Lacybourne Manor Read Online Free PDF Page B

silence.
    “Hey Miss Sibyl,” one of the
girls called.
    “Hi Flower,” Sibyl called back,
her voice sounding strained.
    “ How’m I going to handle
this?” Jemma muttered, sotto
voce. “This is a family show.”
    Sibyl felt for her friend and
tried not to grin in amusement at her predicament. Jemma ran a
small youth project out of a side office of the Community Hall.
Sibyl volunteered for the project and co-ordinated its efforts in
the Community Centre. The girls were going to have to be told that
they should do something more age appropriate and considering the
fact that age ten was the new eighteen that was not going to be an
easy task.
    In an effort to help her
friend, Sibyl called, “Girls, can you come down here for a
word?”
    The girls clattered eagerly off
the stage. They did this because Jemma Rashid and Sibyl Godwin were
the shining lights of these young girls’ often unhappy, promiseless
lives.
    Jemma, petite, dark-haired and
chocolate-eyed, was a local girl who was devoted to her community
and even more devoted to her family. This kind of devotion was not
experienced by many of the children on the Council Estate where
they lived and where the Community Centre was located. Many had
well-meaning but hard-working parents. Others had thoughtless or
even abusive, lazy, wastrel parents. Devotion to family and
community was a rare concept and one to be savoured whenever it
became available.
    Sibyl, on the other hand, was
American, a fact in and of itself that made the girls think she was
the coolest of the cool. However they loved her accent – they loved
her style, her spirit and her incredible beauty more. She was nice
to them, always, and she had the best smile – a smile that could
warm you from the very top of your head straight down to the tips
of your toes.
    The girls arrived to stand
before their two idols and they shifted on their feet, twisting
their ankles awkwardly, waiting for the opinion that meant
everything in their small worlds.
    Jemma looked at Sibyl and Sibyl
returned her friend’s look. Both were at a loss.
    Then Sibyl had an idea, it was
a lame idea but it was, at least, an idea.
    “ I love that song!” she
exclaimed. “Who chose that song?”
    “It was me!” Flower cried.
    Even raised by a hippy,
Sibyl felt for the girl who had such a terrible name, a name she
knew (because she heard) other children used to make fun of her.
Flower’s mother was even flakier than Sibyl and had four children
by four different fathers and another one on the way. Flower’s
mother was always out partying and never home. The care of the
entire family rested on Flower’s ten year old shoulders, evidenced
by the fact that her three brothers were, at that very moment,
fighting in the back corner of the hall.
    “Good call, Flower,” Sibyl
enthused, lying through her teeth.
    Jemma turned to her friend, her
eyes round and her brows raised.
    “ Though, I hear it all
the time on the radio. All the time,” Sibyl
continued.
    “ I know, it’s very popular,” Katie, another of the girls announced, thinking
this was a selling point.
    Sibyl particularly liked Katie,
a bright girl with a head on her shoulders. She had both parents at
home, her mother owned a small cleaning business and her father was
currently redundant, trying to find a job and was a recovering
gambler. Sibyl knew this because Katie’s father ran the local
Gambler’s Anonymous meetings on Tuesday nights in the Day Centre
(but, of course, Sibyl would never tell a soul this
information).
    Sibyl went on, but gently, “By
the time of the Talent Show, do you think people might have heard
it a bit too much? Even you girls might be tired of it by
then.”
    The girls looked at each
other, not at all convinced since it was their most favourite song
of all time. How could they ever be tired of it? Not in
a million years.
    “I know!” Jemma exclaimed as if
a thought just occurred to her. “Why don’t you let Sibyl find a
song for you? Something