To My Best Friends. Sam Baker

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СКАЧАТЬ Boom boom!

      Lizzie rolled her eyes and stuck her elbow in Jo’s ribs. Not funny, she mouthed.

       ‘What course do you do?’ David was saying, but it wasn’t a general question.

       ‘Eng lit. No idea why.’ Only Nicci answered.

       ‘What’s wrong with English?’ he asked.

       ‘Nothing. I’m just more interested in fashion.’

       ‘C’mon,’ Jo said, grabbing Lizzie’s elbow, ‘let’s go and steal someone else’s bottle.’

       ‘But I just got—’ Lizzie protested. She knew it was futile.

       ‘Lizzie,’ Jo hissed as Mona took Lizzie’s other elbow. ‘We. Are. Not. Wanted. Here.’

       And imperceptibly, Lizzie drooped.

       One of them met a bloke, then the bloke met Nicci and that was it. It wasn’t that Nicci was a babe. Mona had the model body, Jo had better boobs and Lizzie had the wild Pre-Raphaelite curls. But whatever it was Nicci did have, men wanted it. The path to their student house was littered with the broken egos of Brighton’s straight male population. And some of the gay ones too.

      Chapter Nine

      Seven fifty-five p.m. Mona glanced at her mobile, double-checked the clock on her DVD and sighed. Whichever clock she looked at it was still seven fifty-five.

      She wasn’t sure which made her more tense: the fact Neil said he’d phone between seven and eight, and it was now precariously close to being clear that call was not going to come at all (oh, there’d be a good reason, there always was); or that in five minutes Jo would be knocking on David’s front door and doing what they’d all reluctantly agreed had to be done. Asking him the big questions. Had he had a letter too? If so, what did his say? Had he been in on this crazy plan all along? And if not, what was he going to do about it now he did know?

      ‘Daniel!’ Mona yelled. ‘Have you done your maths homework?’

      Silence. If you could call the drone of computer-generated gunfire and the grinding gears of video-game tanks, silence.

      ‘Daniel!’

      Silence, literal this time.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Homework? Have you done it?’

      ‘Yes, Mum. Ages ago.’

      ‘When, ages ago?’

      Dan, all five foot ten and counting, filled the doorway. The flat was too small for them now. Too small for him, certainly. Barely fourteen and already four inches taller than Mona. Every inch his father’s son. Physically, at least.

      ‘After tea and before now. Maths and physics. Do you want to see it?’

      It was a dare, not a question. He knew she wouldn’t; especially not physics. English or history she might have taken him up on. Funny how his homework was never English or history.

      She shook her head and watched his back – spookily familiar and scarily alien – return to his boxroom.

      Once Coronation Street was finished, Lizzie dabbled with a documentary about obese babies on Channel 4 and now she was trying to care about University Challenge.

      When Jo first volunteered to talk to David, Lizzie had to admit she’d been relieved. But now . . . she felt . . . what did she feel? Guilty, she supposed, for copping out. But also a bit excluded. This affected her too. All right, so Nicci had left her a patch of land (albeit right outside David’s kitchen window). But still, it wasn’t the same. The others had been left people.

      ‘Picasso,’ Lizzie guessed. Just as the boy onscreen said, ‘Van Gogh.’

      ‘No, it’s Picasso.’

      Lizzie high-fived the air. Still got it.

      No matter how many times Lizzie looked at her mobile, balanced on the arm of the sofa, it refused to ring. Jo should be there by now. She’d promised to call as soon as she could, but that might not be for ages.

      Idly, Lizzie flicked through the channels, ending back at University Challenge.

      Gerry had gone straight to squash from a late meeting; he wouldn’t be back until gone ten, maybe eleven. Perhaps if she texted Jo now she could go with her, be her wing woman. Lizzie could be at David’s in ten minutes if she left now. Snatching up her mobile, she found Jo’s number and clumsily typed, Want some moral support? She pressed Send, before she could think better of it.

      Eight ten p.m.

      David wouldn’t mind Jo being ten minutes late. Since Jo hadn’t warned him she was coming, he wouldn’t even know. She hadn’t told him because that way she could still chicken out. And he couldn’t pretend it wasn’t convenient.

      She’d come straight from Capsule Wardrobe’s offices, taking advantage of Parents’ Evening at Si’s school to get in some extra hours. She was knackered, and worried about last month’s profits. The new season had been in full swing for two months now, but business was still slow. Part of her wanted to put it down to the weather, but who was she kidding? They’d had a sub-zero spring before; it hadn’t affected sales then.

      Smoothing down her sweater dress and tucking the hems of her skinny jeans into her ankle boots, Jo tried to gauge her reflection in the door’s glass panel. Her hair had been thrown into a ponytail hours ago, her roots were long overdue and, apart from red lipstick reapplied in the rear-view mirror two minutes earlier, her makeup hadn’t been retouched since breakfast. She knew she didn’t look great.

      It was now or never, she decided. Do it, or go home and beat yourself up for the rest of the evening. As she raised her hand to ring David’s old-fashioned bell, Jo felt her mobile vibrate in her pocket. Damn. She was tempted to ignore it, but just in case it was Si she turned away from the front door and checked her screen.

       Want some moral support?

      Jo sighed. She didn’t know which was worse, Mona not attempting to disguise her relief when Jo volunteered, or Lizzie’s indecision. Come or don’t come, she had wanted to say, but make your bloody mind up. The fact was, Lizzie didn’t want to be there. She just didn’t want to not be there either.

      It had to be a charity, the local MP canvassing or a neighbour looking for a lost cat/apologising for noisy teenagers/ wanting to borrow a parking permit. Nobody else knocked unannounced at quarter-past eight on a Monday night around here. If he ignored them, David decided, they’d probably go away. He couldn’t be bothered with being neigh-bourly tonight. It had been one of those days. Another one of those days. He just wanted to sit in the dark and wait for it to end.

      The doorbell rang again. Its ancient chords hitting precisely the right note to pierce his low-level headache. Another ring like that and the girls would be awake.

      ‘Fuck off,’ David groaned СКАЧАТЬ