...And a Happy New Year? Read online

  About

  …And a Happy New Year?

  Same bench. Same view. Same girls.

  And yet totally different girls.

  Evie, Amber and Lottie are having a New Year party to remember!

  10, 9, 8…

  For the first time since leaving college, all three girls are back together. It’s time for fun and flirting, snogs and shots.

  7, 6, 5…

  (And not tears and tantrums and horrible secrets.)

  4, 3, 2…

  Because everything’s going right for these girls – Spinster Club for ever!

  1…

  Right?

  About HOLLY BOURNE

  HOLLY BOURNE is an author and journalist. Her feminist education began when she read Caitlin Moran’s How to be a Woman, but it was working at an advice charity for young people and her own experiences of blatant everyday sexism that drove her to write critically acclaimed Am I Normal Yet?, which was chosen as a World Book Night book for 2016, shortlisted for the YA Book Prize and has inspired the formation of Spinster Clubs across the country. Following the hilarious and painfully honest stories of Spinster Club girls Evie, Amber and Lottie, the series continues with How Hard Can Love Be?, What’s a Girl Gotta Do? and now …And a Happy New Year?

  Holly’s favourite things to complain loudly about are: the stigma of mental health, women’s rights and the under-appreciation of Keanu Reeves’ acting ability.

  Praise for HOLLY BOURNE

  “This is a book to press into the hands of every teenage girl you know.” Fiona Noble, The Bookseller

  “Holly Bourne is one of my most favourite authors out there – she writes brutally honest, funny and relatable novels that capture what being a teenager is like.” Izzy Read, age 15, for LoveReading4Kids

  “Blazing a feminist trail for UK YA.” Red magazine online

  “Holly Bourne is one of the most talented UK YA writers at the moment. Her books are phenomenal.” Lucy the Reader

  “Equal parts hilarious and heart-wrenching.” Fable & Table

  “Holly Bourne has become a true feminist legend of YA!” Never Judge a Book by its Cover

  “If you ever doubted the intelligence, ability or passion of teenage girls read Holly’s books and you never will again.” Muchbooks reader review on Guardian Children’s Books

  “Holly Bourne, you’re a genius.” Emma Lou Book Blog

  “Finally, an author who GETS it.” Emma Blackery, YouTuber

  “Bourne truly is one of the best YA writers.” The Mile Long Bookshelf

  Dedication

  To all my brilliant spinsters

  Contents

  About …And a Happy New Year?

  About Holly Bourne

  Praise for Holly Bourne

  Dedication

  7 o’clock

  amber

  lottie

  evie

  8 o’clock

  amber

  lottie

  evie

  9 o’clock

  amber

  lottie

  evie

  10 o’clock

  amber

  lottie

  evie

  11 o’clock

  amber

  lottie

  evie

  amber

  lottie

  evie

  midnight

  amber

  lottie

  evie

  a new year

  amber

  lottie

  evie

  HOLLY BOURNE

  EVIE, AMBER and LOTTIE

  EVIE’S words of wisdom

  AMBER’S best lines

  LOTTIE’S moments of glory

  YOUR favourite SPINSTER CLUB moments

  SPINSTER CLUB SERIES

  EXCITING NEWS

  ALSO BY HOLLY BOURNE

  “I can’t believe I’m actually going to have someone to kiss at midnight on New Year’s Eve.” I took two ornamental vases off the mantlepiece, ready to hide them in the airing cupboard. All breakables were going into lockdown.

  Kyle made his aww baby face and wrapped his arms around my waist. I had to put the vases down on the carpet.

  “You don’t understand.” I buried myself into his chest. “This just isn’t something that happens to me. I’m worried that if we do kiss at midnight, it will cause a giant rip in the space-time continuum or something. Dinosaurs will come back to life. The grid will go down. Evil Craig will get nice…”

  He pulled my face up to look at him, holding it in his hands. “Do you want me to kiss someone else? To be safe?” he asked, in his American twang.

