A Few of the Girls Read Online Free PDF

good for a young girl all by herself.”
    “Please don’t say any more,” begged Catherine.
    On shaking legs she rose and ran haltingly down the Embankment towards a bus stop. Behind her, Bob was calling, “Catherine, Catherine, we must talk, you need to talk.” Behind her, St. Paul’s towered knowingly over it all.

Someone’s Got to Tell Her

    Oh, we could tell each other
anything
when we were fifteen, Angela! Couldn’t we? You and Maggie and I. You two could tell me that white lipstick was tarty. We two could tell you that the short skirt gave you thunder thighs. We could both tell Maggie that the frizzy perm didn’t work. We were always together, Maggie, Angela, and Deirdre. They used to call us MAD back then. We thought it was a scream.
    And when we got a bit older we could tell each other
almost
anything. Like we told Maggie that the fellow Liam she was seeing was also seeing a lot of other people. We only told her because she was actually starting to talk about weddings and we couldn’t let her go down that road.
    And we told you that your boss Eric that you fancied was a con man. And we had to tell you because you were about to invest all your savings in some scam. And you both told me to go back home and live with my mam because my lovely bedsit that I was so proud of was actually a room in a brothel.
    And back then we never really minded being told that we were wrong or foolish or silly or whatever. We didn’t
like
it now, but we didn’t get upset or sulk or anything. It was what friends did for each other. So why has it become so difficult now that we are twenty-eight?
    It’s not that twenty-nine is old. Or that the dreaded thirty is creeping up on us…We’ve lost something along the way. I don’t know what happened, but we seem to be walking on eggshells with each other. And there’s no reason for it.
    We’ve all done fine. Well, as regards work anyway. Not quite so well in the Men Department. But then, people marry much later nowadays. And some don’t marry at all.
    It’s not like it was back in our mothers’ time where they still had the notion of being old maids or spinsters or whatever. And of course we’d all like to have children, but when we’re ready. Not like half the kids we were at school with who had kids of their own just to get out and have a flat, and now they’re tied down and can’t go anywhere.
    And I mean, you have to admit we’re not doing badly. You run a hair salon on your own. And you go out to movie sets and meet the stars and do their hair. You have your picture taken with them. That’s pretty good, Angela, by anyone’s standards.
    And I’m doing okay as well. Nobody in my family had even heard of a career in marketing, and yet here I am in a consultancy doing very nicely thank you. Away long from the classroom when poor Miss O’Sullivan said that we would all end up in the gutter because we had no get-up-and-go.
    And of course Maggie’s doing fine too. In a way. You know. Considering everything.
    And really
her
family was much more difficult than ours were so she more or less
had
to help out all the time. And she couldn’t get any real money together for a training course like we did. When we all worked stacking shelves and serving tables, back then. And honestly, Ange, we
did
try to tell her.
    Remember when we said we’d all stand up to her father when he came down to take her wages from her? We said we’d speak to him straight out and tell the authorities that he was taking every penny his daughter slaved hard for, but Maggie begged us not to, said it would be worse for her mother if we did.
    So we did nothing.
    And then when her mother got sick Maggie said she
had
to stay at home and mind the younger ones. Who else was there?
    And we did say to each other then that someone should tell her we didn’t get all that many chances in life and she should have gone to college. She was brighter than all of us. She could easily have got a place.
    But would she