Where Everything Seems Double, Penny Freedman [best inspirational books txt] 📗

now. Sure enough Mum’s phone had the switched off message. She put her phone in her pocket and made her way out of the car park with her head down, eyes on the ground, in case anyone might think she was crying.

Not wanting to go back to the hotel, she started to walk along the road that ran along the lakeside, in the opposite direction from the town. It wasn’t very interesting walking along the road as there were bushes between the road and the actual lakeside so there was no view, but she could see ahead where there was a break in the bushes and she thought she might be able to get nearer the water. When she reached it, she could hear voices, and when she looked through there were Granny and David standing beside an area of the bank which was marked off with yellow police tape, just like you saw on TV. And David had his arm round Granny’s shoulders as though she needed comforting, which was ridiculous. What did she need comfort for? And when was someone going to think of putting an arm round a thirteen-year-old who nobody wanted to know?

Stepping through, she called, ‘Hi,’ quite loudly, intending to make them jump. They turned to look at her, and David called out, ‘Keep back. This is a potential crime scene,’ in a really unfriendly voice, as though she was a child or an idiot.

‘Oh, really?’ she said, with as much sarcasm as she could muster. ‘I would never have guessed. That must be what that funny yellow tape is for.’

He looked as though he might be going to say something more friendly but her grandmother came charging in. ‘Not with your new friends, Freda?’ she asked, and it couldn’t have been clearer that she didn’t want her hanging around.

‘We don’t have to spend all our time together,’ Freda said. ‘We’ve all got other things to do.’ She turned to go back onto the road but stopped and called back over her shoulder. ‘Do try not to fall in the water, won’t you?’ before stepping onto the road and walking back towards the hotel.

Back in her room, she picked up her sketchpad and pencils. She had told Eve that she was going to draw, and draw she would, but when she looked out at the lakeside it was already busy and she knew she couldn’t possibly sit sketching anywhere where people would come by and look. Even the garden would be busy by now. She could draw the view from the window but she had done that before, and it wasn’t really what interested her today. She decided that she would draw from memory instead. Scenes from yesterday: the four of them sitting on the bench outside the police station, Milo wearing Micky’s school clothes, the five of them eating their fish and chips. And if her drawings of Venetia turned out to be not that flattering, well, get over it.

The drawings actually worked out rather well. Cool, she allowed herself to think as she surveyed them. The people were recognisable, at least, though Venetia might not have wanted to recognise herself. She was pretty but nobody looked pretty when they were being mean, did they?

Eventually her grandmother came in (she didn’t knock on her door, of course) and said they were planning to have lunch in the garden. Her eyes went straight to Freda’s sketchbook but she quickly turned it over and put it into a random drawer which was not its real hiding place but would hold Granny up later, if she came snooping in her room.

Over lunch – a really nice prawn open sandwich without too much mayonnaise – her grandmother tried to probe about what the boys were doing but, to be fair to David, he did try to take the conversation off in other directions, asking about the village in Italy where Ben’s parents lived, but after lunch he said he was going back to the police station, and Granny asked her if she wanted to do the crossword with her. It was a thing she normally quite liked to do, but she was pissed with Granny and didn’t feel like it. Instead she said she was going to finish Lord of the Flies, and went back to her room.

She had been saving the last part because she wasn’t sure when she might get another book. Granny didn’t seem to be in the right mood for shopping, and wouldn’t be all the time David was here. So she had been rationing herself, but she really did want to know what was going to happen. She was beginning to change her mind about whether girls would have been kinder to each other; now she could quite imagine Venetia leading a pig hunt.

The last chapters absorbed her completely, and she liked the ending, when the naval officer, all smart and civilised in his white uniform, couldn’t understand how a group of British boys could have behaved so badly. That felt so true. Adults didn’t understand. They had all been young, they had all known how it was when friendships and breaking friendships and being cool or being sad were the most important things, but they seemed to have forgotten – even Mum and Ben sometimes. They thought her problems with girls at school were like when she was little – like who threw sand at her in the playground at break time. They didn’t see that someone could just diss your whole personality, could cancel you so you were nobody. She had thought Milo really liked her but now she wondered if he had just been laughing at her.

She got up. She wasn’t going to sit and mope. It was four-thirty. She would go down and see if Eve was free to draw her. The result might be hideous, but she thought Eve would be kind.

Eve looked tired when she found her at the studio, sitting at the little table outside, drinking