Best of Friends. Cathy Kelly
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Название: Best of Friends
Автор: Cathy Kelly
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
isbn: 9780007389315
isbn:
Fortunately, driving down Briar Lane never ceased to lift Abby’s spirits. As she bounced the Jeep over the speed ramps, she felt that faint thrill of pride that her hard work had brought them all here.
The previous house had been lovely, thanks to her skill at interior decoration. But Gartland Avenue had been a very ordinary road in a housing estate and with the unruly Milligans next door, screaming at each other at sixty decibels day and night, it hadn’t been exactly anyone’s dream location.
Briar Lane was a different matter. A winding road lined with stately sycamores and overgrown laurel bushes, it was a house-fancier’s heaven – full of all sorts of different properties, from new Regency-inspired homes to low, sprawling old farmhouses, with some quirky cottages in between.
Abby had fallen in love with Lyonnais the first time she’d seen it. It had started life as the gate house to a big, now long-gone mansion and, after years of careful alteration, was now a large white-gabled family home with mullioned windows and rambling roses clinging to the stonework.
Even Tom, who wasn’t at all given to sentimentality, had said there was a lovely atmosphere about the house as they’d wandered through it all those months ago with the estate agent at their heels.
Abby had squeezed Tom’s hand in excitement. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ she kept saying, despite his earlier warning that they weren’t to appear too enthusiastic about the house, no matter how much they liked it. This was the sort of house a television celebrity should own – not a twenty-year-old semi that looked like every other house on the road, but this, this gorgeously unusual pile, with its large airy rooms and its nooks and crannies and the intriguing pantry with the hidden cupboard, and the rambling garden with the armless statue of some Greek goddess hiding shyly behind a gown of ivy tendrils. Abby could already picture what she’d do to the place, where she’d put things and what colours she’d paint the walls.
‘It’s way over our budget,’ Tom had said firmly as they’d toured the attic bedroom, which, if the cobweb content was a reliable barometer, was home to an entire colony of spiders. It was certainly over any budget that his deputy headmaster’s salary could manage and he found it difficult to look at the subject in any other way. It made no difference how often Abby said that his salary had kept them all for years, so what did it matter if hers was bigger now? It did matter to Tom. ‘We can’t afford this,’ he’d reiterated later, his lips thinning into the disapproving line that made him look just like his crabby old father.
Abby hadn’t cared. For once, she’d ignored Tom’s disapproval and fought for what she wanted. They’d manage. She’d do more private commissions and there were sure to be other lucrative spin-offs from the TV show, like public appearances – even though Abby hated that type of thing. She was determined to do whatever it took to buy Lyonnais. They couldn’t lose this house. They’d be so happy there, she knew it. All Tom needed to do was get over his strop about who earned the most money.
She sighed now as she swung the Jeep into the drive, admiring, as she always did, the magnolia tree to one side of the gate, now gorgeously in bloom. She did love this place but things hadn’t been easy since they’d moved here. Her relationship with Tom had deteriorated, while she and Jess seemed to be living on different planets. Just when life should be perfect for the Bartons, it seemed curiously off balance.
Earlier that afternoon, Jess Barton had glanced quickly at the classroom clock. Ten to three. Another forty minutes of science. Boring. Being a teenager was crammed with boredom, Jess felt, what with train-track braces, horrible exams and people constantly bossing you around, but double science was surely the most boring thing of all. Noticing Miss Nevin’s gaze roaming over the class, Jess stared down dutifully at her science textbook, trying to appear as if her mind was firmly fixed on the knotty issue of what sort of chemical formula you came up with if you mixed sulphur, oxygen and hydrogen. Nobody acted dutiful interest better than Jess Barton. She was award-winning material, Oscar-nomination stuff.
‘It’s the angle of the head,’ she often explained to her best friend and partner in crime, Steph Anderson, who was always the first person to be hauled out of her seat and left in disgrace outside the classroom door for not paying attention. ‘And the pencil sucking. There’s something about pencil sucking – it just makes you look riveted. You’ve got to lean over the book and look like you care, Steph.’
In Jess’s opinion, all that any teacher required was a room full of students bent at forty-five-degree angles to their desks and sucking pencils thoughtfully. She knew this from her dad. He said that not everyone paid attention all the time but the kids he liked were the ones who actually behaved in class.
Jess behaved. She reasoned that your mind could be a million miles away, or even four miles away at St Michael’s School for Hot Guys down the road, but as long as you kept your head down, you gave the impression of being a good student. So far, this system had worked. Jess Barton had never been made to stand outside the door, a punishment that also merited ten black marks.
Naturally, chemical formulae were the things furthest from her mind. Ian Green was the focus of her concentration. Gorgeous Ian, with those piercing blue eyes and a hint of dark stubble on his perfect face. Steph said that stubble was so yesterday and the best guys were fuzz-free, but Jess had a secret yearning for the sensation of kissing a guy and feeling manly, grown-up stubble against her cheek, like in a passionate scene from a movie. Jess had enjoyed many happy hours daydreaming about herself and Ian, replaying such a scene. Ian was tall too. Tall enough to have to really lean down to kiss her, which was nice, because Jess was tall herself. There was only one problem. Well, two actually. The first was that he went to St Michael’s School for Hot Guys instead of Bradley College, where Jess went. The guys in Bradley were mostly beyond boring. And the second: he had a girlfriend, Saffron Walsh, who was nearly sixteen, in the same class as Jess, and who was Ms Most Likely to Succeed.
‘Most likely to succeed in becoming an airhead TV weather girl, more like,’ Steph snorted resentfully. Some people might have thought that Steph was a rival of Saffron’s, as they were both of the blonde hair, perfect figure variety. But Jess, who had been Steph’s absolute best friend since kindergarten, knew that Steph’s dislike came from the fact that Saffron was clearly not good enough for Ian. If Ian realised what a bimbo Saffron was, he might dump her and miraculously take up with Jess. Miraculous, thought Jess, being the operative word.
Jess was not blonde with a perfect figure. She was, she felt, more a ‘reliable girl picked for netball’ sort of person. Lanky like her dad, she had no curves, no need of a bra and she could never get jeans long enough for her skinny legs. Her eyes were nice – a thick-lashed, smoky bluey green like her mum’s – but they were hidden behind boring glasses because she’d inherited bad eyesight from her dad. Her hair was boringly straight and the dull colour of wet sand, while the rest of her face was ordinary with a big O: ordinary nose, ordinary mouth, ordinary, slightly pointy chin. It all added up to the sort of person nobody noticed. Having a celebrity mum didn’t help. People expected the daughter of the glamorous Abby Barton to be just as glamorous. ‘And then they meet me,’ Jess would say, grumpiness hiding the hurt.
Steph insisted that this wasn’t true, and was always going on about how she envied Jess for being tall and slim, and for having great cheekbones and beautiful eyes that lit up when she was passionate about something.
‘Now I have slitty eyes,’ Steph would say, piling on another layer of Mac shadow to counteract this perceived failing. ‘But yours are huge and СКАЧАТЬ