After Iris: the Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby Read Online Free Page A

Flora, but Jas threw her arms around Zoran’s neck to say sorry, and then Twig said he was sorry too, and after a minute so did I.
    ‘ Completely pathetic,’ grumbled Flora. She picked up her school-bag. ‘Come on, Blue.’
    I had to run to keep up with her. I don’t know when she got so tall. ‘It’s humiliating,’ she raged as we walked. ‘He treats us like a bunch of kids.’
    ‘We are a bunch of kids,’ I said, then because that only made her crosser I added, ‘He’s quite useful. You know, with the Babes, and the parents away so much.’
    Flora shot me one of her sideways Flora looks. ‘I suppose you like him.’
    I thought about Zoran making hot chocolate for us, putting double the amount of powder in Jas’s because that’s how she likes it, and about how he sat working on his thesis in the rain when it was his turn to watch the rats.
    ‘I don’t like his beard,’ I said. ‘But I do think he’s nice.’
    ‘That,’ said Flora, ‘is just typical.’
    ‘I hate school,’ I said.
    ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
    I wanted to ask her if she remembered lying to the Head at St Swithin’s about me reading Dickens when I was five, but I could tell she wasn’t in the mood. She flounced off to join her friends as soon as we reached the gates, and I knew she probably wouldn’t notice if I spent the rest of the day screaming naked in the playground.
    *
    No chance of skipping out at lunchtime with Mr Maths on the door. Flora nabbed me as I slunk into the canteen.
    ‘He’s here!’ she hissed.
    ‘People are staring,’ I said, and to be honest I’m not surprised. Flora is widely regarded as one of the coolest girls in school, but the pink dreads do take getting used to. ‘If it’s all the same to you,’ I said, ‘ I am doing my best not to stand out.’
    ‘He’s here!’ she repeated. ‘He’s in my year!’
    ‘ Who is here?’
    ‘Who d’you think? The spy! The rat boy!’
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘He introduced himself! I believe we’re neighbours, he said, then he took his hat off like he did in the video.’
    ‘What’s he like?’
    ‘Quite cute, to be fair, but God he fancies himself.   I believe we’re neighbours – who even talks like that? He actually winked at me!’
    ‘We are neighbours,’ I pointed out, but Flora wasn’t listening.
    ‘Whoah,’ she said. ‘They really are looking at us.’
    I swear the whole canteen was in shock, like they’d just worked out we were related. Candy-floss Head and Little Miss Nobody.
    ‘Gotta shoot,’ said Flora.
    ‘Can I have lunch with you?’
    ‘Sorry, tadpole,’ she said. ‘I’m going out.’
    I wanted to leave then too, spend lunch in the toilets or the library or something, but I was too hungry. I needn’t have worried anyway. With Flora gone, people lost interest. I carried my tray to an empty table and tried to look like I was eating alone by choice.
    I stood up to clear my tray when I finished, and froze.
    The boy from next door sat alone on the other side of the room, and he was staring straight at me.
    *
    It’s warmer tonight. Zoran has said that even though he is not our father he will personally whip us if we keep watch again, but I couldn’t sleep so I climbed out of my window on to the flat roof like I did last night. I sat with my duvet around my shoulders, and in the moonlight my shadow looked like a giant mushroom with my head a little bobble on top. I slid my hand out from under the duvet and moved it like the Indian dancers Dad took me to see last winter, then pinched my fingers and thumb together to look like a duck.
    I waved, and the mushroom waved back. I shook my head and the mushroom’s hair went wild. I held out my hand, and the shadow of another hand reached out and touched mine.
    *
    I have never moved so fast in my entire life. I dived through the open window – literally, head first. I’d have made it too, if I hadn’t tried to take the duvet with me. As it was, Joss Bateman caught hold