Little People Read Online Free PDF Page B

me cramp in my spine, and I knew that if I didn’t find someone I could explain my theory to and who’d tell me, That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard, go and sleep it off somewhere , I was either going to burst or have no choice but to face up to that conclusion and have the whole world change shape all around me.
    A day or so before the end of term, I’d asked her: Cru, would it be all right if I phoned you a few times during the holidays? And she’d looked at me and said, Well , for just long enough to make the rest of the reply unnecessary. This, however, was an emergency. I slipped away from the mob scenes in the drawing room, crept upstairs to Daddy George’s study, where there was a telephone and a good thick door, and tapped in her number.
    Needless to say, I’d never spoken to her parents or heard their voices before. From her descriptions of them, I was expecting either incoherent drunken giggling or something that’d have been perfectly at home announcing that it could smell the blood of an Englishman. When her dad answered and turned out to sound – well, normal – my immediate assumption was that I’d got the wrong number.
    â€˜Yes, of course,’ the voice answered pleasantly when I chirped my is-Cru-there-please routine. ‘Who’s calling?’
    â€˜Um,’ I said. No fooling, I had actually forgotten. Fear’ll do that to you. ‘Um, it’s Mike.’
    â€˜Just a tick,’ replied the very nice man at the other end of the line; and a very long thirty seconds later, Cru’s voice jabbed into my ear. ‘Mike? Is that you?’
    She sounded annoyed. ‘Yes, it’s me. Look, I’m really sorry to dist—’
    â€˜So you bloody well should be, you pig. I’ve been waiting by the phone for days and you couldn’t be bothered to spare me five minutes.’
    Really sorry to disturb you like this, when you made it clear you’d rather I didn’t call , was what I’d been about to say. Just as well this wonderful language of ours is so delightfully flexible.
    â€˜I’m really sorry,’ I repeated.
    â€˜It’s fine you saying that,’ she snarled at me. ‘Only goes to show, though. Just one lousy call would’ve done, just so I’d have known you were still alive and not dead in some ditch somewhere.’
    I managed to choke back the ironic laugh before it escaped from my throat. Sure was funny, though: me being dead in a ditch would’ve been a slice of luck and a piece of cake compared with what I seemed to be up against. ‘Well, anyway,’ I said, ‘I just wanted to, um, wish you Happy Christmas, and all that stuff. If it’s OK, I mean.’
    â€˜Yes, all right,’ she said, as if grudgingly conceding a point in a particularly fraught session of peace talks. ‘Happy Christmas to you too, with brass knobs on. Well, is that it?’
    At that point I realised that I wasn’t going to be able to tell her about the dead elf and our beautiful garden after all. ‘Pretty much,’ I replied.
    â€˜Oh. Oh well, then, I won’t take up any more of your valuable time.’
    â€˜That’s OK, really,’ I said quickly as I could get the words out. ‘I mean, I wasn’t doing anything else at all.’
    â€˜That’s such a weight off my mind,’ Cru growled ominously. ‘It’d really wreck my day, probably the rest of my life too, if I thought that maybe you’d had to sacrifice ninety seconds of your day just to phone silly old me. I could have got ulcers worrying about it, you know?’
    There’s an old Australian proverb: the left foot of a man with a hangover makes an infallible mine detector, even if only once. In the same vein, I guess I could write an etiquette book listing all the things you must never ever say on the phone to the girl you love. All I’d have to do is tape my own phone calls and