Читать книгу In Sarah’s Shadow - Karen McCombie - Страница 7

“It looks nice!”

Pamela, my best friend, is lying. It’s something she does pretty regularly.

“It doesn’t look nice,” I tell her as I stare at my bizarre reflection in the full-length hall mirror. “It looks crap. Before, I had no boobs, and now – now it looks like I’ve got two satsumas shoved up my T-shirt.”

“But in a good way!” Pamela shrugs uselessly. “Maybe you just need to slacken the straps or something…so they’re not so high.”

High, as in tucked just below my chin, where – unless I’m very much mistaken – boobs aren’t meant to be. Well, bang goes two weeks’ allowance on a Wonderbra that probably does wonderful things for other girls but makes me look like a freak.

“You’ve really got to be more positive, Pumpkin!” Mum had told me this morning when she caught me hugging a cushion across my non-existent chest while sighing at the sight of Destiny’s Child bouncing around in spangly bras that could barely contain their bosoms on some old video they were rerunning on MTV.

“Be more positive”: that’s what Mum always tries to tell me if I’m down about anything. Maybe if she stopped calling me Pumpkin for five minutes I might feel more positive, of course. (Just a thought.) But you know, like most human beings, mothers can’t be wrong all the time, so I decided to try and do the positive thing, just this once, just to keep her happy. And so this afternoon (spent shopping and window-shopping, like every other Saturday), me and Pamela wandered into the underwear department at BhS, laughed at all the old lady knickers (big enough to hold a week’s worth of groceries, if you sewed the legs up), sniggered at the G-strings (not enough pant to cover a postage stamp, never mind your girly bits), and bought myself a slinky, black Wonderbra. Which I am now wearing, and which is making me feel about as slinky as a baboon in a fairground hall of mirrors.

“Hold on…” says Pamela, and before I can stop her she’s got her hands up the back of my top and is trying to wrestle the straps a little looser. “There! Now if I just do this…how’s that? Better, huh?”

Better…no, I don’t think so.

In front of me, all I can see is a girl wearing size 12-14 black trousers, a boy’s (aged twelve) grey Gap T-shirt, with two satsumas loitering in the middle of her chest (one higher than the other), while a hand holds up her dull, brown hair in what is supposed to look like a loose and lovely topknot but is more like a gently collapsing bird’s nest.

God, I’d be irresistible, if I wasn’t such a walking disaster…

“You might as well let it go,” I tell Pamela, wriggling away from her hand and feeling my hair tumbling down over my shoulders. “It still looks lousy, whatever you try to do to it.”

Maybe I should grow my hair really long – that way I could drape it over my chest so no one would see that I don’t actually have one.

“Just trying to help,” Pamela mumbles, taking a step away from me.

I know she’s trying to help; she always does. But sometimes, the more Pamela tries to help, the more she puts her foot in it. Like the time she convinced me that the silver, spray-on hair glitter I bought looked excellent? I wasn’t so sure, but decided to believe her and wore it to the end-of-term Christmas party. Lucky it was the end of term; the nickname of “Granny” that the boys dumped on me that night – on account of my new-look ‘grey’ hair – had been forgotten by the time the next term started, thank God. Even if I still remembered.

“Look, you want a coffee?” I ask her, realising that Pamela’s acting like I’ve slapped her in the face.

“OK,” she replies, following me, lap-dog style, through to the kitchen.

Poor Pamela; she has to put up with me and my stupid black moods, but it’s cool – she knows how hard things get for me. It’s not as if Pamela’s life is some rose-tinted success story – me and her are neck-and-neck when it comes to being resoundingly average at school – but at least her size 12 body is all in proportion, even if she isn’t exactly Kate Moss gorgeous, and at least she doesn’t have an older sister who’s so stunning in every department that she can’t help but feel like the family booby prize by comparison.

‘Course, there is one area where my best friend is scoring considerably better than me.

“You said you’d show me the message Tariq texted you,” I nod in the direction of the bag Pamela left on the kitchen stool when she came round to collect me earlier.

I know what the message says, of course: Pamela only told me about twelve thousand times this afternoon. But then she’s desperate to dig out her mobile and show me the message for real, and if that gets her smiling again then I’ll act surprised (as surprised as she was to get a message like that) when she sticks it under my nose.

“Look, see?” she beams as, right on cue, the jumble of text letters dance in front of my eyes, just as I flip the kettle on.

“Hi, Pammie – what’s up? Tar x,” I read aloud, my voice practically drowned out by Pamela hyperventilating.

