m serious,” I sighed, “Without you, the last three weeks would have been dire.  They just seem to have been custom-made to antagonise me.

Yes, Anja is clearly the person who’s suffered most over the last three weeks.  Never mind her parents’ grief, Gary’s guilt, Mr Daly’s ostracisation, Cherry and Shell’s mind-numbing terror, and Jean’s death.  All of this happened solely to get on Anja’s nerves!

For a start, I had to sleep on someone else’s floor, in the same building as an old git and a complete slimeball…

…Aren’t Joe and Mr Daly sitting right next to you?  RUDE.

…while the whole nation made me out to be a cute little girl.   

Which you previously said you enjoyed.

Then Mr Daly kept accusing me of being a slapper, and now, to top it off, I’m living in a hotel, shortly after someone’s died.”  I folded my arms in annoyance, while Gary looked up at the ceiling with a philosophical expression.   

Yep, that’s her reaction to Jean’s death.  Annoyance.

“Do you miss your family?” he asked.

I hadn’t expected him to ask me anything like this.   

Me neither.  Gary’s being impressively meta in this scene, isn’t he?

“Well…  The thing is, I hadn’t seen them much in the months before the bus thing.  My brother was always hanging around with his mates, not that he liked me much anyway.  And my parents were always at work or going out for the night.  But for some reason, I wish I still lived at home.”   

We could have used this backstory eleven chapters ago.  It’s too late to make your family look like the bad guys now.

I’d managed to sum up my feelings exactly.  Whenever I had time to stop and think about it, there was a tight, uncomfortable feeling in my stomach that came from my unfamiliar surroundings.   

And it’s also too late to try and convince us that you have actual human emotions.

“I’m guessing you don’t feel like that?”

Gary shrugged.  “Well…  I miss Helen a lot.”

“Your stepsister?”

“Yeah.  I think she liked me really, but she would have liked me a lot more if she hadn’t thought I was going to die if she wasn’t careful with me.  I think she’d have talked to me more if I hadn’t had that heart attack…”

“Phone call for Honour Cleary!”

It took me a while to recognise my fake name and turn around.  

Right!  That’s enough half-hearted character development- on with the half-hearted plot!

The shout had come from the receptionist’s desk, and I had to doubt whatsoever that the phone call was from Cherry.

“Anja!” she squealed on the other end, “You’ll never guess, it’s brilliant!”  Her tone had changed dramatically from the miserable one that had announced Jean’s death.

All in all, Jean is forgotten fairly quickly.

“Why?  What happened?”

“Well…  First the lawyer went, ‘This is the last will and testament of Eugenia Beatrice Foster,’ and I thought, This is great.  We’ll sit through a whole load of legal jargon and then it’ll turn out she’s left me an ornamental tea set or whatever.  And I was wondering what the point was in coming along, you know, especially after the funeral had been so miserable- ‘Born into sin and dying in sin,’ what a load of cobblers…”

Fifteen-year-old me had never been to a funeral, which is why this bit is ripped off from Adrian Mole.

“Yeah, I know.”  The eulogy had clearly been written by someone who hadn’t known Jean and had assumed that she was a stereotypical old woman.  James had read it, which in my opinion was just typical. 

A few things:

1. A woman in her fifties isn’t old enough to be a “stereotypical old woman.”
2. Murderer or not, James presumably knew Jean a lot better than a girl who only met her once.
3. We never find out how the eulogy made her out to be a stereotypical old woman (“born into sin and dying in sin” doesn’t really qualify.)
4. Nor do we find out what made Anja feel it was inaccurate, since she, as I said, only met Jean once.
5. James is (as far as anyone knows) Jean’s closest living relative.  Of course he’s going to read the eulogy.
6. Why was Anja at the funeral in the first place?

But I needed to know how the reading had gone.  “So, what happened?”

“Well, James and Mel looked pretty confident that they’d inherit Wild Cherry House and Blaze.  The lawyer went through all the things everyone had been left- a few hundred quid each for Jack, Leah, Robbie and Vick, with pretty strict instructions that their parents couldn’t tell them what to do with it.”  Cherry cackled.  “But then, it said ‘If anything should happen to my nephew Joseph before I die, I leave my home, my business, and my entire estate to’- drum roll please…” She paused to do a drum roll effect.  “Svetlana Irene Hughes, baby!”

We’re now completely in the “dancing on Jean’s grave” stage of proceedings.  And no, we don’t get any reaction from Joe over Cherry stealing his inheritance.

(Irene is a Greek name.  This family really is from everywhere.) 

“Oh my God!” I squeaked, “So you’ve inherited everything?”

“You bet I have!  And I’ll be moving into Will Cherry House ASAP; you can count on that! 

“Some people would have waited until they’d scrubbed the bloodstains out of the patio, but not me!”

I’ll be in there at six, so you can check out of the hotel and I’ll pick you up at seven.  Bring Gary and Joe, too.”

Uh-oh.  I could see a potential problem here.  “Just Gary and Joe?”

“Yep.”

“Not Mr Daly?”

Cherry snorted.  “Get real, Anja.  I don’t want to live in the same house as that creep.  I could just about stomach him being in my living room for a few hours a day, but living in my house?  No way.”

“So what should I tell him?”