  And I thumped him, laughing. “Don’t you bloody dare.”

  “You sound so English right now.” He leaned down to kiss me. He. LEANED DOWN. To kiss me. Even after a year and half of dating, I couldn’t get over how great that was.

  I picked the vases up and carried them into the bathroom; began wrapping them up in towels. For extra protection.

  “I don’t trust it, Kyle,” I called behind me, placing a vase right at the back of the cupboard shelf. “Nice things don’t happen on New Year’s Eve. That is not what it’s about. It’s not about new beginnings, or the best night of your life, or your great lost love hunting you down at the countdown to tell you he made a horrible mistake letting you go.” I shut the door and walked back into the living room to find Kyle fiddling with the sound system.

  “What is it about, then?” he asked scrolling through my party playlist.

  “It’s about feeling let down by life. It’s about a sinking feeling in your stomach that the night should’ve worked out better. It’s about high expectations being dashed. It’s about your feet getting really cold watching shit fireworks. It’s about worrying everyone is having a better time than you. It’s feeling, only ten seconds after midnight, that actually, yes, your problems are still here and you were a deluded idiot for thinking a new year could change that.” I threw my hands up in the air. “And, in my case, it was always, ALWAYS not having someone to kiss at midnight.”

  Kyle held up my phone, which was plugged into the speakers. “Did you show any potential kissers your terrible playlist before midnight?” he asked. “Because that might explain things.”

  I threw a cushion at him. But, being a jock and all, he ducked and it knocked a lamp off the table. It fell to the floor with a crash.

  “Bollocks.”

  “I think you’ve found another breakable.”

  I rushed over to the fallen lamp and gulped in relief to see it intact. I picked it up, cradling it like a baby, and wondered if I could fit it in the airing cupboard. “Honestly, if Dad and Penny find out we had a party, I’ll be so dead that they’ll resuscitate me after murdering me, just so they can murder me again.”

  “If you hate New Year so much, why are you even having a party?”

  I shrugged. “Because it’s New Year’s Eve. It’s just what you do.”

  Kyle took the lamp off me to bring me into another hug. I loved how tactile he was – like he knew physical affection was something I’d missed out on most of my life so he wanted to make up for it.

  “It will be fun! I’m here, aren’t I? And your dad won’t find out. It will be fine. We’ve still got a while before people arrive to hide the rest of the smashables. Plus Lottie and Evie will be here soon to help.”

  We managed to peel ourselves apart to finish preparing the house. Glass things were hidden. Plastic cups were stacked high on the kitchen table. I let Kyle add three whole songs to the playlist. Bowls of cheesy snacks were artfully arranged. I even put signs up on the bedroom doors, saying Please don’t have sex in here, please, which Kyle found hilarious.

  “But are we allowed
to have sex in here?” He tried to pull me onto the bed. I looked at the time on my phone. It was seven thirty.

  “We’ve only got half an hour before people start arriving.” I leaned into his kisses on my neck, my whole body unravelling under his touch. His smell. His Kyleness.

  “What I’ve got planned will most certainly take less than half an hour.”

  “Way to sell yourself, Kyle.”

  We laughed and fell backwards onto my bed, Kyle on top of me, raining kisses on my face. His hands creeping up my blue dress, which was too short on me, like every other dress in the universe. I knew the doorbell could go any second. A scrunching sound behind my back – we’d fallen onto some of my art coursework. I sat up, pulling my paintings out from under me and then fell back on the mattress again.

  It had been the most amazing two weeks – having Kyle here for Christmas. He’d come for a few days last Christmas too, but stayed in London as Dad still hadn’t forgiven him for the whole taking-me-away-on-a-road-trip thing. I’d been terrified about him coming to stay this year. Worried Penny and Craig would tell him horrid stories, that Dad wouldn’t approve of how serious things had got. We heard that a lot. “Don’t you think you should slow down? Aren’t you both a bit young?” That and, “You’re doing long distance? Between here and America?” Like being together for over a year and a half wasn’t proof of our seriousness or anything. Everyone at art college thought I was mad.

