The If Game Read Online Free Page B

furious even, that he’d been taken in. He’d talked to Alex as if she’d been a boy, an equal. If he’d known she was a girl, he wouldn’t have talked like that. He wasn’t sure what difference it would have made, but still, he felt cheated. He also felt that if she was only a girl, he needn’t take anything she said seriously.
    â€˜You don’t look pleased,’ his dad said.
    Stephen didn’t answer this.
    â€˜I don’t see that it makes that much difference. If you liked her when you thought she was a boy.’
    â€˜I didn’t say I liked her.’
    â€˜Anyway, you don’t have to see her again if you don’t want,’ his dad said.
    â€˜I shan’t. Ever,’ Stephen said.
    â€˜We’ll be having supper in half an hour. About,’ his dad said.
    Stephen said, ‘Right.’
    But he was no longer hungry. He was more upset than he could explain to himself. He had somehow lost dignity by being involved with a girl. If he met her again, he’d pretend not to know her. At the back of his mind there was also a faint regret that he’d lost a possible friend. He’d thought of things that the boy Alex and he could do together. He certainly wasn’t going to make a friend of a miserable girl.

5
    Stephen never knew for certain how Sundays were going to turn out. There were black Sundays, when he and Dad had to visit Dad’s mother, Stephen’s gran. This was something neither of them enjoyed, and the thought of what they were going to do in the afternoon made the mornings heavy and depressing. But on this particular Sunday, which was unexpectedly fine after a horribly wet week, after Stephen’s dad had written the letter which occupied most of his Sunday mornings, he wanted to go for what he called their country walk. It wasn’t quite real country, you were never out of sight of the town’s chimneys and tall blocks, but the lane soon left its bordering houses behind, and wandered up and down small hills as it had done ever since it had been the path along which shepherds drove their sheep and, perhaps, geese, which were taken to the goose fair, miles away, walking in little web-shaped shoes, made for them by kind shoemakers out of soft leather left over from proper people’s footwear. It was still muddy, and was bounded on one side by a hedge, and on the other by ragged trees, which now had fat green and brown buds and the beginnings of leaves.
    â€˜Smells like spring,’ Stephen’s dad said.
    â€˜You can’t smell spring,’ Stephen said, wanting vaguely to be disagreeable. He was bored with this walk. They did it too often and it annoyed him that his dad liked it.
    â€˜You may not be able to, but I can,’ his dad said.
    â€˜And it’s not proper country here.’
    It’s the best we’ve got.’
    â€˜I wish we could live right out in the country. Or by the sea. Miles from anywhere.’
    â€˜Oh yes? And where’d you go to school? And where would I get work?’
    â€˜I could fish. And we could grow vegetables and sell what we didn’t want for ourselves.’
    â€˜Sounds fine, but I don’t think we’d better try it just yet.’
    â€˜Why not?’ But he knew, quite well, why not. They hadn’t got enough money to buy a cottage in the country or by the sea. They had just enough to stay where they were, in a flat that didn’t cost much because it was dark and dilapidated, where the garden wasn’t much bigger than the headmaster’s study at school, and which was near enough for them to walk to their daytime occupations. Stephen to school and Dad to the garage where he worked.
    After the usual Sunday midday meal, scrambled eggs on toasted cheese and sausages, Dad sat down with his paper in front of the television. Stephen sat too, until he could forget the full feeling in his stomach. Then he went to his own room and sat on the side of the