Secrets and Dreams. Jean Ure

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      It was the middle of September when I finally started at St With’s (as I soon learnt to call it). I was a whole week late! I couldn’t help thinking if there was anyone else that was new, they’d have made friends by now, which meant I’d be the odd one out. I told Nat that if she hadn’t gone and breathed on me I might never have caught her rotten chicken pox. It was just an observation. She didn’t have to get all uppity about it.

      “Wasn’t my fault,” she said. “I didn’t know it was the chicken pox!”

      I said, “Well, considering you were covered in spots.” Which she’d scratched. At least I hadn’t done that.

      “I meant at the beginning,” she said. “At the beginning I didn’t know. And anyway, you’re not the only one starting a new school. It’s just as bad for me.”

      “It was your chicken pox,” I said. “And it’s nowhere near as bad for you!” Nat was starting at secondary school. She’d still be with lots of her friends. “It’s loads worse if it’s boarding school.”

      “Well, you chose it,” said Nat.

      That was the point at which Mum came into the room. “Are you two at it again?” she said. “What’s going on? You never used to fight like this. It’s enough to make me wish we’d never won the wretched lottery!”

      I couldn’t believe Mum really meant that. She loved her new house with its big garden.

      “I do hope,” she said, “that you’re not regretting this, Zoe?”

      “I’m not!” I said.

      I was just having a sudden attack of what Gran calls the collywobbles. Not even that, really. Just the odd flutter, like butterflies in my tummy.

      Mum and Dad drove me down to St With’s on a Sunday afternoon. Nat had to come with us on account of Mum thinking she was too young to be left on her own. We squabbled again in the car. Nat had found a new joke: instead of going to St Cheeseburga, I was now going to St Beefburga. She cackled uproariously as she said it. Several times. In the end I told her to shut up. She said, “You’re not supposed to speak to me like that.” I said I could speak to her how I liked, it was a free country. So then she said, “This is what happens when people go to posh schools – they get all big-headed.”

      “Talking about big heads,” I said, “you’d just better be careful you don’t fall off your pony, when you get one, and knock all your brains out! Not,” I added, “that you have much in the way of brains to begin with. It’s mostly just sawdust.”

      She then yelled, “Beefburga!” in a mindless kind of way, but before I could think of a suitable retort Dad told us both to be quiet, he was sick of the sound of our voices, while Mum said that if this was what having a bit of money did to us she’d almost be tempted to give our share to charity. She said Nat didn’t deserve a pony and I didn’t deserve to go to boarding school. Just for a moment I felt like saying, All right, then, I won’t!

      The butterflies were flapping like crazy, all swooping and swarming. To be honest, if Dad had said, “Let’s just forget about it and go home,” I’d have been secretly relieved.

      Miss Latimer, the Head of Boarding, was there to meet us when we arrived, sweeping up the drive in Dad’s new car. The first new car we’d ever had!

      Miss Latimer said, “Zoe! I’m so glad you could make it at last.” She said it like she really meant it, like she’d almost been counting the days till I could come. I immediately felt a whole lot better. The butterflies had settled down and I couldn’t wait to get up to the dorm and start arranging my things.

      Dad wanted to carry my bags up there, but СКАЧАТЬ