  But then Kyle had turned up on December seventeenth, looking totally weird without his summer tan. He’d crashed college on the last day of term and charmed all my new friends the way he charmed everyone. He’d had Penny eating out of the palm of his hand since the get-go. Even Dad had thawed to him.

  Just as things were getting very compromising, my phone went.

  “Ignore it,” Kyle whispered into my ear. “It can wait.”

  My phone went again.

  And again.

  I sighed, and pushed him off. “I have to get it. It might be Dad.”

  Kyle groaned face down into my pillow, as I got my phone.

  Then it was me letting out a groan – of anger.

  It was Lottie.

  Three totally non-urgent messages.

  Home Alone.

  It’s a Wonderful Life.

  EVEN THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL??????

  “Your dad?” Kyle asked, still face down on the bed.

  “No, it’s Lottie. She’s off on one.”

  “About what now?” It came out a bit more annoyed than he normally sounded when he spoke about Lottie.

  Kyle’d been getting defensive recently about how Lottie had been treating Evie and me since she went off to uni in September. By “treating” I mean “borderline ignoring”. She hadn’t even invited us to come and stay. And her messages were always just vague, or droning on about how great London is.

  “She’s claiming not one Christmas film passes the Bechdel test.”

  Kyle sat up, covering his crotch with one of my cushions.

  “But Christmas is over already.”

  “You know what she’s like. Once she’s latched onto something…”

  “She doesn’t let go,” Kyle finished.

  I punched out a reply.

  Christmas is over.

  Her reply came instantaneously.

  But the patriarchy isn’t.

  When you getting here already? I sent back.

  On my way.

  I sighed and stood up. Lottie only lived ten minutes away. And though what Kyle and I had planned usually didn’t take longer than half an hour, it did take more than ten minutes. Most of the time anyway…

  “Come on, we should turn the music on. Get the party vibe going.”

  Just as I got to my door, Kyle called over.

  “When are you going to tell them?”

  I stopped, my hand on the door frame. Leaning on it, holding myself up.

  “Soon.” I didn’t turn back.

  “The later you leave it, the harder it will be.”

  My stomach riddled itself with instant knots.

  “I know…”

  I mean, when you come to think of it, why was it up to the MOTHER in Home Alone to go back and check Kevin was okay? The dad in it literally didn’t appear to give a shit. YOUR KID IS HOME ALONE, DUDE, AND YOU’RE TELLING EVERYONE TO RELAX? I mean, that isn’t just unfair on Kevin’s mother, but also, like, the portrayal of fathers too.

  God, it’s exhausting, realizing things.

  I made a note of the film so I could list it in my next newspaper column. I still couldn’t freaking believe I already had my own column in UCL’s student paper when I’d only been there one term. Everyone at UCL must hate me. But it wasn’t MY fault that the Vagilante campaign had made me all famous and that the newspaper team had wanted me on board.

  Uni… Just thinking about uni made my tummy hurt.

  I looked at myself in the mirror – trying to work out if I’d overdone the eyeliner. Yes was the answer to that question. One eye just wouldn’t go right and I’d had to keep getting bigger and bigger until my flick was perfect and now I looked like I’d been punched in the face by a panda. Or maybe I looked like a panda because I’d been punched? By an angry eyeliner? But eyeliners don’t have arms?

  To tell you the truth, I was already a little bit drunk.

  It wasn’t like I was nervous or anything. I mean, why would I be nervous? It was just a party. With everyone from Before Uni. People I knew, members of the Spinster Club, Evie and Amber, of course – my favourite favourites…even if we hardly spoke any more. But we didn’t talk about that, which wasn’t like us at all.

