Читать книгу Cross Her Heart - Sarah Pinborough - Страница 11

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The cafeteria is like the changing room at the pool, hot and moist, and the windows are misted up as the summer rain pelts at the glass outside. I don’t mind the rain so much. Ange does because her carefully straightened hair starts to frizz as soon as the first drop falls, but unless the sun is properly baking, I prefer spending our lunchtimes indoors. It’s how I always spent them before, when I used to hang out with Caz and Melanie, which feels like a lifetime ago now. It’s the only thing I really miss about them. Angela is more of an outdoor girl so we have lunch on the benches normally. Not in this downpour though. Today we’re safely inside with everyone else.

‘So, what do you reckon?’ she says. ‘For Saturday? Crash at Jodie’s? We could go to the pub first and then make a punch or something. See if anyone else is around?’ One thick black eyebrow, filled in with pencil, wriggles like a slug on her olive face as she tries to raise it suggestively. If I did mine like that I’d end up rubbing brown all over my face. Angela is way better with make-up and clothes than me. When she’s all dressed up she looks about twenty. I just look about twenty stone. I’m the ugly duckling of our group, I know it. Please God, let me one day turn into a swan.

‘Yeah, sounds good,’ I say. ‘If the others can come.’

Angela’s fingers fly over the keypad of her phone, and I know mine will buzz in a minute once she’s sent out the message to our MyBitches WhatsApp group. Lizzie came up with the name. We are each other’s bitches after all, she’d said, and we’d laughed. She was right. I can’t believe I’ve only been at Larkrise Swimmers for a year. I’ve only known these girls for about ten months. It feels like we’ve been friends forever. Well, I kind of knew Angela before because we’re in the same school, but we’ve never been in any of the same sets so she was only a face in a crowd, like I was to her. Now look at us. MyBitches. It still makes me smile. But I think I prefer The Fabulous Four, as our coach calls us. We’re his winners. We may compete as solo swimmers but we drive each other to be the best. We clicked right away, from the first morning practice, like jigsaw pieces slotting into place around each other, coming together to make a brilliant picture and put Larkrise on the competitive map.

We’re different ages, and in a lot of ways, it’s better. Gives us more to talk about. Me and Ange are the only ones at King Edward’s Grammar, Lizzie is in sixth form at Harris Academy, Arse Academy as it’s known, the shithole school in the middle of town, and Jodie is a first year at Allerton Uni. She’s nearly twenty-two and competes with the adults but she’s one of us really and she doesn’t seem to care we’re younger than her. She trains with us because her lectures clash with the adult sessions and she says she prefers mornings. She doesn’t stay in halls but at her mum’s house here in Elleston and so she hasn’t really got into uni life. She helps us with our techniques and she’s pretty cool. She never makes me feel like I’m way younger than her. Not that five years is that much younger, but the sixth formers at KEGS make you feel like they’re thirty or something, constantly looking down at us.

‘Lizzie’s in,’ Ange mutters, focused on her phone, as if I can’t read my own pinging matching messages. ‘Jodie says her mum’s not back this weekend. She’ll double-check but she’s pretty sure.’

Another bonus to having a friend at uni – much more relaxed parenting. Jodie’s mum does interior design or something for big posh houses, and she has a boyfriend in Paris where she’s currently living while she works on some project. It all sounds very glamorous, but more importantly means she’s hardly ever home. I’ve never met her and Jodie pretty much has the place to herself.

‘Cool,’ I say. I want to check my Facebook, but I’ve told myself I won’t until the end of lunch. I pick at the dregs of my cold jacket potato instead. My shoulders ache from the butterfly this morning – not my best stroke – and the gym session last night. We push hard, but I’ve been slacking a bit recently and I’m feeling it. I need to get my shit together or it will start to show to the others, or worse, I’ll start letting the club down. I’ve always had to work harder than them to stay fit. Lizzie is naturally toned and runs like a gazelle. Jodie is only five foot three, but she’s all muscle, lean, angry and boyish in her swimsuit and Ange has the curves. Her own personal floats, as Lizzie would put it. Not that her boobs stop her cutting fast through the water. All her femininity dissolves as soon as she dives under the surface. I’m not quite sure how I fit into the pack. More ass than tit is how I overheard twatty Jack Marshall talking about me last term – it still stings badly – and he probably had a point. I’ve inherited my mum’s pear shape. Any extra weight goes straight to my thighs, and they’re big enough even when I’m barely eating.

I may tell Mum that Jodie’s mum is back this weekend, just to stop her worrying. I feel a flash of guilt. Of all of our families, my mum is the most protective. I never noticed it much before. It’s always been us two together – and Auntie Marilyn – and I know she loves me more than anything, and I do love her too, but I’m sixteen now and I have to have my own space, like the rest of my friends do. Text me when you get there. Text me when you’re leaving. I’ll come and pick you up, no, really, it’s no problem. I know she means well, but no one else’s mum does that and I can’t help but feel embarrassed. It makes me feel like a child, and I’m not. I’m pretty much a woman. I have my own secrets now.

Our phones buzz again and we laugh in unison at Lizzie’s message. A gross spunking dick gif.

‘So, are you gonna?’

Ange always does this weird half-American accent whenever the subject is sex. She breaks off a piece of doughnut and pops it in her mouth, but her brown eyes are sharp on me as she chews.

I shrug, casual, although my heart trips. Am I? I said I’d do it when I was sixteen, and part of me wants to – at least used to want to – but I don’t see why it’s so urgent I do it straight away. But Courtney is hot, and he’s totally different and more than anything he’s cool. Cool boys have never really liked me before and I kind of feel I owe him now. He’s probably not used to waiting, even though we’ve only been sort of seeing each other a couple of months.

‘Probably,’ I say, and Ange breaks into an excited grin.

‘Oh my God, I bet he’s totally experienced. Way better for your first time.’

‘He’s been pretty good so far.’ I stick my tongue out at her, wiggle it crudely, and wink.

This time she shrieks loud enough to make several girls at other tables turn and stare.

The banter comes easily and I know I probably will do it with Courtney this weekend, if only to get it out of the way, and it’s not like we haven’t done most other things anyway apart from that, but I don’t feel the way I used to about him any more. I’m not overwhelmed by him like I was at the start. Not since … well … not since the messages started. I’ve got a new secret now. One I haven’t shared even with the girls. I can’t. It’s something which is entirely mine and it’s making Courtney and all his cool seem like teenage-boy bullshit.

My new Facebook friend. Someone I can really talk to.

The bell rings out overhead signalling the end of lunch and my heart races. I made it through the hour without looking at Messenger. I don’t like to check in front of Ange or the others and I’ve turned my notifications off. We have sharp eyes as well as strong muscles. We demand to know everything of each other. If it pinged, I’d have to share. We are one.

As Ange disappears off to Geography, I clear our trays before going to English revision. Only then do I click into FB Messenger. My heart thumps, but quickly falls. No new messages. I can’t believe how disappointed I feel. It’s my sixteenth birthday. It’s important. I thought he cared.

Maybe later, I tell myself, as I pocket my phone, determined not to be too upset. To believe in him like he said I should. There’ll be a message later.