Chocolate Box Girls: Bittersweet by Cathy Cassidy Read Free Book Online Page A

left, or I’ll be late for school!’
    ‘You’re not going to school today,’ Ben says. ‘Lessons can wait. Dad almost ruined things for me, Shay – I’m not going to let him do the same to you. Sometimes you have to seize the moment – take the opportunities that come your way.’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘Take control of your own destiny,’ he says. ‘Look to the future.’
    ‘Ben, what are you talking about?’
    ‘Wrecked Rekords,’ my big brother says. ‘You and I are going to London!’

As kidnaps go, this one is pretty cool. The morning unfolds into a road trip, with lots of brotherly bonding and advice and a long stop for Coke and chips at a greasy-spoon cafe just outside Swindon. The two of us have never talked so much before, not properly – our friendliest exchanges have always been wind-ups and jokes.
    We’ve never been close – perhaps that was Dad’s fault, or maybe it was just the age gap, but now I am getting to know my big brother and I can see he’s not so very different from me. A couple of times I think of telling him about Cherry, but I don’t know where to start. I want Ben’s support, but not his pity.
    I guess I don’t need anyone else to tell me I’ve been an idiot. I already know.
    ‘Dad used to play football, y’know,’ he tells me. ‘Small-time, Sunday league stuff. It was his dream, though. That’s why he pushed me so hard – he thought he was helping me, but really it was all about him. His dream, not mine.’
    ‘Just like the sailing centre is his thing,’ I say. ‘Andyou’re turning your back on it. That takes courage, Ben – we all know Dad has a temper on him.’
    ‘We should have stood up to him years ago,’ Ben sighs as we cruise along the M4. ‘Just for the record, Shay, I’m sorry about the go-cart thing. I didn’t think you’d actually go and break your arm …’
    I laugh, and as we approach the outskirts of London I take the forms that Curtis Rawlins gave me out of my rucksack, where they’ve been hidden for the last few days, still slightly stained and now quite crumpled too. Can Ben really sign them for me, open up the doors to possibility again? Maybe. I hope so.
    Ben makes me navigate, using a dog-eared street map and his iPhone. We get lost about a dozen times before we finally pull up outside Wrecked Rekords’ Camden HQ.
    It’s like stepping into a dream – a dark, edgy, slightly psychotic dream. The walls are papered with silver foil and a collage of iconic album covers stretching back decades. A huge, shiny mobile made entirely from CDs spins silently in the stairwell, and framed gold discs line the hallway. Even the sofas in the waiting area look like they have been borrowed from a passing spaceship.
    The girl at the reception desk has fuschia-pink hair and a pierced nose, and she seems to be wearing some kind of cool fancy-dress outfit madefrom a checked tablecloth and a lace curtain. She looks at me doubtfully, taking in the school uniform and beanie hat, and I flush a little pink.
    I push the crumpled forms across the desk towards her, and she looks at them dubiously. ‘We’d like to see Curtis Rawlins, please,’ I say.
    ‘Yeah?’ the girl drawls. ‘Do you have an appointment?’
    ‘No, but …’
    ‘You’ll need one,’ she shrugs. ‘No exceptions. Why not send in a CD, some demo tracks? Then you can ring in a few weeks and if Curtis and his team think you have potential we can set you up with a November appointment. Or December, maybe. Or January.’
    Or never.
    Stricken, I look at Ben, who rolls his eyes dramatically. ‘Don’t panic, little brother,’ he says under his breath. ‘Leave this to me. Watch and learn …’
    Ben leans across the desk in full-on flirt mode, his sun-gold hair flopping carelessly across his tanned face, his blue eyes intent. I am not sure that his beach-hunk looks will cut the ice with the pink-haired girl, though. She looks like she’d be more impressed with tattoos and piercings and a neon-blue