Fatlands Read Online Free PDF

vision of Debringham College for Girls as a Cynthia Payne training school with Mrs Parkin as the madam. I even made a joke about it.
    She gave me the cockroach look, but not without a certain affection. ‘You don’t think this stuff’s for me, do you?’she said disparagingly, looking through an unexpected but clearly deliberate hole in a designer piece of satin. ‘It’s a present. For Helen …’
    Of course. Helen and her gardener. ‘Don’t tell me. He’s into topiary.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Nothing. It’s just in my day the whole appeal of schoolgirls was their grey serge knickers.’
    She gave a grin, but you could see that for her it was really a serious business. A costly one, too. The smaller the garment the bigger the price tag. My mind kept slipping back to D. H. Lawrence, too busy with the life force to check out the lingerie prices. Did men really care that much what it was, so long as it came off? Maybe that was my problem: not enough spent on underwear. The last time I had been lingerie shopping it had been a clever device to check I wasn’t being followed. Frank’s idea, I should add, not mine. I hadn’t bought anything that time, either.
    Mattie, however, was making out like a bandit. She finally settled for six little numbers. And then, rather charmingly, bottled out at the last minute when it came to paying for them. So I got landed with it, along with a bundle of notes to cover the damage. The woman at the till lifted up each garment to fold it properly. Her face was impassive. On balance it must have been easier than selling condoms. ‘Will it be Fetherlite, or Rough Rider,Madam?’I stuffed the Harrods carrier into my shopping bag and headed back to Mattie. She stood waiting with an expression caught midway between mischief and pleasure. I was surprised how happy it made me feel to see her so relaxed. ‘Well, let’s hope they do the trick,’I said, smiling. She hooked her arm over mine and propelled me towards the exit.
    The afternoon was easier. The erotic purchases behind her, she seemed happy to be her age again. It was she who picked the Science and the Natural History museums and there proceeded to dazzle me with her knowledge. Of course, being on first-name terms with the dinosaurs is a prerequisite of childhood, but Mattie was something else again. It was biology mostly, but with enough hard science to have me outmanoeuvred within the first half-hour. Either Debringham College was doing a better job than she was willing to let on or she was a very bright cookie indeed. I wondered if it was her natural bent, or if she had tailored her intelligence to what would impress her father. I just couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t be interested in finding out.
    On the security front I decided to keep an open mind and, more important, open eyes. But no one showed any undue interest in either of us. In the end I think I probably got careless. Although I don’t believe that would have made any difference to what happened later. But then that’s for you to judge.
    We headed off at around 5.00. Her father’s place (she insisted on calling it that, rather than home) was in Sutherland Avenue, in one of those gracious, generous houses overlooking communal gardens at the back. In my student days someone I’d known had had a bedsit in one of them. It was the time of the Notting Hill rapist. All I remember were the bars on her windows and the fear ofleaving too late at night. Now it looked different, plush and with less sense of threat. But then now it’s my job not to be so scared of everything.
    When we arrived she didn’t want to get out of the car. I sat for a while trying not to notice, but her aggression made the silence too noisy to stand for long. I put my hand lightly on her sleeve. ‘Come on,’I said gently.
    She shrugged me off and opened the door. I let her lead the way. At the top