Not the most romantic message in the world; not exactly an excerpt from the love scenes between Joey and Dawson in Dawson’s Creek. But it’s enough to make Pamela feel like the most desired female in the Western hemisphere and I have to say I’m a tiny bit jealous, even though Tariq is the sort of boy I’d have to kiss with a paper bag on my head if we were ever in that last boy/last girl on Earth scenario.

“See? I told you! ‘X’ is a kiss, isn’t it?” Pamela babbles, stabbing at the phone and nearly erasing her precious message.

“‘Course it’s a kiss!” I grin, idly wondering if ‘x’ stands for kiss in all languages. What if ‘x’ is short-hand for ‘sod off’ in Vietnamese? But luckily for Pamela, Tariq is from north London, same as us, and so ‘x’ is most definitely a kiss and most definitely unexpected, since the only communication Pamela and Tariq have had so far is a few shy “hi”s across a crowded dinner hall. Who did he get her number from? What gave him the courage to call? And why’s he suddenly calling her “Pammie” when no-one else in the world ever has?

“Pammie…” says Pamela wistfully, leaning up against the gently gurgling fridge.

I guess it sounds more exotic than plain Pamela (in the same way chocolate digestives are more exotic than plain ones). Pamela Ann Jones: not the most memorable name in the world, as Pamela would be the first to agree. Not even an ‘e’ on the end of Ann for that extra scrap of glamour. But don’t get me wrong; I’m not putting her down for having a dullish name; after all, mine is only just a fraction more interesting. It’s just that it’s ironic, isn’t it, that my best friend happens to be called Pamela, while Sarah’s two best mates are named Cherish and Angel. Cherish Kofi and Angeline Girardot, to be precise. Memorable by name, memorable in the flesh, as most of the boys at Bakerfield School will happily tell you, if only they can get their tongues back in their mouths and their jaws off the floor. They’re like that about Sarah too (naturally), but I don’t want to sully my mind with thoughts of her right now. It’s been two solid weeks of Sarah, the competition and general parent hysteria about Sarah and the competition in this household and, right now, I’m kind of enjoying having the place to myself for five Sarah-free, parent-free minutes…

“So, what are you going to text back to him?” I ask ‘Pammie’, handing her a mug of milky coffee.

“God! I hadn’t thought about that!” Pamela suddenly switches from happiness to panic in half a split second.

Lateral thinking: that’s when your mind spins off at different tangents from one particular thought. Pamela, bless her, doesn’t do lateral; her mind works in one direction at a time, with blinkers fixed to either side of her brain to stop her from being distracted by incidental stuff. Now I feel bad for her, the last thing I want is to spoil her happiness by making her tense up about a suitable reply.

“How about…Hi Tar – hanging with Megan. What’s up with U? Pammie x,” I suggest.

“That’s brilliant!” Pamela beams. “But could you key it in, Megan? My hands are shaking too much…”

“Sure,” I shrug, taking the mobile from her and doing my good deed by tapping out the message.

“Hey, that’s not right,” says Pamela, being a backseat texter and pointing out the mistake I’ve just caught myself making.

“Hi Tar – hanging with Sarah—”

My stupid brain has just subconsciously sent traitorous messages through my nervous system, all because I’ve just heard the front door open and my sister’s laughing voice drift down the hall towards us.

“Oh,” says Sarah, stopping dead in the kitchen doorway. She’s got her wine-coloured velvet jacket on today, with those hipster Levi’s of hers that have worn in all the right places.

“Oh?” I shrug back at her, hoping I sound edgier than I feel as I quickly slam down Pamela’s phone and fold my arms across my lopsided, satsuma-look boobs. (Wish I’d got Pamela to even up the straps at least…)

Maybe it’s worked, me staking my finders-keepers’ claim to the kitchen and my right to a private conversation with my friend. Sarah’s looking weird: kind of flushed and surprised or something.

And then I see why…and it’s nothing to do with me trying (and probably failing) to be edgy or tough with her.

“Conor…” says Sarah, with her voice wavering and her hands fluttering, “this is my sister Megan. And that’s her friend Pamela.”

Behind her in the doorway is this tall guy I vaguely recognise from the Upper Sixth, in a denim jacket, with shaggy, fawn-coloured hair flopping around his face and a guitar case – the flash guitar Sarah’s borrowed from the music department – slung across one shoulder.

Instantly, I know that something is going on between the two of them. Sarah wouldn’t flush pink and act so flustered if it was just one of the regular boy mates she sometimes hangs around with. And regular boy mates don’t act the gallant hero and offer to carry your guitar home from rehearsal.

And just as instantly, when Conor’s face cracks into a heart-melting smile in my direction, I know that the world is not a fair place.

How else can you explain it when you’ve just set eyes on your soulmate…and realise he’ll never in a million years see you the same way?