Pretty Hot (The Pretty Trilogy Book 1)

  PRETTY HOT

  Book One of the Pretty Series

  COPYRIGHT

  The moral right of this author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the express permission of the author

  This book is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  © Donna Alam 2014

  Chapter One

  ‘So when you said you caught him with his trousers down . . .’

  With a sigh, I reach for my fishbowl-sized glass, taking an unladylike slug. The dissection had to begin sometime. You can’t expect to mooch around a friend’s house playing Lady Macbeth forever, not without an explanation at some point, I suppose. Large gulp on the way to loosening my tongue, I finally answer.

  ‘Pants down. Literally.’

  Niamh’s brow furrows as she waits for the punch line to follow. So I deliver one while still examining my glass.

  ‘Bare arsed and panting. Daks around his ankles, the lot.’

  ‘Wha—he was . . . and you . . .’

  ‘Walked in on them?’ I lean forward placing the much lighter glass down. ‘Coitus interruptus.’ The glass clatters against the table. ‘Sort of. Anyway, he was doing her on my sofa.’

  I don’t think I’ve ever shocked Niamh into silence. She isn’t the silent type. It doesn’t last long, her next sentence delivered in a verbal explosion.

  ‘Ohmyfuckinggod!’

  ‘Funny, that’s what she said. Only more like, Oh, Shane, oh, oh, ohhh my fucking . . . god! Shane, you’re so big! Total lie, by the way.’ I’d know, having laboured under his pimply butt for the last couple of years, affianced-to-be-married in, oh, a month or so.

  ‘The absolute bastarding shite!’

  Australians are pretty sweary. I think it’s a cultural thing. Where else in the world is a stranger referred to as mate, while your best friend forever is greeted with abuse? Niamh’s lot, the Irish, are also pretty profane. But they seem to do it with a bit more style, somehow.

  ‘You’re serious, like? Of all . . . you walked in on him and he was nuts deep? Ah babes, what did you do?’

  ‘Just stood there.’ I shrug, shoulders hovering around my ears as it transforms into a slow but violent sort of shudder, unwelcome snapshots of that evening filtering through my mind. A perverse Hansel and Gretel trail of slutty undies scattered from the front door to the lounge, the cheesy soundtrack playing softly in the background, punctuated by noises more suited to the gorilla enclosure at Taronga Zoo.

  ‘Like watching bad porn.’ Really bad, upsetting porn. ‘I couldn’t tear my eyes away. It was like having an out of body experience or something.’ The last part of my sentence comes out in a manic laugh, tears teetering on the edge of my lids. ‘Bloody ironic, seeing as how it wasn’t my body he was in.’

  Mistaking Niamh’s silence as sympathy, I raise my head. Her blue eyes are levelled on mine, mouth pursed like a cat’s ass.

  ‘Kitty, tell me you hurt him. Please tell me you trashed his car, kicked him in the bollix, at least.’

  With a vague gesture, I reach for my glass, realising its almost empty status. ‘I thought you were supposed to be getting me drunk?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject,’ she says, despite heading for her tiny kitchen.

  But the thing is, that’s not me. I don’t do confrontation well, or at all, really. So I didn’t make for the nearest candlestick with which to cave in his head, or cry. Not even after, when modesty had been restored, and slutty side bits escorted out the door. It never occurred to me to shove something unsavoury under the seat of his beloved ride. Or to list his number in the gay classifieds. Instead, I did something way crazier. I packed a bag and got on a flight to the other side of the world.

  ‘I wish I’d been there, I’d have brained the bastard,’ Niamh says returning, brandishing the new bottle like a cranium-crushing weapon of head destruction. ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’

  ‘Shame. Disgust. The possibility of herpes.’

  ‘Wha—’

  I wave a hand, silently telling her at least that was okay. ‘One negative I can turn into a positive, hey?’

  ‘Well, that’s something, at least,’ she replies uncertainly. ‘But shame? That doesn’t deserve headspace.’

  ‘Deserve? No one deserves to find their fiancé screwing a stripper on their new sectional sofa. The same sofa they’d waited twelve weeks for delivery!’

