FULL SUMMARY: Sonny has practically been molested, unceremoniously dumped and now totally humiliated by the most good looking, but also, she's now realised, the most obnoxious guy at school. She's had it with immature boys. So when she runs into Chad(literally), it somehow seems fated. But surely an Armani- wearing sex god such as Chad couldn't be interested in her. But Chad is interested and he's everything a girl could want in a man – gorgeous looking, great clothes, glamorous job – rich... oh and older. Problem is how much older? And what are Sonny's parents going to say? (Sonny and Chad aren't famous)
OK, I admit it. Perhaps I was wrong all along. Maybe I should have listened and ended it before it all properly began. But that's with the benefit of hindsight. Wonderful thing, hindsight, isn't it? At the time, though, I thought it was all too cool for words. Well, who wouldn't? I was so caught up in the glamour of the situation, the deliciously illicit appeal o forbidden fruit, that I couldn't see the reality – that it was like being on an out of control fairground ride, careering wildly along and threatening the stability of my entire family.
Personally, I put it all down to moving house. Well, maybe not all of it – there were other elements involved – but to my mind, the entire thing, the whole crazy, exciting, exhilarating mad experience began on that cold grey morning in February when we packed up our former lives and moved out o the little three bed roomed semi detached house in Wisconsin that had been home to me for as long as I can remember. I say little semi, but I suppose it wasn't that small, not compared to up north where my Dad grew up – only one step removed from the old cardboard box in the middle of the road joke if you're to believe his reminisces. But little it undoubtedly was in comparison with the solid red brick former rectory we were moving into in Los Angeles, California.
"The Old Rectory" the house was called – imaginary or what? It was on the outskirts of the city and even my brother, Hugh, who reckons he's pretty funny (even if nobody else does), said we should rename it Dunsaving, given the size of the new mortgage; but the parents just smiled indulgently and said things about it being a bargain because of needing some work doing on it and that we were lucky to find a house this price in LA. This uncharacteristic parental laid backness in the ace of major financial expenditure was fairly surprising in itself, but then again the two of them had been in a practically non stop good mood since Dad had come home just before Christmas with the news that he had been promoted at work. Hence more money, you see and hence, in its turn. The Move.
I suppose purists might say that, in that case, it was Dad's promotion that kicked it all of but I'm sticking to my original hypothesis. If we hadn't of moved into "The Old Rectory"m Hugh wouldn't have invited Danny Oldfield round to check out his groovy new top loor pad and if Danny hadn't come round, there almost wouldn't have been any o the resulting developments between him and me, nor all the attendant fall out and knock on effects.
But perhaps, more importantly, if we hadn't moved, Mum and Dad wouldn't have had their housewarming party, which is where it really all kicked off. Because it was there at the housewarming party that Chad and I met again for the first time since I was a kid of about Hattie's age, eleven or twelve years old and far too young to take any notice of him.
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