  I checked my phone for the millionth time that evening, waiting for a message from Will to say he’d landed. I hadn’t seen him since the beginning of December and even then it was just one night. In fact, he always acted like UCL and Royal Holloway – where he was – were miles apart when, literally, we were lucky we were so close. I found it was always me slogging down there rather than him coming up to me. And that one time a few weeks ago when he had come to UCL, he’d not been very nice when I’d complained about my housemates. He’d just said, “Well, they seem okay to me,” and taken off his glasses and got into bed and fallen asleep WITHOUT HAVING SEX WITH ME FIRST.

  Will doesn’t do ANYTHING without having sex with me first.

  He’d fallen asleep so quickly, snoring, and so I’d just lain next to him in my tiny single bed, watching him snore and worrying about why he’d not had sex with me first. When I’d finally dropped off, I’d got woken up by my housemates coming in from yet another night out they didn’t invite me to.

  He didn’t have sex with me the next morning either. He’d woken before me, and I’d found him in the kitchen, laughing with Heather, Aimee and Jade. My three basic-bitch housemates, who are so basic and bitchy they make me break all my rules of feminism by buying into that word.

  But that was then and this was now and I’d see him tonight FINALLY. His flight from Austria was getting in at seven, so he’d hopefully get to the party by nine. And even though I looked like I’d been punched by a panda, I’d charm him and… What was I talking about? He was my BOYFRIEND, I’d already charmed him! I was just being silly and insecure because uni wasn’t quite what I’d thought it would be…and I hadn’t told anyone that because I felt too ashamed. I mean, I’d turned down Cambridge in a blaze of glory, chosen a London uni so I could fling myself into a political career and, well, that was impressive even if my housemates really weren’t impressed at all.

  But I was fine. Will and I were fine. Everything was fiiiiine, apart from maybe the sell-by date of the brandy I’d stolen from under my parents’ sink.

  I yelled goodbye and happy New Year to Mum and Dad and ventured out into the freezing freezingness. I messaged Evie and Amber some of my new Christmas-fail Bechdel discoveries. Amber came back to me saying:

  Christmas is over.

  Was she being sarky? I couldn’t tell. I was using the messages in a kind
of desperate look-everything’s-the-same-here! way, to plaster over the cracks I think we were all pretending weren’t there. Doing different stuff in different places was changing things, whether we wanted it to or not. And I guess it didn’t help that I’d accidentally-on-purpose been “too busy” for them to come to London, so they wouldn’t twig how bad things were in my flat. And so “too busy” usually meant I spent weekends alone, staring at the city through my window, or doing “SURPRISE” visits to Will’s campus, which he never seemed that excited by. Not even when I brought fancy red underwear.

  The town felt so…small as I walked to Amber’s. The streets so much quieter compared to London. It just all felt so…twee and suffocating and like nothing exciting could ever happen or be achieved. I guess if I’m being honest – which I am because of all the out-of-date brandy swilling around inside of me – maybe this was causing the distance between me and the others too. It had only been a term and despite the lonely weekends I felt like the curtains on my world had been flung open. It was hard not to feel like that when my bedroom window looked out onto the BT Tower.

  Okay – so my housemates were horrid, and I already had a sort-of reputation at uni for being precocious. But it wasn’t all bad. The girls I’d met at the Leading Women Society seemed pretty awesome and undaunted by my feminist column and, well…me. And I’d finally joined a political party! The Women’s Equality Party. When I wasn’t listening to the girls giggle in the kitchen and feeling too scared to go and join in, I was enjoying myself stuffing envelopes, going around the House of Commons, making posters, meeting all these amazing, powerful, inspiring, incredible women doing fab things.

  Our town just didn’t have that. I knew Amber and Evie couldn’t help it. Amber needed to do a foundation year to get onto an art course and it was cheaper to stay at home to do it. And it was a ruddy beautiful miracle that Evie was doing a degree at all with her OCD. No one could blame her for just wanting to commute to our local university, the one where my dad worked. But they seemed so…the same, and I felt so different, and it was like a huge cheese wedge had been shoved between us and I couldn’t eat it all. And, mmmm, cheese. And why hadn’t Will messaged me? And…oh, Amber’s house is here! I wonder if she has any alcohol?