SUN KISSED Read online

  A Letter from the Author

  Hello!

  This is Kat’s story. She loves her friends and her infuriating family, but she wishes her parents would stop treating her like a little girl!

  Like Kat, when I was a teenager I was impatient to grow up. I wanted to explore the world and have adventures. And I did! I visited lots of amazing places. I swam with dolphins in New Zealand, walked in a whispering bamboo forest in Japan and kayaked through mangroves sprinkled with glow worms in Thailand.

  But the most magical place I have ever visited was a tiny island in Sweden.

  My brother, sister and I stayed with a friend, Jakob, and one day he took us out on his boat to a deserted island. It was covered in wild flowers, bees and rocks, and surrounded by a dark blue sea that sparkled in the sun and stretched for miles. First, we ran all over the island screaming (because having your own island for the day is exciting), then we had a picnic. Next, we decided to go for a swim. We were still changing when Jakob ripped off his T-shirt, leapt into the sea, swam to a cliff, climbed it, then – without hesitating – dived straight back into the sea.

  Wow, I thought. I would love to do that … but I didn’t.

  I never forgot the adventure of visiting that beautiful island and now, in Sunkissed, Kat is going back there. Turn the page and discover what happens when one girl is brave enough to take the plunge and jump into the unknown.

  For Ben, who means the world to me.

  CONTENTS

  A Letter from the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  About the Author

  Also by JENNY McLACHLAN

  ONE

  I’m hiding in my bedroom wardrobe with my sister’s ex-boyfriend. This might be the worst decision I’ve ever made in my life.

  Downstairs, my family are crashing around. Dad’s banging pans and saying ‘spaghetti bolognaise’ in a shocking Italian accent, Britta’s practising her piano scales and Mum’s slamming doors and yelling, ‘Kat, Kat!’

  ‘Why are we hiding?’ whispers Joel.

  ‘Shhh!’ I say, then I listen as Mum comes up the stairs and starts looking for me. Through the slats in the wardrobe door, I see her glance into my room. Then she calls out, ‘I can’t find her anywhere.’

  ‘Spaghetti bolognaise!’ replies Dad, and I hear his heavy footsteps on the stairs. Oh no. I’ve got a terrible feeling about this.

  Next to me, Joel starts to wriggle. ‘Keep still,’ I hiss. ‘Dad gets well scary when he loses his temper.’ Joel freezes just as Dad strides into my room. He stands on my rug with his hands in the pockets of his hideous running shorts – the ones cut high at the sides to show a lot of hairy thigh. He’s just worn them to Britta’s parents’ evening. How could he?

  I hold my breath and try to make myself as small as possible. Dad turns in a circle, his eyes narrowed, and for a moment he seems to stare straight at me. Then I see Pinky step into my room. Dad looks at her and frowns as she rubs against his leg. He doesn’t stroke her. Pinky happens to be hairless after a fight with a fox and no one really enjoys touching her. She steps lightly away from Dad, walks towards the wardrobe door and starts sniffing the slats. Go away, Pinky! Just when I think Dad’s going to stomp over and pull open the door, Mum shouts, ‘Check the garden,’ and he walks out of my room.

  I let out my breath. I’m such an idiot! Why didn’t I just put Joel in the wardrobe? I didn’t need to get in with him: I’m supposed to be in my bedroom! Next to me, Joel shifts around and whispers, ‘Maybe we should –’

  ‘Shh!’ I say. ‘He might come back.’ We sit in silence for a few moments. ‘OK. He’s gone, so I’m going to go downstairs and I’ll come and get you when it’s safe for you to leave. You’ll have to wait until everyone goes to bed.’

  ‘But I told my mum I’d walk the dog.’ I stare at Joel’s shadowy face. I don’t remember his voice being so whiney when he was going out with Britta. I must have zoned it out and focused on his superb grooming. Problem is, in the dark I can’t see his gorgeous hair, but I can hear his voice.

  ‘Can’t you walk him later?’

