Transformation of Minna Hargreaves, The Read Online Free Page B

(disappears under blankets, pillow and ancient teddy bear)
    Dad: (flings open door, thunders in, dumps something on the floor, pulls blankets etc. away from my head, shouts) Breakfast, Min. You want to eat it or wear it?
    Me: Go ’way piss off it’s still night.
    Dad: The TV woman’s coming in fifteen minutes. She’ll have a camera crew with her. You want her to talk to you here or in the lounge?
    That got my attention. I shot upright, all the better to yell and glare and throw things — with a bit of luck he’d end up wearing the breakfast he’d so kindly (huh!) brought me.
    I yelled. I glared. I yelled some more.
    He just grinned and said, ‘She’s due at ten.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You’ve got fourteen minutes.’
    ‘Dad!’ He barely paused in the doorway, but I kept yelling anyway. ‘I am not talking to anybody because I am not going to any island ever, except maybe Fiji or Tahiti. Understand?’
    ‘Thirteen minutes, and they’ll have my permission to come in here with the cameras,’ was all the answer I got to that.
    I toyed with the idea of staying right where I was. I didn’t really think he’d let a camera crew loose in my bedroom, but then again, he was apt to go a bit crazy when he got his mind fixed on some dumb project and right now he had a fanatical gleam in his eye.
    I got up. I ate my breakfast (toast, cereal and fruit, the preparation of which hadn’t caused him to break out ina sweat). At five minutes to ten, I jumped in the shower. I took my time. At 10.48 I wandered out to the lounge — hair gleaming, make-up immaculate and my outfit showing very clearly that I was a city girl, not some conservation bunny. I wore the low-cut jeans my grandmother Hargreaves loathed. My earrings reached my shoulders, and my black top showed off my figure.
    Dad grinned at me. ‘Well, that’ll make an impact on the screen.’
    I shrugged. ‘It’s immaterial, because I am not going to be part of your idiot scheme.’ And anyway, as far as I could tell, the telly chick hadn’t waited around.
    I turned my back on him and phoned Jax because she was the only one of my friends who’d be out of bed at this time on a Saturday. I’d hardly got started when Mum showed up. ‘Is that woman here yet?’
    Dad shook his head. ‘She’s due in five minutes.’
    That penetrated my conversation with Jax. ‘My father is a conniving liar,’ I told her.
    Then the doorbell rang and the room filled up with a red-headed woman called Cara, a guy toting a camera and another with a fistful of lights.
    ‘Gotta go,’ I told Jax.
    ‘Mum!’ I said. ‘I am not doing this. I’m not going to that island. Doesn’t Dad get it?’
    She rubbed her head. ‘I’ve told Wes I’ll listen to what Cara has to say.’ She gave me a look that said
cool it and behave yourself
. ‘It won’t commit us to anything to listen, Min.’
    I gave her a look that said
You can’t fool me. I know you hate this idea as much as I do
. She looked pretty haggard,like she’d been up all night worrying about it. How dumb was that? Just say no. Dead simple.
    The man with the lights took his time. Cara, who didn’t bother introducing us to the two guys, flitted around being gracious and patronising to Mum and oozing charm at Dad.
    All right, I thought, I can do this — I too can ooze charm and graciousness, and if I chucked in a dash of maturity and intelligence it wouldn’t hurt. When they’d finally fussed enough, I was ready for them. I sat down. I fixed a picture in my head of Seb watching the film, and I smiled.
    I asked intelligent questions carefully phrased as hypothetical hypotheses.
    1. Would there be a camera crew on the island too? (No, we’re going to train you, Minna, to be the cameraman.
Me: You mean, you would train me if I went.
Cara: Yes, Minna. That’s what I said.)
    2. Why would we have to be there by ourselves? Why wouldn’t you let friends visit? (Because, Minna, part of the interest is in seeing how a family copes