“Tell him exactly what I said.  You don’t have to be polite to him or owt!  You hate him, remember?”

I love how everyone in this story constantly tells Anja to give in to her baser instincts.  It’s not like she needs the encouragement. 

Putting the phone down, I thought, Svetlana doesn’t understand how hard it is to get rid of him.  

Neither do the readers, since this hasn’t been demonstrated at any point in the story.

I knew that telling Mr Daly would be hard, and that he might react violently.  But I never guessed that his resentment of women, and especially me, could lead to something potentially horrific.

At five to seven, I was pulling on my top.  Knowing that Mr Daly wouldn’t be there to disapprove, and that Joe would be too depressed to look at my chest, I’d picked the most attractive top from my wardrobe.  

Priorities!

Most of my clothes were either borrowed from Estelle or bought when I’d got to Southend, and this top fell into the second category.  For some reason, Estelle’s stuff looked terrible on me.  There was no denying that she had a better figure than I did, even if she was pregnant.  But my thoughts about what I was wearing faded out when someone rammed their fist into the door.

“Let me in this instant!”  Mr Daly’s sour voice echoed through the hotel room. 

Couldn’t he just have knocked?  She’s more likely to let him in if she doesn’t suspect anything.

I sat down on the stool, determined not to let him in.  “Why should I?”

“You have to leave the room at some point!  Isn’t your sister expecting you?”  The word “sister” was dripping with sarcasm.  “I know what’s happening!” he continued, “You think you’re heading off with your lover to a glamorous lifestyle!  You’ve done nothing to deserve a life of luxury, you ugly little slut!  Nothing!”  At this point, he managed to get the door open.  I must have forgotten to lock it properly.  He took one look at my clothes, and he was off again.  “Here we are in a complete mess, intruding on a family’s grief already, and you and your cousin abuse our situation!  

Mr Daly makes one last attempt at sanity before the story turns him into a homicidal maniac.  It was a good effort, Mr D. 

I’ve seen the look you both get when you talk to that pale-looking lad!  Fluttering your eyelashes, wearing provocative clothes…  You’re disgusting!  Trying to seduce a sick boy for cheap thrills! 

“Trying”?  I’m pretty sure that Mr Daly already knows Anja and Gary have slept together.

Well, your cousin seems determined to keep me at arm’s length, but I can still teach you not to play with people’s emotions!  Someone’s going to teach you eventually, and it might as well be sooner rather than later!”

As soon as his fingers came within a centimetre of my neck, I grabbed his hands and started twisting his wrists round.  As soon as I heard that sickening snapping noise, I knew I was safe.  For once, something horrible was a sign of something fortunate.

“For once.”  This from a girl who reacted to a near-fatal explosion with “This is so cool!” 

The next thing I remember is picking up my bags and running out of the hotel while Mr Daly stayed in the room, screaming so loud that people in Kent could probably have heard him.  

None of the hotel staff bother to investigate, though.  Why should they?  They just give the customers their keys and never bother with them again.

As I rushed to get into Cherry’s car, I shivered.  I knew how close I’d come to something hideous, and it was much closer than Mark and Joe had come to being crushed to death.

Anja always suffers the most.  Are you noticing a theme here?

By the time we got to Wild Cherry House, Gary was crying.  He was trying to hide it from Cherry, Ben, Joe and me, but I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

“Gary’s sad,” Ben said forlornly.  I nodded.  “He’ll be OK.  Go and talk to your mum.”

Ben did as I said, and I put a hand on Gary’s shoulder.  Everyone else had gone inside, so we could talk properly.  “Why are you so upset?” I asked, “Mr Daly didn’t attack you.”

“Don’t tell me you’re feeling empathy for another human being.  We don’t do that in this story.”

He turned to hug me, his voice quavering.  “I’m sorry, Anja.  I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you from that bastard.  Why can’t I do anything right?”

“Gary!” I snapped, pushing him away so I could look at him properly, “You can do things right.  You couldn’t have known he’d attack me just because you left the hotel a few seconds before me.   And all that stuff about protecting me…  I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself, Gary.  

“In complete contrast to what I said after Jean died!  I think I’ve really matured in the last week or so!” 

He’s probably in an A&E department right now, getting his broken wrists seen to. 

Or still weeping on the hotel carpet, being callously ignored by the chambermaids.

And he doesn’t know my fake name, so when he tells everyone it was Anja Cleary who’d done it…  Well, everyone will think he’s a nutter!  Trust me, Gary, everything is fine.”  It wasn’t, though.  My fear was still hanging in the air around me.

He sniffed.  “When I think of him trying to hurt you, I feel sick.  Please don’t ever do anything dangerous.  I know this is kind of morbid, but if anything happened to you I don’t know what I’d do.”  He was telling the truth.  When I looked into his face, I could see more pain and terror than I’d experienced in my entire life.  I realised in surprise that what Mr Daly had done had scared him even more than it had scared me.

“Trust me,” I smiled, “I won’t get myself killed.”   As I said this, we stepped over the threshold and slammed the coloured glass-plated door behind us. 

Our life at Wild Cherry House had begun.

Join us again for Chapter Thirteen, in which there are Cute Ben Moments, nonsensical red herrings, and constant discussions of Anja and Gary’s Epic Love.  The plot?  Oh, there’s no room for that.