  ‘He’s got irritable bowel syndrome. It’s not good if he doesn’t get regular walks …’ Joel’s breath is warm on my cheek and smells of chocolate cupcakes. When he turned up this evening asking for Britta – looking like a model in his tight Levi’s shirt – I told him to come in and wait for her. Then I gave him a cupcake, and then I asked him if he wanted to listen to some music up in my room, and that’s how we ended up in the wardrobe. Right now, he’s panting sugar on my face and I’m finding it hard to breathe.

  ‘Joel,’ I say, leaning away from him, ‘you do understand that if Mum and Dad catch you in here I am dead?’

  ‘Because I’m a boy?’

  ‘Yes, because you’re a boy … who went out with my sister. Plus, you’re eighteen and I’m fifteen. Also, I’ve done some things recently that they aren’t too happy about.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘A couple of times I skived off school during PE. Which was fine, until our neighbour saw me sunbathing on the grass outside Tesco’s and told Mum. I said I’d rather get a tan than be stuck indoors playing ping-pong, which Mum kind of understood, but then there was the shoplifting incident.’

  ‘You shoplifted?’ Joel’s squeaky voice goes up a notch.

  ‘Only a smoothie, and I lost Mum’s handbag.’

  ‘Wow! Britta always said you were –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, doing stupid stuff.’

  My sister is such a cow. ‘It wasn’t as bad as it sounds,’ I say, pulling a stiletto out from under my bum. ‘Stealing the smoothie was an accident. I ran out of Marks and Spencer’s when I realised I’d left Mum’s Prada bag in a changing room and I forgot to pay for the smoothie.’

  ‘Prada sounds expensive.’

  ‘It was, hundreds of pounds expensive. It was her fortieth birthday present from my dad.’ I remember Mum’s face when she collected me from Marks and Spencer’s and how she cried in the car on the way home. Not about the handbag. She said it was seeing me sitting in the manager’s office ‘like a criminal’. When I asked if we could stop at the drive-through McDonald’s to get a milkshake – they wouldn’t let me keep the smoothie – she freaked.

  After a moment’s silence, Joel says, ‘I don’t think you’re stupid, Kat. Actually, I really like you.’

  ‘What?’ I whisper.

  ‘I like you. I even liked you when I was going out with Britta.’

  I sit in stunned silence. Wow. There is just so much wrong with that. Now I’m really worried about Mum and Dad finding him in here! Joel shuffles round so our faces are centimetres apart. I try to back away, but there’s nowhere to go.

  This is all Britta’s fault. When they left for her parents’ evening, Mum said, ‘Fingers crossed the teachers say nicer things than they did about Kat!’ And they all laughed because Britta’s a genius, so obviously they’ll say better stuff about her. I’m the opposite of a genius. I’m the smoothie thief. When I saw Joel standing on the doorstep, I invited him in to teach my family a lesson. I wasn’t sure what the lesson was going to be, I
just knew it would annoy them to find Joel in my room. But the moment I heard Britta yell, ‘We’re back!’ I knew I’d made a terrible mistake, which is how we ended up in here.

  In the darkness, Joel finds my hand and squeezes it. ‘And I mean, I really like you …’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, and I gulp, but maybe it sounds like, ‘Mmm,’ because he puts his arm round me and starts rubbing his nose in my hair. I’ve got to get out of here! I fumble through dresses and jumpers, trying to get my fingers in the gap in the door, but as I lean forward, he starts kissing me.

  Actually, he’s kissing my ear.

  Does this count as a kiss? If it does, it’s my third-ever kiss. Joel’s ear-kiss is moist and gross. Part of me wants it to stop immediately, but a bigger part of me knows this is going to be a really funny story to tell my friends because I’m fairly certain Joel thinks he’s kissing my mouth.

  Suddenly, Joel breathes out and it’s so tickly I burst out laughing. Next, footsteps crash across my room, my wardrobe door is thrown open and I tumble on to the carpet. Joel and some shoeboxes land on top of me.

  I stare up at Dad, blinking into the bright light. ‘Sorry, sorry!’ says Joel as he desperately tries to untangle his shirt button from my hair. Then Pinky strolls in, followed by Mum and Britta. Pinky starts to bite my toes, Britta gasps and covers her mouth, but Mum doesn’t even look surprised. She just shakes her head and says, ‘Oh, Kat, how could you?’ which is word for word what she said at Marks and Spencer’s.

