The Illustrated Mum Read Online Free Page B

flat as a boy's.
    “Two pimples,” said Star, sneering at me. “Turn round, let me do your back.”
    We got dressed in our school clothes. Well, our version of school clothes. I wore one of Marigold's dresses she'd cut small for me, black with silver moon and star embroidery. I called it my witch dress and thought it beautiful. It still smelt very faintly of Marigold's perfume. I sniffed it now.
    “Is it sweaty?” said Star.
    “No!”
    “I don't know why you keep wearing that old thing anyway. You just get teased.”
    “I get teased anyway,” I said.
    Star used to wear much weirder outfits when she was at my school but nobody ever dared tease Star. She changed when she started at the high school. She wore the proper uniform. She
wanted
to. She got money off Marigold the minute she got it out the post office and went to the school's special uniform sale and got herself a hideous gray skirt and blazer and white blouses and even a tie.
    She customized them when she went into Year Eight, shortening the skirt until it was way up above her knees, and she put pin badges all over the blazer lapels. It was the way all the wilder girls in her class altered their uniform. Star didn't seem to want to do it her way anymore.
    She checked herself in the mirror and then fiddled with my dress.
    “Sweaty or not, it needs a wash.”
    “No, it'll spoil it.”
    “It's spoilt already. And the hem's coming down at the back. Here, I'll find a pin.”
    She tucked the wavy hem neatly into place and then stood up.
    “Right,” she said. She glanced at the kitchen table, the bowls and spoons set out Three Bears style.
    “I'm not hungry,” I said.
    “Me neither,” said Star. “Tell you what. Marigold's got the purse, but I've got that pound I found down the park. We'll buy chocolate on the way to school, right?”
    “Do we have to go to school?”
    “Yes.”
    “But’
    “It'll be worse if we just stay here, waiting. We'll both go to school like normal. Only you won't tell anyone that she's gone missing, will you?”
    “Has she really … gone missing?”
    “I don't know. But if you start blabbing about it, or even go round all sad and snively so that some nosey teacher starts giving you the third degree then I'm telling you, Dol, they'll get the social workers in and we'll both end up in care.”
    “No!”
    “Maybe not even together.”
    “Stop it.”
    “So keep your mouth shut and act like you haven't got a care in the world. Don't look like that.
Smile!
”
    I tried. Star sighed and put her arm round me. “She'll probably be back right after we've left for school.”
    “We'd better leave her a note.”
    “What?” Star glared at me.
    “In case she wonders if we're OK.”
    “Oh yes. Like she wondered if we were OK last night,” said Star.
    “She can't help the way she is.”
    “Yes she can,” said Star, and she marched us both out of the flat.
    I made out I needed to go to the toilet when we were down on the main landing, so Star gave me the key. I charged back up the stairs and in at our door and then I tore out a page from my project book and scribbled:
    We are at schol.
Bak soon.
Hop your okay.
We are.
Lots and lots and
xtra lots of lov
form Dolly and Star.
    Then I ran back downstairs again. Mrs. Luft came to the door in her dressing gown, her hair pinned into little silver snails all over her head.
    “I've told you girls enough times! Stop charging up and down the stairs like that. My whole flat shakes. And the stairs won't stand it. There's the dry rot. I've spoken to the trust a dozen times but they don't do anything. You'll put your foot right through if you don't watch out.”
    I stood still, staring down at the old wooden stairs. I imagined them crumbling beneath me, my foot falling through, all of me tumbling down into the dark rotting world below. I edged downward on tiptoe, holding my breath.
    “Come on, Dol, we'll be late,” said Star. When I got nearer she whispered, “
She's
the one that's talking