Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page A

boyfriends. I haven’t ever had any.
    Ben and I have never really hit it off. He used to push me off my toddler trike when we were little and he once tore the head off my Barbie doll, deliberately. I hadn’t seen him for a year or two and wondered if he might have improved. Mum said he was fatter than ever and utterly refusing to go on his mum’s diet. I decided we might have something in common after all.
    Ben certainly was wonderfully enormous, stuffed into a big denim shirt and combat trousers. They were supposed to look baggy but they were very close fitting on Ben. I did my best to be a Good Hostess. I offered him a drink and several snacks and tried to make small talk. The talk got smaller and smaller, threatening to dwindle into silence. I asked him what subjects he liked most at school. And then wanted to know his favourite television programmes. And what type of mobile phone he had.
    â€˜Look, is this some dumb questionnaire?’ he said.
    â€˜No, I was just trying to make conversation,’ I said, mortified.
    â€˜You don’t have to hang around me, India.’
    â€˜I don’t mind,’ I mumbled.
    â€˜Yes, but I do,’ he said – and he went off and started chatting to Phoebe.
    Phoebe is my mum’s favourite model. She is a year younger than me but she acts like she’s ages older. She has a mass of wonderful soft black curls, big, big, big eyes with long lashes, and she’s
tiny
. She is so beautiful it makes me ache to look at her. Even Mum softens when she speaks to Phoebe. Her voice goes all gooey and sickeningly sweet.
    Thank goodness Dad doesn’t go a bundle on Phoebe.
    â€˜She looks like Bambi with a wig on,’ he whispered to me the first time we met her. I got the giggles so badly I snorted and stuff came out my nose.
    I looked for Dad at the party but he didn’t seem to want me hanging round him either. He had a bottle of whisky in one hand and Wanda’s au pair friend, Suzi, in the other. Wanda herself had e-mailed her family in Australia and then retreated to her room, crying. I suppose she was homesick. I wasn’t allowed to go to
my
room. I had to stand there with a stupid smile on my face, passing round the party snacks.
    I told people again and again and again that my name is India and yes I
am
Moya’s daughter and I
am
getting a big girl now. It got so bad I wanted to scream and throw the canapés at them. I snacked a lot myself. Caviar looks like baby blackberries so I expected it to taste sweet. I took a big bite and wrinkled my face in disgust. Mum said it’s an acquired taste. I don’t think I’ll ever acquire a taste for rotting fish. Mum got a black bead of caviar stuck between her front teeth. I didn’t tell her.
    At twelve o’clock everyone went mad and started kissing. Ben kissed Phoebe. He didn’t kiss me. Dad kissed me and some of Mum’s friends kissed me and one silly man picked me up and whirled me round and round and then got very red in the face and had to sit down. Mum frowned at me as if it was
my
fault. Mum did her fair share of kissing too. The black bit of caviar had gone. Some sad person had it stuck to their tongue, yuck yuck.
    I looked closely at all the smiling men, trying to spot which one.
    â€˜Don’t
peer
like that, India,’ Mum hissed. Then there was a loud swoop and bang and Mum clapped her hands like a little girl.
    â€˜Firework time!’ she cried. ‘Goodie goodie!’
    She ushered everyone into the garden to watch. She’d hired a firework man to do a special display. We had to stand behind the little picket fence for safety, so we were uncomfortably huddled together. I saw Dad making the most of this with Suzi. I wished she hadn’t come to the party. I wanted Dad to myself. Mum was bobbing about in the distance. I edged further and further away from her. I knew it would annoy her if she saw me standing all by myself.
    I peered up at all the