V for Violet Read Online Free PDF Page A

mess anything up. He didn’t want us in there. The feeling was terrible. It started in the pit of my stomach and spread all through my body, until my fingers and toes were tingling.
    Suddenly, Jackie pulled open the wardrobe door. ‘Boo!’ she yelled. ‘He’s in here, Violet! He’s in here!’
    I screamed loudly. And the shirts and trousers swayed on their hangers. I thumped Jackie on the arm. ‘Idiot! You nearly gave me a heart attack!’
    ‘Your face!’ Jackie spluttered. ‘So funny. So funny!’
    I never went into Joseph’s bedroom again. But sometimes in the quiet of the night, the thought of that graveyard in the middle of the house knocks on my brain like an unwanted visitor.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s
    ‘You’d best be back by four, or I’ll have yer guts for garters!’ Dad shouts across the shop as I jangle the door open and step outside. It’s Saturday morning and it’s freezing. Crisped-up leaves are hurtling along the pavements and the wind is swirling up the dust from the old bombsite opposite. I hold my coat tight around my throat as I hurry up the High Street towards Ruby’s Café. I keep my head down and watch my feet scuffing the pavement. Jackie won’t be on her own. They’ll all be with her; her new friends. The Sugar Girls. I don’t want to meet them, I feel sick at the thought. But it would be worse not to see Jackie at all. I’m like a pet dog, I think; hanging around patiently, waiting to be thrown any old leftover scraps.
    It’s been three months now since we left school. It wasn’t too bad to begin with. I’d still run round to Jackie’s most nights, after my shift in the shop had finished. We’d sit round the kitchen table drinking tea, while Brenda clattered about in the sink, and Jackie would tell me all about her day.‘It’s the early mornings that are killing me, Vi,’ she’d say, yawning loudly. ‘And only two toilet breaks all day! Can you imagine?’
    I nodded solemnly. I felt sorry for her. But inside, I was glad she wasn’t having a good time without me. She looked different already. She’d changed her hair without telling me. It was backcombed and stiff on the top of her head.
    ‘What’ve you done to your hair?’ I asked.
    She smiled, all pleased with herself. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’ she said, patting it carefully. ‘You should try doing something different with yours, Vi.’
    ‘Makes you look older,’ I mumbled.
    ‘Yeah?’ she said, smiling again as though looking older was a good thing.
    Soon, she started talking about other girls at the factory. Sharon said this and Pauline said that. ‘Sharon reckons you can get pregnant if you let a fella touch your boobs. And Mary! Oh, Vi, you’d like Mary. She’s a right laugh. She says she’s done
it
already. But standing up against a wall, cos it’s safer that way.’
    I didn’t think I’d like Mary at all. She sounded like what Mum called a fast piece. A girl who’d come to no good at all. I didn’t like the sound of any of them, and every time Jackie mentioned a new name it was like she was stabbing me in the heart.
    ‘I wish your dad would let you leave the chippie and come to Garton’s,’ Jackie would say. ‘You’d love being a Sugar Girl, Vi. I know you would. I miss you.’
    That was the first time she lied to me. The curtains came down in her eyes. I saw them, as clear as anything. She didn’t really miss me. She just thought she should say she did.
    Now, Jackie lines her eyes with black kohl. She looks like she’s been in a fight and lost. She wears hip-huggers and skinny rib jumpers (while I still dress like Mum.) She’s been going out to dances too, and this morning she went to the Granada without me.
    As I weave my way around the Saturday morning shoppers on the High Street and dodge the prams and a gang of boys carrying a broken go-cart, I picture Jackie and her new friends piling out of the Granada. I bet they all linked arms and giggled and oohed and aahhed over beautiful Audrey