  I hold out my glass, my insides twisting as I recall three months of bean bags and kitchen chairs. My delight as the sofa had arrived, the delusion of making our new house a home.

  ‘Calm down, Kitty.’

  ‘I am calm.’ Calm-ish, anyway.

  ‘But a Stripper?’ she repeats, straining not to smile. ‘That’s gonna stain.’ She twists the bottle top from the neck. ‘You’ll need to burn it, all that fake tan and fan—’

  ‘Eww,’ I complain. ‘Is heartsick not enough? You actually want me to vomit all over the floor?’

  Ignoring me, she fills my glass almost to the rim. ‘How long had it been, you know, going on?’

  ‘He said it was just the once, not that it matters.’

  ‘I should hope not. I’d like to give him just the once, right over his pretty feckin’ useless head.’

  I hadn’t expected to feel so hollow, admitting that this is the end. Niamh’s the first person I’ve confided in completely. My humiliation. My abject shame. Isn’t this supposed to be cathartic? I thought I’d feel unburdened or at least a little bit better, somehow.

  Stage Three Alert: The Void. Or so I’m reliably informed by my newly purchased break-up book, Leaving with Healing. Or as Niamh renamed it, Heaving while Reading. She wasn’t impressed, picking it out of my hands with a contemptuous look.

  ‘Chapter 4: It’s Okay to be Sad,’ she’d read aloud. ‘Let me know when you get to the It’s Okay to be Angry chapter and I’ll get the scissors out.’

  ‘What did your mum say?’

  ‘What?’ I raise my head, Niamh’s question breaking through my thoughts. ‘Oh. We haven’t talked about it much. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her everything. She shed a few tears, stoically, of course, like he’d been cheating on her almost. When it dawned on her that people would have to be told, I thought she was going to take to her bed. Not so much worried about losing the daughter bit, but you know.’

  ‘I do,’ she replies with a small shake of her head. She’s seen it all first-hand.

  Introspection fills the room, neither one of us possessing the appropriate words to address that kettle of worms when, leaning forward, Niamh reaches for her glass.

  ‘Well, you don’t do things by halves, Kitty-Kat.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Most women get a new haircut. Updates their underwear.’ She shields a growing smile behind the rim of her glass. ‘Gets drunk, then gets even by shagging the next fecker that crosses her path. You, babes, moved to the other side of the planet.’

  ‘I haven’t run away,’ I mutter defensively. ‘I just needed a change, that’s all.’

  ‘A change,’ she repeats sceptically, raising her glass. ‘Memento mori.’

  The toast isn’t one I know.

  ‘What-a-mori?’

  ‘My one bit of Latin. And a bit worth remembering.’ One blue painted fingernail points in my direction. ‘You’re a long time dead
.’

  ‘Remind me not to come to you if I’m ever feeling suicidal.’

  ‘Not at all, good on ‘ya, taking life by the balls. There’s plenty in the cemetery would swap places. So long as you’re on this side of the grass, you’re doing all right.’

  ‘Wished he was in the cemetery.’

  ‘That’s my girl!’ Leaning over the sofa arm, she clinks her glass against mine. ‘So you’re really staying?’

  ‘I said I was.’ I lick the spilled wine from my hand with a sigh.

  ‘You did so, but I didn’t think you would. Not really. I got that you’d had a fight. And now I understand why you wanted to get away, but it’s a massive step. You’re absolutely sure? This place is nothing like Australia.’

  ‘They’ve both got sand. And camels. Anyway, I’ve accepted this job now.’ I say this more to myself than to her. ‘I couldn’t pull out, especially as it’s apparently God’s will that the old teacher didn’t come back after her holiday.’

  ‘Serendipitous,’ Niamh agrees, half laughing.

  ‘That’s what Shane said about meeting me.’ I feel my shoulders deflate. When will the past stop sneaking up and kicking me in the butt?

  ‘A big word for someone with only half a brain,’ she mutters.

  But my stomach still twists as I stare into my glass. ‘He was going to include it in his wedding speech. I wonder what the opposite of serendipitous is.’

  ‘Unlucky. And just the opposite of what you should consider yourself. Imagine if you’d married the twat.’

