Precocious Read Online Free Page B

rush off but I’d better get to work.’ I wink. ‘The oily wheels of capitalism won’t turn on their own, you know!’
    She hugs me at the door.
    ‘Any time you need to talk, just call,’ squeezes me tight, ‘and, give my love to Dave.’ This is the first time in five years she has ever said that.
    Mrs Worthing. Please call me re: collision on Weds night.
    Has to be. I take a deep breath and dial the number. A voice reverberates through the car speakers.
    ‘Ah – Mrs Worthing.’
    I know immediately of course that it is you. I’m surprised by how much I dislike hearing you use my married name.
    ‘Mr Morgan,’ I laugh. From married woman back to schoolgirl, in a breath. ‘You took my number from that car’s windscreen? Neat trick.’
    ‘You knew I would, that’s why you left it there. Neat trick.’
    ‘No wonder they haven’t called me about the damage.’
    ‘It was only a nudge. Practically nothing. You got away with it.’
    ‘Are we still talking about the car?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Well, it was careless of me. I shouldn’t have had wine with dinner.’
    ‘No, probably not. Very naughty. What are you doing?’
    ‘Going to work … but I can be late.’

three
    Diary: Thursday, 1 October 1992
    The fourth white shirt of the week hangs on my wardrobe door. It’s the first thing I see, bright and ironed to stiffness, delivered by the Laundry Fairy, aka my mother. Every night she comes, swift and stealthy as Santa, gathering up the grubby and bestowing clean, pressed replicas.
    It’s the first day of a new month (white rabbits, etc.) and the first page of a new diary so I thought I should start with a suitably descriptive opening paragraph. I was told recently, while doing work experience for a local newspaper, that I suffer from ‘verbal diarrhoea’. The editor was a woman, the rest of the small staff men, but not a trace of sisterly solidarity. On my ‘report’ all she could do was complain about the level of my neck/hem lines. Anyway I don’t care: I want to be a writer, not a journalist.
    I’m going to hide this diary better than the last one, which got read ‘accidentally’ (how do you read a diary accidentally?) and naturally led to all sorts of scenes, even though I’d gone to the trouble of omitting certain details, using codes, abbreviations and general red herrings. It’s a strange thing, writing a ‘secret’ diary in the knowledge that it will probably be read. Anyway I will keep you with me, to be on the safe side.
    I proceed to cover my body in regulation grey, and stand in front of the mirror. I look the same as every other day. Why wouldn’t I? Mousey hair, fair skin, grey eyes. Unremarkable. I leave the house, looking the same as every other fourteen-year-old girl gathered at the bus stop on Wellbeck Street: grey sweater, striped tie, white shirt, grey skirt, white socks, black shoes.
    It’s a good job I know I’m different.
    The school bus is a marvellous thing, especially for a writer. I watch boys flick various small inanimate objects at each other, their faces too red, their voices too loud. I watch Helen Taylor, Jo Maloney and Claire Smith studiously rearrange themselves. Their shin-length flannel skirts become thigh-skimming with a dexterous flick of the waistband. Sleeves are rolled up, collars opened, ties discarded. There is a blast of hairspray and they are done.
    Me, I don’t have to work to achieve disarray. I’m naturally untidy-looking. However neat I look when I leave home, somehow on the bus I invariably spill something, lose something or tear something. By the time we get to the school gates I always have a shoelace undone, or a button missing, or a loose thread trailing.
    He told me to read a poem: ‘Delight in Disorder’. I was flattered, I think. Was I supposed to be? Meant to be me, I suppose. He compares me to great literary heroines: Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth … it makes me laugh although I don’t really understand.
    Today nothing wants to stay