Every Good Girl Read Online Free PDF

so-sympathetic spaniel eyes. Emily had been offered counselling by the school welfare officer, as soon as her parents’ separation had become known. Now
that
had been a day of Embarrassments to be Remembered, when both parents, all smart prim suits like nervous Speech Day guests, had turned up together to do what they called the right thing. ‘If you get stressed, or whatever, they need to be aware of the pressure you’re under,’ her dad had explained while she cringed and argued. They were such bloody
Guardian
-reader parents – all emotion-sharing and fervent reassurance. Couldn’t just sodding well do the
other
right thing and stay together though, no chance. Whatever they said about putting her and Luce first, there was no stopping Dad from going to find his own path through the woods, as he put it. No stopping Mum from helping him pack.
    Emily had refused the counselling – there was nothing to talk about. Nothing she’d let the school know about anyway. What could she tell them? The awful truth? A couple of Dad’s advertising jingles (ice-cream and a cheap car) turned into mega-hits, he decided he was Andrew sodding Lloyd Webber and went all irresponsible and big-time, and Mum was being such a stroppy feminist she did everyone’s laundry except his, and kept telling him his kind of success was only a fluke, like the lottery. It would be all round the staff room. Instead she kept an enigmatic silence, gaining a hefty amount of sympathetic leeway where homeworkwas concerned, and a convenient assumption that the only reason for flagging concentration must be unhealthily repressed emotional angst. Emily was quite happy to take advantage.
    â€˜S’OK, she’s gone. I thought we were in for one of her “I do
understand
, I
was
young once” rantings,’ Chloe mocked.
    Emily laughed. ‘Do you think she was one, though?
Really?
Do you think if I asked her if she’d tripped or done speed or shagged someone whose name she didn’t even know that she’d actually say “
Oh yes, yes
, happy days”?’
    Chloe thought for a moment, pausing outside the hall to give the menu a quick glance. She didn’t really need to, it was Friday, so lunch was therefore something fish-shaped with chips. ‘She might. She might like the chance to “share”. Perhaps she did the Paris riots back in 1968 and met some Gauloisey piece of French rough.’
    Emily shrugged. ‘I haven’t shagged anyone whose name I don’t know either so it would be just a pose,’ she laughed. ‘How disgustingly, typically
teenage
of me.’
    â€˜Well you are from a broken home, you’re sure to be kicking at the barriers a bit. Doesn’t your poor despairing mother find you moody and uncontrollable and your father not know what to say to you? Don’t you put your little sister through secret mental torture?’
    Emily joined the end of the queue and stared past a crowd of jostling boys at the food. It all looked orange. Bread-crumbed fish, lurid chips, glistening beans. Her father had told her, that weekend when he’d asked her to help choose paint for her and Lucy’s room in his wondrous loft/flat, he’d told her about when he was fifteen and painted his bedroom ceiling orange. He’d told her about the paint blobbing onto the carpet, hisbed, his head, and how his mother had said, “Oh that’s lovely, darling,” because she’d thought everything he did was God-perfect. No wonder he’d gone off and slaked his ego on every little slapper who laughed at his jokes. Mum should have known he’d do that, Gran had warned her often enough that men need careful cherishing, like delicate plants. It even said all that in
Man-Date
, Emily’s new guide to getting and keeping the man of any woman’s dreams.
    â€˜No,’ she eventually replied to Chloe, who had lost interest and was using both her inky hands