  And then I make my second big mistake of the evening: I start to laugh … and I just can’t stop.

  One hour later, I’ve stopped laughing. Joel has gone – Dad chased him down the road, roaring, which can’t have been a good experience – and I’m sitting in the middle of the sofa. Mum’s curled up on the sheepskin beanbag biting her nails and Dad is pacing around the room. ‘Your mother and I have been talking, Kat, and we’ve come to a decision.’

  ‘Mother?!’ I say, putting on a posh voice. ‘Who’s my mother?’

  Dad stares at me and breathes deeply in and out through his nose. I stop grinning. ‘As you have just demonstrated, you don’t seem to take anything we say seriously and you don’t appear to care for your sister’s feelings –’

  ‘Dad, that is so unfair. Britta dumped Joel over two months ago. He’s up for grabs. A singleton. Those are the rules of dating …’ The looks on their faces make me trail off.

  ‘We know you’re trying to be funny, Kat,’ says Mum, ‘but you really hurt Britta tonight.’

  Ha, ha, ha! I laugh. Very quietly. In my head. Britta’s the one who told her boyfriend I was stupid. As Mum stares at me, I think of all the times Britta’s called me Dingbat, Dummy or, if Pinky’s sitting on my lap, Dumb and Dumber. She even insults my cat, and Mum and Dad let her get away with it because they’re always laughing along with her.

  ‘So we’ve come to a decision about America.’ Dad stops pacing and stands in front of me, his legs a metre apart. Hairs are literally crawling down his legs like they’re trying to escape from his shorts.

  ‘You should get a wax, Dad. Seriously, loads of men have them now.’

  ‘We have come to a decision,’ he says, ignoring me. ‘We can’t leave you here with Britta. Not for a whole month. It’s not fair to expect her to look after a wild teenager.’

  ‘What are you going to do with me, then?’ Over the summer holidays, Dad’s taking Mum with him on a business trip to the States. Apparently, this is their ‘second honeymoon’, but if I’ve added them all up right, it will be their ‘seventh honeymoon’. Britta’s supposed to be in charge, which basically means I get to do whatever I want for a month. But if they’re not leaving me behind, then that must mean … ‘Are you taking me with you?’ I ask. ‘Summer in Los Angeles … That would be awesome!’

  ‘What?’ says Dad, confused. ‘No, of course we’re not taking you with us. We’ve decided to send you to stay with Auntie –’ I swear he pauses here, giving me a chance to run through all the terrible auntie options: Auntie Christie in Portsmouth, who wears leggings and crop tops, Auntie Joanna on the Isle of Wight, who’s a witch (literally, it’s her job), or Auntie …

  ‘Frida,’ says Mum, finishing his sentence. Frida, my Swedish auntie, who lives in Stockholm, and who loves nakedness.

  ‘But,’ I say, trying to work out what this will mean, ‘I won’t see my friends for the whole summer.’

  ‘Well,’ says Dad, arms folded, looking smug, ‘you should have thought of that before you decided to get intimate with your sister’s boyfriend.’

  ‘He’s her ex-boyfriend,’ I mutter, but finally I decide to shut up. This is one serious punishment and unless I want to literally die of boredom, ABBA and pickled herring this summer, I need to get out of it fast.

  TWO

  ‘Look,’ says Bea. ‘A plane!’

  Betty leans across my seat and the two of them peer out of the car window, watching as the plane flies low over the motorway. ‘Betty, you’re squashing me,’ I say.

  ‘Sorry.’ She settles back into her seat. ‘But did you see its little wheels come down? I’ve never been on a plane. This is so exciting!’

  ‘Anyone want a yogurt raisin?’ asks Bea, leaning forward and offering the packet to Mum and Dad. ‘Or I’ve got Mini Cheddars.’

  When my friends said they’d come to the airport to see me off, I didn’t expect it to turn into such a fun day out for them. Mum takes a handful of raisins and starts feeding them to Dad. ‘That was a Scandinavian Airlines plane, Kat. It could be the one you’re going on.’

  ‘Don’t depress me, Mum.’

