Looking for Andrew McCarthy
The third novel by the Sunday times bestselling author of Amanda’s Wedding'I'm wearing a beautiful pink dress, and I'm in a big pink room with billowing curtains…and I'm dancing to Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark…and my handsome partner leans over and whispers…'Yes, 80s child Ellie really thought life was going to be like Pretty in Pink, St Elmo's Fire and all those other movies – where everyone was astoundingly glamorous, popular, successful, had huge apartments and lived happily ever after. But now that she and her gang are thirty, she has to admit that things haven't quite turned out that way. When did horrible flats, difficult relationships and menaningless jobs take over?And, more importantly, what happened to the coolest, wisest, most inspirational Brat Packer of them all? Where is Andrew McCarthy now? Did life fulfil its promise for him? Is he happy on Channel 5? Surely he, of all people, can tell Ellie what to do about her thirty-angst?Determined to get her idol to unravel some of life's great mysteries, Ellie sets out, unwillingly accompanied by her best friend Julia, on a quest across the USA, from LA to New York to find him. It's an unlikely epic, by turns hilarious, romantic and downright uncomfortable – but, helped by a cast of thousands, of whom Frosty the Giant Pig is probably the least improbable, they do find some answers, although not the ones they expected
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JENNY COLGAN
Looking for Andrew McCarthy
This book is dedicated to the girls I first watched these films with, particularly Queen Margaret’s finest: Katrina McCormack, Karen Murphy and Alison Woodall. (I was going to include some Nightmare on Elm Street stuff, but I reckoned we’d get too frightened.)
The passion runs deep.
Strapline, St Elmo’s Fire, 1985
The laughter. The lovers. The friends. The fights.
The talk. The hurt. The jealousy. The passion. The pressure.
The real world.
Strapline, Pretty in Pink, 1986
Bernie’s back – and he’s still dead!
Strapline, Weekend at Bernie’s II, 1993
Contents
Chapter 8: Planes, Trains & Automobiles
Chapter 12: Adventures in Babysitting
‘HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY!’
Simple Minds. Ellie nudged it up with her foot, still concentrating on whitening up an extremely old pair of stilettos, and joined in with gusto.
‘Wooohhwoooahh!’
The phone rang and she turned the music down reluctantly.
‘Hedgehog!’
‘Oh, hi Dad.’
‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!’
‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Ellie tried to sound embarrassed, but was actually pleased.
‘Did you like your present then?’
‘Dad, it’s a beret.’
‘It’ll come in handy, though, won’t it? For skating?’
Ellie hadn’t been skating with her father for sixteen years.
‘Uh, yeah.’
‘So, are you all set for tonight then?’
Ellie looked around the room. One of the problems of having an eighties party, she mused, was not quite having the resources to rip out your entire flat and redesign it to look like the set of Dynasty. So she’d hung lots of old Brat Pack and Duran Duran posters on the wall, left lots of Jackie annuals lying about and bought a bunch of pink and black striped napkins. Later on, she was planning on spraying around some Anaïs Anaïs.
‘Hmm, pretty much,’ she said.
‘Is Julia coming?’
Ellie raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Dad, she’s my best friend. Of course she’s coming.’
‘I bet she’ll look nice.’
‘Yes, well, I think it’s enough every male my own age I’ve ever known fancying Julia without you as well, okay?’
She could hear her dad shrug over the phone.
‘She’s very pretty.’
‘Dad, you’ve know her since she was five. Stop being disgusting.’
Ellie stared in the mirror next to the phone and squinted at herself, trying to see if she could get her hair to lie down simply by leaving her hand on it for a long time. Ellie didn’t quite fit into the ‘very pretty’ category. She might make ‘very perky’ on a good day, with her ridiculously curly hair, which went in every direction, snub nose, and generous sprinkling of freckles. At least her eyes were nearly black, usually with mischief.
‘Yes, well,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Thirty, eh, darling? Leaving your wild, carefree youth behind you.’
Ellie contemplated a much-loved picture of Limahl and wondered if her youth had been quite wild and carefree enough.
‘Ehm … something like that,’ she said, trying to manipulate sellotape, poster and phone at the same time. ‘I stole a traffic cone once. Anyway. What did you do for your thirtieth birthday?’
‘Don’t you remember, Hedgehog?’ he said. ‘You were the one who wouldn’t stop biting the waitress.’
‘I was there?’
‘There? You were practically at school. Couldn’t go back for another black forest gateau for years. Then we went to the garden centre in the afternoon and you weed behind the fountain.’
‘That sounds terrible,’ said Ellie, glancing at the piles of old twelve inch Howard Jones singles she was planning to use as the major form of entertainment.
‘No, actually, it was lovely,’ her father said, nostalgically.
Ellie examined her face in the mirror again. It was a Nik Kershaw one she’d found at a boot sale.
‘Wrinkles and freckles? That can’t be right, surely,’ she thought to herself.
‘Huh?’ she said.
‘Nothing. Just have a nice time.’
‘I will. I’m just going to pick Billy up from his rehearsal.’
‘Oh, right.’ Her dad conveyed by those two simple words exactly what he thought of Billy, Ellie’s latest paramour. Ellie thought it was because he played saxophone in a band. In fact, it was because her dad had been a policeman for thirty-five years, and had a pretty good idea what a rogue looked like.
‘Okay. See you soon.’
‘See you soon, darling.’ He paused. ‘And – have a happy birthday, sweetheart. You know? I just want you to be happy.’
‘Now what the hell did he mean by that?’ thought Ellie to herself, instantly upset as soon as she put the phone down. She started unpacking the bags of Wham bars, Spangles and Space Dust and gazed at the dusty box of Bezique she’d extracted from a rather shocked looking off-licence assistant.
‘I’m completely happy,’ she thought to herself. Particularly now she’d bribed her evil landlord with several boxes of nasty cheap continental lager to get himself out the house.
