Pumpkin Pie Read Online Free

thinks it looks like. It is too vulgar. I am surprised that she knows about such things, although she does have two brothers, both older than she is, which perhaps would account for it. All the same, it was quite uncalled for. (Especially as it made me go all hot and red.)
    What Mr Pickering says is not so vulgar, but it is certainly what I would call
deflating.
I am not going to repeat it. It makes me instantly droop and give up all ideas about going to art school. It is terrible to have so little confidence! But between them, Saffy and Mr Pickering have utterly demolished me.
    Get home from school to find the house empty. Mum and Petal not yet back, Dad has gone off to pick up Pip. Help myself to some cold pasta and slump in front of the television till Dad and Pip arrive. Dad at once bustles out to the kitchen to prepare some food, while Pip settles down to his homework. I hardly had any homework when I was ten, but Pip has stacks of it. This is because he goes to this special school that Mum and Dad
pay
for, and where they are all expected to work like crazy and pass exams so that they can win scholarships to even more special schools and pass more exams and go to university and become nuclear physicists. Or whatever. Me and Petal just used to go up the road to the local Juniors. Nobody cared whether we passed our exams and became nuclear physicists. But Mum says Pip is gifted and it would be a crime not to encourage him. She is probably right. I am not complaining, since I don’t seem to be gifted in any way whatsoever. Not even artistically, in spite of getting an A for my rabbit’s reproductive system
    At five o’clock Dad goes off to Giorgio’s for the evening, leaving a big bowl of macaroni cheese for us to dig into. I help myself to a sizeable dollop and go back to the television. Pip is still doing his homework. Petal comes waltzing in, snatches a mouthful of macaroni cheese and rushes upstairs to her bedroom, where she spends most of the evening telephoning her friends. Every half hour or so she wafts back down to grab an apple or a glass of milk. I hear her discussing some party that she is going to at the weekend. Her main concern seems to be whether a certain boy is likely to be there, and if so, who will he be there
with?
    “Please not that awful tart from Year 10!”
    If it’s the awful tart from Year 10, Petal will just
die.
Why, is what I want to know? But it is no use asking her. She has already gone wailing back up the stairs.
    “What will I do? What will I do?”
    Fascinating stuff! I sometimes think that Petal and I inhabit different worlds.
    We all do actually. Me and Petal and Pip. There’s Pip obsessed with work, and Petal obsessed with boys, and me very soon to become obsessed with fat. We never talk about our obsessions. We never really talk about anything. We are part of the same family and live under the same roof and I think we all love one another; but we never actually
communicate.
    Mum gets in at quarter to nine. She gives me and Pip a quick peck on the cheek – “All right, poppets? Everything OK?” – pours herself a glass of wine and disappears upstairs to soak in the bath. Pip packs up his homework, makes himself a lettuce sandwich and takes himself off to bed. Just like that! Without being told. It doesn’t strike me as quite normal, for a ten year old, but that is Pip for you. He has the weight of the world on his shoulders.
    Obviously nobody is going to eat Dad’s macaroni cheese, so I decide I’d better polish it off to stop Dad from being upset. I then finish off my homework, watch a bit more telly, eat a bag of crisps and go upstairs.

    At eleven o’clock Dad comes home from work and calls out to see if anyone’s awake and wants a nightcap. I am, and I do! So Dad makes two mugs of foaming hot chocolate and we drink them together, with Dad sitting on the edge of my bed. I love these private moments that I have with Dad! I tell him all about school, about my A for