Every Good Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

to sort her way through the contents of the hotplate for a decent fish. ‘No. I’m a perfect child. I’d say a model child, but that’s my beautiful little sister’s role.’ Emily picked up a tray and then laughed, ‘Lucy doesn’t get out of bed for less than two Snickers bars a day.’
    â€˜There are girls in our year,’ Chloe murmured, looking surreptitiously around, ‘who will get
into
bed for less than that.’
    â€˜I would too,’ Emily said, absentmindedly scooping chips on to her plate. ‘I met a man.’
    â€˜Man? Not boy? And what about the faithful Nick? You’ll break his scummy heart. If he’s got one,’ Chloe said as they made their way to a table strewn with abandoned salty crisp packets, spilt yoghurt and cold, dead chips. Across the dining room, Nick, the school’s most desired male, was sprawled across a table with friends, talking about football and pretending not to care that Emily wasn’t about to come over and sit with him. Around the room, girls flicked their long clean hair alluringly, hoping he’d notice
them
.
    â€˜Nick’s irrelevant, don’t mention him. He’s just a
boy
, just someone I learned to do sex with. But last weekend,’ Emily confided, ‘when Luce and I went to see Dad . . .’
    She hesitated, both scared to tell and at the same time keeping Chloe hanging onto her words. ‘
Well?
’ Chloe reached across and shook her plate.
    â€˜Sorry. It’s just in here, with all these
children
and the squally schoolkid racket.’ Emily sighed, chewed a chip and continued, ‘OK. Well, this Catherine woman he lives with now, her brother was there to see her. And he’s younger than her. Only about twenty-three or so.’
    â€˜But you’re seventeen,’ Chloe pointed out, looking disappointed. ‘It’s not much of an age difference. Where’s the big deal? I mean, come back and tell me when you’ve pulled a bald sixty-year-old with grandchildren and a pension and prostate trouble.’
    Emily shrugged and flicked her hair back. Her hair was long and thick and red-blond. He’d said it was the colour of sunset, but he’d said it as if he was laughing at her, like a joke so she wouldn’t think he was sadly drippy. He’d also said it in front of her father and Catherine, picking up a hank of hair like it was a sleeve of something in a shop to be felt before it was tried on. His fingernail had trailed across the back of her neck, very slowly. The other two hadn’t seen that.
    Nick didn’t trail his fingers anywhere. His hands made a mad straight-there dash up her skirt, no loitering, no hanging about and tantalizing. It had seemed all right at the time, exciting enough when she was in the same amount of hurry and didn’t really know any better. She looked at the girls who were gazing at him so adoringly: suppose she went up to one of these romantic little innocents and told her that his dick tasted of old sock?
    â€˜Seventeen but a pathetic schoolgirl,’ she said and then looked down in disgust at her moss green pleated skirt. ‘And this place must be the only school left inthe world where the sixth form still have a uniform. It’s like living in a piece of fiction from grandmother days. Even the boys here are pathetic, sad things.’
    Chloe nodded sympathetically and munched a handful of chips, waiting for Emily to go on: having kept it bottled up all week there was going to be no stopping her now. Emily pulled a bone from her fish and waved it at Chloe. ‘Look, it must have been a real fish, unless they slide a few bones into this stuff just to make us think they are. Anyway, about Simon, I mean I’m only just thinking about my gap year,
if
I pass my As, and he’s had his
and
university. Six years when you’re both working is nothing, but
these particular
six years, loads happens. Plus, and