  ‘At least that was something I didn’t have to see.’ I raise my gaze to hers, wrinkling my nose. ‘The loser had the decency to cover it—her, I mean.’

  ‘What, with a cushion?’ Holding a hand to her mouth, she tries unsuccessfully not to laugh at my nodding head.

  ‘The very cushion I’d balanced a bowl of soup on a few hours earlier.’

  For a brief minute, I can see the scene through her eyes. Shane’s stricken face as he scrambled to pull up his drooping jeans with one hand, the other waving an ineffectual throw pillow, not sure who or what to cover first. I almost laugh myself. Almost.

  ‘Imagine what you could’ve caught from that cushion.’ She shudders theatrically. ‘Still, could’ve been worse. He might’ve been in the middle of eating h—’

  ‘Nee-eve.’ Filling her name with reprimand, I screw my face up in distaste, aiming one of her own fluffy sofa offerings at her head. ‘You’re supposed to be comforting me in my hour of need, not giving me nightmarish flashbacks.’

  ‘I supplied wine!’ she says as it narrowly misses her. ‘Every cloud and all that.’

  I expel one hard laugh from my chest. It even surprises me.

  ‘Where’s the silver lining in this? I walked in on my fiancé screwing the stripper from his bucks’ night—a cliché in Perspex heels!’

  ‘Trust you to notice the shoes, Cinderella. So your prince charming turned out to be a toad. Better you find out he’s a philandering fuckwit now rather than later, yeah? A cheater never changes his spots. You just have to hope that they turn into full-blown herpes a relationship or two down the line.’

  I sigh loudly, the wind having blown out of my sails as quick as that. She’s right, maybe not the herpes hex, but the rest, yeah. And not that it makes it any easier.

  ‘Grab your silver linings where you can. Look at it this way, you have a do-over, a place to begin again. Be who you want to be, do what, or who, you want to do.’ Her sudden smile would put a cut watermelon to shame. ‘And his loss is absolutely my gain.’

  A shiver ripples down my spine. Excitement or fear, I can’t say for sure. I still can’t quite believe I’m here.

  ‘And it’s like a pick-and-mix of blokes out there, the variety of rides will blow your mind.’

  Her eyes positively gleam with mischief, and I roll my own in response.

  ‘The difference between sour worms and jelly snakes? I’ve seen enough of dangly bits for the foreseeable. Did you miss the bit where I said I was heartbroken?’

  ‘You said heartsick, and I’m not surprised after what you’ve seen.’ She slides me an eloquent glance. ‘Cop on, babes, the best way to get over a bloke is to get under another. Quick, like. It’s always worked for me.’

  Do I detect a touch of asperity in response to my expression? Quick on its heels comes a lewd gesture of the hips. No mean feat considering she’s still sat down.

  ‘A good revenge ride, that’s what you need.’ There’s no mistaking her actions or the way her accent twists ride into roide. It sounds so much filthier. Filthy and unwarranted as far as I’m concerned.

  ‘And here I was thinking you’d at least give me a chance to settle in before trotting me out like a prize heifer.’

  ‘Heifer? I’ve seen more fat on the pencil me mammy’s butcher uses.’

  I pick imaginary fluff from my new, size smaller skirt as though I’ve discovered something new. ‘Ah, look, I think I just found that silver thread. I lost, oh . . . maybe 85 kilos, if you include the dead weight fiancé.’

  ‘Get on with ‘yer sexy self. See, you do need a night out to celebrate!’

  ‘Niamh, I don’t. I’m still—’

  ‘Mourning what could’ve been? Grand, we’ll make it a wake—cremate the fucker in flaming Sambuca shots!’

  My palm meets my head with a groan. I’d somehow forgotten what a pain in the arse she can be. Like sciatica, a persistent, nagging pain that you can’t do much about. Though this trait sometimes has its uses. In fact, as I’d muttered down the phone that I’d booked a ticket to visit, she’d pretty much taken over. Told me I could stay with her as long as I liked. She’d even lined me up with some interviews once I’d said I was thinking about staying, totally facilitating my getaway.

