The Ice Cream Girls Read Online Free PDF

and marginally offended. ‘Why not?’
    ‘Just not that interested in going out with anyone.’
    ‘Bad break-up?’
    ‘Probably the worst break-up of all time,’ I said.
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘And I’m sort of staying away from all that for a while. A long, long while.’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘And, just so you know for the next girl you ask out, saying that you’re not sure if you fancy her and then saying you think your parents would like her probably won’t pass for sweet talk. Some women might like it, but most of them would be offended.’
    ‘Yeah, you’re probably right. But you’re sure I can’t change your mind? Not even for the sake of my poor parents who think I’m never going to make them grandparents?’
    I laughed as I shook my head. ‘Especially not for them.’
    ‘OK, well, if you change your mind, you can always . . .’
    ‘Knock on the door of every medical school in London and ask for Evan?’
    He laughed, a smooth, throaty laugh that sent the whooooohooooo feeling up and down my spine again. ‘I’ll see you, Serena,’ he said, a smile still on his face.
    ‘I’ll see ya.’
    ‘And every time I think about missed opportunities, I’ll think of you.’
    ‘OK,’ I replied and, this time, I had no problems walking away.
    ‘Why are you getting married again, Mum?’ Verity asks as we head back home in the car. She is sitting up front and could easily pass for being my younger sister she is that grown-up looking. Often, I try to remember what it was like to be thirteen, to try to tap into what she might be feeling and thinking, but my memory – fuzzy and haphazard at the best of times – lets me down, it blurs itself into a haze of waving my older sisters – Medina and Faye – off to uni, watching The A-Team and doing a paper round. I cannot remember how I felt about anything, how I felt about my parents, what big secrets I was determined to hide. I remember what it was like to be an older teenager, though, and sometimes I have to stop myself from tarring Verity with the brush of those experiences.
    But then, aren’t most teenagers more grown-up more quickly these days? Shouldn’t I be extra vigilant now because she might fast forward to being me a little bit earlier? This is the battle I have with myself, trying to balance protecting her as a mother should, and protecting her as this mother knows from experience she should.
    I take time to consider her question as I pull out of the roundabout on to the A26, the road back from Uckfield to Brighton. Why are we getting married again? ‘Because we can, I suppose.’
    ‘Don’t most people just renew their vows and have a party? Why are you almost pretending that you’re not even married?’
    ‘Because we’re not,’ I say jokingly.
    I feel Verity’s eyes widen, I hear her heart almost leap out of her chest as she gasps. ‘You’re lying!’ she screeches, almost bursting an eardrum. Somewhere nearby dogs are whining. ‘Tell me you’re lying!’
    ‘I’m not lying, I’m joking,’ I say to end Vee’s sonic mode before it brings on a migraine. ‘I’m joking, I’m joking.’ I want to ask her what would be the big deal if we weren’t actually married, but that’s a conversation I should not get started with a teenager. Especially not a teenager.
    ‘I suppose we’re getting married big this time because we couldn’t do it on this scale before,’ I say. ‘We couldn’t afford to. We were so young, but we really wanted to get married, so we did it. I suppose it was an unspoken thing that that one was the first wedding and at some point in the future we’d do the big one.’ I’d love to tell her the whole truth, but how can I tell her that we only got married when we did because I was up the duff, and I was up the duff because we’d had a contraceptive malfunction? How can I tell her that and not expect in, say, two years’ time for her to come to me asking for my blessing to move in with her older, tattooed, long-haired