Threads Read Online Free PDF Page A

is the ideal way of getting the publicity to finance the divorce and the ‘exquisite Cotswolds home’ he's setting up with wife-to-be number four. There's an awful lot about Sir Lionel and his various stage productions thirty years ago, but newspapers need family appeal, so he's padded it out with the few bits of Jenny's childhood he was around for, her mother's ‘tragic’ nervous breakdown (which coincidentally happened around the time he left her for wife three), and Jenny's embarrassment about her boobs, spots and weight. He rounds it off by wishing her well and promising he'll always stick by her, as ‘theatre is in the Merritt blood’.

    Edie finishes the article with a look of disbelief.
    ‘That man is evil!’
    ‘He's just . . . Dad, I guess,’ Jenny mumbles. She's at the hiccupping stage now. ‘He needed the money. The funny thing is, he invited me to that house in the Cotswolds last night. He said if I wanted to spend the summer there, I could. It sounded quite nice. Mum wants to murder him, of course.’
    I look back down at the paper.
    ‘Has anybody mentioned it?’ I ask. ‘Today, I mean. In there.’ I indicate the Dorchester, across the road.
    Jenny looks at me as though I've gone barmy.
    ‘Mentioned it? I was all ready with the lousy monkey story. I was geared up to talk about Joe Yule's incredible talent till I was blue in the face. And all they've asked me all morning, for the last four hours, is “What's it like growing boobs when you're in the public eye?” “What do you use for your spots?” “Have you got any messages for fat teenage girls?” “What's it like growing up with a famous father?” And I don't even know, ’cause he was never there.’
    I look at her, hunched up on the grass, makeup streaming. (She doesn't normally wear it, but they slap it on thick for those TV interviews.) She's in her usual jeans and some black cotton top they've given her, which billows over the boobs while suggesting that underneath its capacious covering they may be the size of hot-air balloons. A large, fierce spot has emerged on her cheek sincelast night and is sitting there defiantly, soaking up the midday sun.
    ‘Anyway,’ she says, desperate to change the subject, ‘what did you think of yesterday?’
    There's a long pause while I will Edie not to mention the traffic-light effect. Luckily, she's distracted before she can say anything. A bus is heading down Park Lane with a picture of Jenny's face on it, two metres high, beside Joe Yule's. She looks spotless. Literally. And supermodel thin. It's kind of surreal to see her this way. Especially as real, runny-makeup Jenny is sitting beside us. Edie bobs up and down and points. We look over.
    ‘They airbrushed me!’ Jenny says, affronted. ‘They even airbrushed my neck! I would've said that was the one bit of me that wasn't spotty or podgy, but they had to airbrush that.’
    Edie and I exchange despairing looks. Our cheering-up job isn't going as well as I'd hoped. I absent-mindedly play with the petals of my new skirt while I try to think of something positive to say.
    ‘That's unusual,’ Jenny says at last, looking at the skirt. ‘Did you make it?’
    Relieved at the chance not to talk about Kid Code or Sir Lionel Merritt for a moment, we tell her all about the bazaar. Edie explains about the Three Bitches. I butt in with Edie's super-amazing rescue mission and the library card. We both interrupt each other. Jenny's eyes swing between us as if she's watching a tennis match. By thetime we've finished, her eyes have dried and her streaky face is smiling.
    ‘If only you had been from Teen magazine.’
    We all look a bit helpless for a minute. We are so NOT from Teen magazine. If it exists, even.
    ‘Those girls have to be stopped, though. I'm going to complain to the people I volunteer with,’ Edie says crossly. ‘There must be something they can do.’
    ‘I think her main problem was the nylon,’ I add.
    Edie and Jenny both look at me