The Radleys Read Online Free PDF

nothing. Lorelei and someone else giggle.
    Clara waits for them to leave and then flushes away the vomit. Outside in the corridor, Rowan is leaning against the ceramic wal tiles. She is pleased to see his face, the only one she could real y deal with right now.
    “I saw you running down the corridor. Are you okay?”
    Toby Felt walks by at this precise moment, prodding the tennis racquet into Rowan’s back as he does so. “I know you’re struggling for some action, slo-mo, but she’s your sister . That’s just wrong .”
    Rowan has nothing to say, or nothing he is courageous enough to say out loud.
    “He’s such an idiot,” says Clara, weakly. “I don’t know what Eve sees in him.”
    Clara sees this upsets her brother and wishes she hadn’t said anything.
    “I thought you said she didn’t like him,” he says.
    “Wel , I thought she didn’t. I thought as a person in possession of a ful y functional brain she wouldn’t like him, but, wel , she might, I think.”
    Rowan struggles to feign indifference. “Oh, I’m not bothered real y. She can like who she wants.
    That’s what democracy is al about.”
    The bel goes.
    “Just try to forget about her,” advises Clara as they walk toward their next lesson. “If you want me to stop being friends with her, then I wil .”
    Rowan sighs. “Don’t be stupid. I’m not seven. Look, I only mildly fancied her, that’s al . It was nothing.”
    Then Eve creeps up behind them. “What was nothing?”
    “Nothing,” says Clara, knowing her brother wil be too nervous to speak.
    “Nothing was nothing. That’s a very nihilistic thought.”
    Clara shrugs. “Inherited habit.”

    I nevitably, if you have abstained all your life, you don’t truly know what you are missing. But the thirst is still there, deep down, underlying everything.

    The Abstainer’s Handbook (second edition), p. 120

    A Thai Green Leaf Salad with Marinated Chicken
    and a Chili and Lime Dressing

    “Nice jewelry,” Peter finds himself having to say to Lorna, after staring for too long at her neck.
    Fortunately, Lorna smiles appreciatively and touches the simple white beads. “Oh, Mark bought this for me years ago. At a market in St. Lucia. On our honeymoon.”
    This seems to be news to Mark, who only now seems to notice she is wearing a necklace of any description. “Did I? Can’t remember that.”
    Lorna seems hurt. “Yes,” she says, mournful y. “You did.”
    Peter tries to focus elsewhere. He watches his wife take off the plastic wrap from Lorna’s appetizer, then looks at Mark sipping his sauvignon blanc with such showy indifference you’d think he grew up on a vineyard.
    “So, has Toby gone off to this party then?” asks Helen. “Clara’s gone, even though she’s feeling a bit sick.”
    Peter remembers Clara coming up to him an hour ago, while he was checking emails. She’d asked him if it was okay if she went out, and he’d said yes abstractedly, without real y connecting to what she was saying, and then Helen had glanced scornful y at him when he went downstairs but had said nothing as she prepared the pork casserole. Maybe she was having her dig now.
    And maybe she was right. Maybe he shouldn’t have said yes, but he is not Helen. He can’t always be on the bal .
    “No idea,” says Mark. And then to Lorna: “Has he?”
    Lorna nods, seems awkward talking about her stepson. “Yes, I think so, not that he ever tel s us where he’s going.” She swings the attention back to her salad, which Helen has just served. “Here it is. A Thai green leaf salad with marinated chicken and a chili and lime dressing.”
    Peter hears this but no alarm bel s. And Helen has already taken a mouthful, so he thinks it should be al right.
    He pokes his fork through some of the chicken and dressed watercress and puts it in his mouth.
    Within less than a second he is choking.
    “Oh God,” he says.
    Helen knows it too but hasn’t been able to warn him. She has managed, somehow, to swal ow