  ‘Hey, girls,’ Dad says, interrupting me. ‘Don’t you love this song?’ Without waiting for a reply, he turns the radio up and starts to croon along to Adele singing ‘Someone Like You’. Annoyingly, Bea and Betty join in, making Dad turn the music up even louder.

  I sit back in my seat and try to control the sick feeling that is building up in my stomach. I can’t believe Mum and Dad are actually doing this to me! I find flying scary, especially take-off, but knowing I’m not going to see my friends for a whole month is even worse than the thought of being thirty thousand feet in the air. Mum and Dad don’t understand. They keep telling me I can speak to Bea and Betty on the phone and text, but I’ll miss them so much.

  A lorry overtakes us, spraying the window with grey water and making the car shake. It’s been raining since we left our house, and now the car is steamed up. Betty’s drawing a cartoon ghost on her window. She adds a speech bubble. Now the ghost is saying, ‘Bye-bye!’

  I must look sad because Bea nudges me. ‘It’s going to be alright, Kat.’

  I’m not sure it is. In the front, I watch Dad rest his hand on Mum’s thigh. ‘Dad,’ I say, ‘please don’t perv on Mum in front of my friends!’

  ‘Can’t keep my hands off her.’ He gives her leg a squeeze.

  ‘I think your mum and dad are cute together,’ whispers Bea. We watch as Mum puts her hand on top of Dad’s and mashes it down into her leg. ‘Oh,’ says Bea. ‘Less cute.’

  ‘Seriously, you two, stop it. It’s bad enough that I’m going to Sweden, without having to watch you two make out on the way to the airport.’

  ‘If you hadn’t been making out with your sister’s boyfriend, you wouldn’t be going to Sweden,’ says Dad, glaring at me in the mirror.

  ‘Ex-boyfriend,’ I say wearily, ‘and we weren’t making out … at least, I wasn’t.’

  ‘Joel snogged Kat’s ear,’ says Betty. ‘She didn’t even like it. She said it felt like he was washing her ear out with his tongue!’ Suddenly the car swerves as Dad lets go of Mum’s leg and grips the steering wheel.

  ‘Not really helping, Betty,’ I say.

  But she’s not listening. ‘Plane!’ she shouts. ‘I think I saw the pilot!’

  ‘So,’ says Dad, ‘time to say our goodbyes?’ I’ve checked in and we’re standing by the electronic barriers that lead to security. Until now, Bea and Betty have been working hard t
o distract me. Betty even pushed me on a trolley all the way from the car park, pretending I was a giant baby. ‘Your plane goes in just over an hour,’ he adds, glancing at his phone.

  So, it’s actually happening. It was only when Mum started speaking to me in Swedish and a suitcase appeared in my room that I realised they were definitely going ahead with the Auntie Frida plan. One suitcase … one suitcase? I told Mum I needed three: one for clothes, one for products and accessories, and one for technology, but she just laughed and said Frida’s boat was too small to take that much stuff.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ I say.

  Mum and Dad exchange a look. We’ve been through this so many times. Mum just keeps telling me how much fun I’ll have with Frida. I suppose she is pretty cool. She’s a jewellery designer and she lives on this awesome houseboat in Stockholm, but without my friends, Frida’s boat will feel like prison. A prison with loads of IKEA furniture and a guard who walks around naked. ‘Come here,’ says Dad. ‘Give your old man a hug.’

  ‘But who’ll make Britta’s breakfast smoothie? I’m the only one who does it right. And there’s no way she’ll water the plants.’ He wraps his arms round me. ‘Do I have to go?’ I ask, but he doesn’t even answer my question.

  Next, I bury my face in Mum’s grey cashmere shoulder. She smells of lemons. I don’t want to let go because she’s so soft. God, I wish she hadn’t found the cardi in my suitcase and taken it out. All around us, people stream past, dragging trolleys and hyper children along with them. Except for me, everyone seems excited, like they’re off on a big adventure. Over Mum’s shoulder, Bea gives me a ‘Be brave’ smile and Betty sticks her tongue out and winks. The sight of Betty in her pink knitted hat makes me cling to Mum even tighter. She knitted it herself and although she claims it’s a cupcake it looks much more like a boob. She really shouldn’t have knitted a red cherry on the top.