  Niamh. She’s my shining example of how to live life as you want to and not how others think you should. I’d gotten to know her a few years before when we’d worked at the same school in Brisbane, she on her teaching-tour-of-the-world, me on my path to the ‘burbs, teaching at the school I’d worked at since leaving university. The very same one I’d attended as a kid my whole school life.

  She’s a pain, for sure, but the very best kind. So now I have a new job, which comes with an apartment, in a school where all my fellow teachers are female. Short of joining a convent, I can’t imagine a better place to start again.

  I’ll be teaching grade three at the Al Mishael School for Girls. An exclusive English curriculum school for families preferring a more culturally acceptable environment for their daughters. Which is just a long winded way of saying it’s an all-girls school. I’m familiar, having attended and taught in one myself. Catholic in my case. It can’t be that different, surely. A school is a school, whether in Brisbane, Delhi or Dubai.

  Not that I can quite believe I’m here—in Dubai, I mean. It kind of blows my mind. Billion dollar buildings and roads where every other car seems to be a Lamborghini. Streets filled with exotic sights and sounds.

  Far out. I’m living in Dubai.

  With a slow smile, I place my glass down. Now I just need to work out how to convince Niamh I need a new man like I need a genital piercing.

  Chapter Two

  The classroom door creaks in protest as I close it, but I’ve done it. I’ve officially survived my first week at a new school, in a new country, not to mention on a new continent. Pushing away from the wood, I resist the urge to dance around the room. Just as well as the door screeches open, Sadia, my classroom assistant, staggering into the room barely visible behind a tower of books.

  ‘Asif . . . sorry, the door,’ she apologises as I grab a few teetering copies.

  ‘We’ll get the caretaker to look at it. It must’ve swelled in the heat.’

  Placing the pile of books on a nearby desk, she slides an errant wisp of hair under her headscarf. ‘I go now to him?’

  ‘What? Nah, next week’s fine.’

  ‘Then I will take the wowel verk for marking?’

 
‘The what?’

  She frowns, casting her gaze around the room almost as though expecting to find the answer to my confusion daubed on the walls. ‘The wow-el,’ she says slowly, patiently. Like she’s talking to an idiot, while I stare back, probably looking like one. ‘Wowels; the a, the e, the i—’

  ‘Oh, vowels! You want to take the vowel worksheets home?’

  ‘Yes, verk-shit,’ she says, her frown deepening.

  ‘It is,’ I reply, struggling to keep my composure. ‘But it pays the bills. Sorry, of course that’s what you meant. And its fine, we’ll catch up next week. No reason you should work on your weekend. You can . . . leave now, if you want?’

  She flushes pink, discomfited, murmuring something about a taxi, her head moving as though independent of her neck. I find myself mirroring her actions before stopping. Rather than exotic, I probably look like a bit of a tit.

  ‘Yeah, go. Whenever.’ Feeling ungracious, I add, ‘Thanks for your awesome help this week.’

  And awesome she has been. The week has passed by so fast, I can’t imagine ever going back to oversized classes, the daily grind and being overworked. I love my job, but a class of just twenty and a full-time assistant is enough to seduce any teacher. Even if said assistant’s English is a little funky.

  Sadia’s cheeks flush once more, this time with pleasure. Ducking her head, she straightens the scarf covering her hair as she murmurs a quiet most welcome.

  She leaves the grating door open, the courtyard beyond almost quivering in the heat. The campus is pretty big, but I’m slowly finding my way around. There’s apparently a boys’ school nearby identical to this. I wonder if it’s just the building or if the set-up’s the same. Are all the staff male? I smother the thought in a heartbeat. So not going there, in either sense. I hardly need a paperback shrink to tell me that.

  My heels echo in the quiet of the room. Classrooms can be pretty sad places at the start of a new school year, unadorned and absent of the children’s creations usually displayed with pride. Delaying my own taxi for a later pick-up, I’d planned to hang around for a while and fossick through the resource cupboard, curious to see what’s inside. It’s good to know what you have to work with, plus I’ve big plans for the room, beginning with designating a reading area that’ll be the envy of the grade. All I need to do now is hang my pink-sequined mosquito net from the ceiling, thus defining a space for the sanctuary of the written word.