Ninepins Read Online Free PDF Page B

‘Can I have some straighteners for my birthday, d’you think? I mean, I know you’re getting me the new bike, but just as an extra thing. They’re not expensive. Fifteen pounds, Rianna said.’
    â€˜Well …’
    â€˜Or I could ask Dad.’
    â€˜We’ll see. What if you used the hair dryer, for now, and combed it straight as you dried it?’
    â€˜It wouldn’t stay straight, it never does. Maybe if I had some mousse – or serum. You can get this straightening serum.’
    Laura sat down next to her daughter on the bed and tried not to breathe in too obviously. Even the familiar tang of tea tree and mint shampoo was overlaid with other smells she didn’t recognise: smells from the expanding collection of bottles and jars on which Beth now spent her pocket money. The cleansers and toners and moisturisers – so wholly unneeded by her clear, young skin – were like a veil of teenage mystery to Laura, who used nothing but old-fashioned soap.
    â€˜Maybe we could buy you some, then.’
    â€˜Thanks, Mum. You’re a legend. It comes in this little red tube and you get it in Boots. Can you get some for me tomorrow? Please .’
    â€˜We’ll see,’ said Laura again, but she was already replanning her lunch break. She knew it was pitiable, but when Beth called her a legend, she was powerless to resist.
    â€˜Could you hang my dressing gown up, please?’ Beth peeled it off as she climbed under the duvet.
    Rising to oblige, Laura bent over her daughter and kissed her good night. ‘Light on or light off?’
    â€˜On. I’m going to read a bit.’
    â€˜Not for too long, then. It’s school in the morning – light out by half past nine.’
    There was no chance she’d be allowed to get away first time. It was another game, a power play of Beth’s, evolved when she was a toddler afraid of the dark. Then, it had been just one more story, Mummy, one more cuddle. Now her daughter traded in the new currency: the sharing of small confidences. When Laura was at the bedroom door, hanging up her dressing gown and preparing to go downstairs, or back to her desk, that was the time Beth chose to talk.
    â€˜Break times are weird.’
    Laura turned, and took two steps back towards the bed. ‘Why weird?’
    â€˜Break times and lunchtimes. Nobody wants to play.’
    Her stomach plunged; she sat down heavily on the edge of the duvet. ‘No one will play with you, sweetheart?’
    But her concern was brushed away impatiently. ‘I don’t mean that. It’s not me especially, it’s everyone. Nobody plays.’
    â€˜Oh?’ By her daughter’s expression, she was clearly being very dense.
    â€˜They don’t play . They don’t do anything, even the other Year 7s. They just stand about and talk.’
    â€˜Oh dear.’ Now that she understood – or thought she did – Laura’s relief turned to half-amused sympathy, and she leaned across to gather Beth into a hug. At primary school they’d played It and Forty-Forty or dangled from the climbing frame to gossip, even the Year 6s; how much easier than the closed circle of conversation, faced without props. Laura remembered it herself from school; girls were so political, and Beth wasn’t good at that. Asthmatic or not, she’d rather run about. ‘Nobody plays any games at all?’
    â€˜Well, the boys do. They’re OK – they play football and stuff.’
    â€˜And you couldn’t join in with them, sometimes? Don’t girls ever play football?’
    â€˜Huh,’ said Beth, against her chest. Not, it seemed, the girls who mattered.
    â€˜Well, then …’ She cast about for ideas. In Year 6 they’d still skipped, or at least turned the rope for the little ones, but she knew enough not to suggest taking a skipping rope to the college. ‘What about netball? There must be netball hoops,