Being a Girl Read Online Free Page B

her seat and slapped the side of her bottom.
    â€˜Only if it’s fun.’
    â€˜Well, you never know unless you try.’
    â€˜I don’t know . . .’
    â€˜Please, Milly, please. I’m dying to try out my car . . .’
    â€˜Have you had it serviced?’ I asked. I was the practical one.
    â€˜Yes, matron, everything’s ticketyboo.’
    She placed her pink boots up on the bench beside me and her skirt slipped over her thighs.
    â€˜Everyone can see your knickers,’ I said and she sighed contentedly.
    â€˜They’re new,’ she replied, and sipped her buck’s fizz.
    We were supposed to be looking for summer jobs, but Daddy had gone back to whatever it was he did for the EU in Brussels; Mummy was having an affair,and in the midst of these passions she didn’t mind what we did as long as we didn’t make any noise. Anyway, I deserved a break after the exams and raised my glass in a toast.
    â€˜To Scotland.’
    We finished our drinks and I felt quite tipsy as I watched Binky skip between the cars back across the road to her pink Volkswagen. I had an interview for a job in a shoe shop and thought I’d let the
fickle finger of fate
decide on my future: if I got the job I would stay in London and, if I didn’t, I would go on an adventure with my little sister.
    I wandered off to the tube thinking about smelly feet. I was ten minutes late for the interview and was told by the woman who called herself Madame Dubarry that I was obviously ‘spoiled’ from having gone to boarding school and didn’t have the right ‘attitude’ to devote myself to the shoe trade.
    She was shaking her head and peering unpleasantly at my chest. ‘Selling shoes requires a certain discipline,’ she said. ‘You are clearly cut out for other,
better
things.’
    â€˜I’m sure I am,’ I said sullenly and had a real spring in my step as I marched off to the map shop in Long Acre.
    During the coming days, I plotted the route, and Binky acquired a pair of pink flares to go with her Doc Martens. We set off the following weekend from Chelsea, up the motorway, and over the sea to Skye, which really was as beautiful as I’d imagined. We had a two-man tent and planned to camp, although I did have my doubts about Binky roughing it with her long nails and creamy white skin, much of which was on display in her Che Guevara T-shirt.
    I had dressed appropriately in walking shoes and a heavy sweater. Binky had made fun of my get-up onthe long drive, but it turned out that I had made the right choice. We had left London early to avoid the jams and crossed to Skye just before six. It had been warm and sunny all day, but Scotland, we discovered, had its own way of doing things.
    We were driving west between high stone walls, the narrow lanes curvy and deserted. The sky grew darker and when the clouds ripped apart in a flash of lightning, we screamed as great hailstones the size of tennis balls started beating on the windscreen. The car misted up. The wipers were slowing and, when the engine conked out, the wipers froze solid and we couldn’t see a thing.
    We sat there for an hour. Binky wriggled into her sleeping bag and we watched the hail turning gradually to rain. The storm was passing, but when my sister went to start the car, it was dead. We got out and peered at the engine, the jumble of wires and rubber tubes sitting there all wet and cold, a complete and absolute mystery.
    â€˜Typical!’ I said.
    â€˜What is?’
    â€˜African violet trim,’ I mocked. ‘Where did you get this car from, anyway?’
    â€˜You know perfectly well where I got it from.’
    â€˜How much did you pay for it?’
    â€˜I exchanged it . . .’
    â€˜What for?’
    â€˜I’m not telling you.’
    She didn’t need to tell me. Her cheeks were as red as her T-shirt. Binky really had grown up, and you didn’t