The Secret Cooking Club Read Online Free

grow slower, andsoon it’s fast asleep.
    I move silently to the front door and shut off the torch so that no one will see me. I slip out of Mrs Simpson’s house, with the handwritten recipe book still tucked underneath my arm.

THE LITTLE RECIPE BOOK
    I don’t really know why I took the notebook from Mrs Simpson’s kitchen. It’s not like I’m actually going to cook anything at home. I can picture Mum rubbing her hands with glee if I did: Help, my daughter is trying to poison me/burn down the house/make me throw up during my marketing meeting with Boots. I stick the recipe book under my pillow. Part of the reason I keep my room – according to one of Mum’s blog posts – ‘like a toxic waste dump’ is so that she won’t ever go in there.
    Downstairs the next morning, Mum is blustering around in the kitchen, taking two minutes out of her busy day to drink a cup of instant coffee.
    â€˜So do you have any plans for the weekend, Scarlett?’ Mum says.
    â€˜Um . . .’ My brain furiously calculates the probabilities of providing her with blog material, depending on whether I say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. I settle on: ‘Not really, but I’ve got some homework to do.’
    â€˜Kelsie’s gone to a birthday party this morning and I’ve got a guest blog post to write. Can you go over to Stacie’s house?’
    â€˜She’s visiting her grandma,’ I lie. Stacie was my best friend last year, before the whole Gretchen and Alison thing. Then Mum wrote a post called Psst . . . want to know a secret? My daughter’s best friend is really thick . And then, big surprise – Stacie stopped speaking to me and dropped me as a friend. Luckily, she goes to a private school so I don’t have to see her every day.
    â€˜That’s nice.’ Mum puts down the coffee cup and digs around in the fridge. She takes out a piece of cold pizza and nibbles on it. ‘And how’s school – you doing any new clubs?’
    â€˜No, Mum.’ I take a box of cereal from the top of the fridge and pour some into a bowl. Then I sit down and stare at it.
    Mum shakes her head and tsks. ‘I just don’t know what’s up with you, Scarlett. When I was your age, I had lots of friends. Plus I did swimming and netball and . . .’
    I stop listening. Mum’s already written a soppy blog post called I really was your age once . . . where she went on about the days before mobile phones, iPads and Snapchat, when she and her friends passed notes in class and gossiped about boys. That post alone got over three hundred and fifty sympathetic comments from her followers. She won’t write another one that’s too similar, so I’m off the hook.
    â€˜Yeah, Mum, I know. But I’m sure Oxford University can live without me.’ I force myself to take a bite of the cereal. It tastes like soggy cardboard.
    Mum frowns. ‘Well, if you’re not doing anything, maybe you can pick up a few things for me at the shops.’
    â€˜Sure, whatever.’ I take my bowl to the sink.
    â€˜You didn’t eat any of that cereal.’ Mum’s eyes sharpen. ‘Is something wrong?’
    â€˜No.’ I pause for a second. ‘I’m just not hungry.’
    She cocks her head. ‘You’re not anorexic, are you?’
    â€˜No, Mum. It’s just that the cereal’s a little stale.’
    â€˜Oh.’ She tosses the pizza crust in the rubbish and puts the kettle back on to boil. When she’s not looking, I take the crust out of the bin and put it in the compost bucket instead.
    â€˜OK, Scarlett, whatever you say.’ Mum glancesat me over her shoulder. ‘But you’re a growing girl – almost a real teenager. You need to keep your blood sugar up.’ I can almost see the gears in her brain working overtime: Idea for new blog post = is my daughter anorexic – or just