Being a Girl Read Online Free Page A

true.’
    â€˜How do you know?’
    I didn’t answer. I didn’t know.
    Mr Cartier went to a drawer and took out a business card which he tucked into the top pocket of my blazer.
    â€˜Just in case.’
    â€˜In case of what?’ I said impatiently.
    â€˜The right part comes along for a young actress.’

2
Men in Kilts
    I SUPPOSE BINKY and I have always had a strange relationship. My mother died shortly after I was born and her father died shortly after she was born. Our two stray parents getting married and Binky taking our family name must have seemed like the perfect solution, but Daddy I’m sure had no idea Binky was going to shoot up like a tree with killer legs and the shortest skirts in London. We were born to be rivals and, in our race into the adult world, she had taken the lead. At least, that’s what she wanted everyone to think.
    Added to her porcelain skin and classic good looks, my step-sister had the self-confidence of those who
always
get their own way. She was
a real cutie
. That’s what her driving instructor said when he called her and spoke to me by accident. I thought she was an awful driver but she had managed to pass her test first time after only five lessons and had acquired a pink VW beetle with ‘African violet trim’ from a friend of the driving examiner. The plot thickens.
    Anyway, she hunted me down in Notting Hill one Saturday when I was supposed to be looking for a summer job and almost crashed into an elderly gent in an electric wheelchair. Binky zoomed into a vacantparking spot, gestured hopelessly towards the poor old gentleman and rushed me into the King’s Head for a buck’s fizz, her latest discovery.
    She strolled up to the bar in her pink Doc Martens and behaved as if she wasn’t enjoying the heads turning to watch the sway of her perfectly round bottom. If anyone was a little tart it was my sister Binky.
    She turned her shoulder to one side as she cast her green eyes on the barman.
    â€˜Two buck’s fizz, please,’ she said in her plummy accent.
    â€˜Here, you old enough, darling?’ I heard the barman say.
    â€˜What a cheek,’ she replied, and the barman grinned as he added orange juice to the champagne flutes.
    Binky since the start of the summer hols had gone retro with her gelled hair, a slashed T-shirt and a little skirt that would have made our poor matron turn in her grave, if she were dead of course.
    â€˜You’re becoming such a slut, Binky,’ I hissed as she set the glasses on a vacant table.
    â€˜You can talk,’ she said, and I blushed.
    I had told Binky
everything
that had happened that day in Monsieur Cartier’s office and I wasn’t sure whether she believed me or not. When I looked back, I didn’t quite believe it myself, although a rosy glow had stained my bottom for ages and when I closed my eyes and pictured myself wriggling naked on his lap my insides went all watery.
    While I was squirming on the hard wooden seat, Binky was pressing a finger to her lips and I could almost visualise all the little cogs whirring around in her mind. She leaned forward and looked deadly serious.
    â€˜Have you found a job yet?’ she asked.
    â€˜No,’ I answered.
    Her eyes grew big. ‘We’re going to go away for a holiday,’ she said, ‘and if you don’t come, Milly, I’ll never speak to you again.’
    I took another sip of champagne and the bubbles made me giggle as they went up my nose.
    â€˜I don’t want to speak to you anyway,’ I said, and she drummed her nails on the tabletop until I continued. ‘All right,’ I added, ‘where?’
    â€˜As far away as possible,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Let’s go to Scotland.’
    â€˜Scotland?’
    â€˜Yes, Scotland. We’ve never been there,’ she said. ‘You like doing things you’ve never done before, don’t you?’
    She turned sideways in