Boy Trouble by Sarah Webb Read Free Book Online Page B

Amy!” Mum yells up the stairs. “I’ve just put the baby down for her nap.” Then Evie really starts to bawl.
    Dave stomps up the stairs, muttering under his breath, “Amy, have you no brain?”
    I stick my head out of my room. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
    “I’ll have to take her for a walk now.” He rakes his hands through his hair. I feel a little sorry for him, he looks wrecked. There are two dark, cup-like hollows under his eyes, like he’s been in a concentration camp.
    We’ve been doing World War Two in school and it’s shocking stuff. Miss Ireland, our history teacher, invited this old Jewish lady, Mrs Harris, in to talk to us. Mrs Harris hadn’t been in a concentration camp herself – she’d managed to escape with her dad before she had been found. They’d travelled to London and then to Ireland. But she had lost a lot of her family in Auschwitz, a camp in Poland. She was so good at telling stories she made it all come alive. She showed us slides of some of the camps and also a few old grainy black and white photographs of her mum and her sister, Rebecca, who had been killed in a camp. Makes you think.
    “I thought you were on nights,” I say to Dave.
    “I am. But your mum needs help.”
    I feel bad. When he’s on nights he doesn’t get home till seven. It’s now ten so he’s only had three hours’ sleep, tops.
    I sigh. “I’ll take her for a walk. In fact, if Clover doesn’t mind, we can probably take Evie shopping with us.”
    His eyes light up. “That’d be brilliant. Thanks, Amy.” He steps towards me, arms out, like he wants to hug me, but I back away.
    “Give me five minutes,” I tell him.
    As we walk down the road towards Dun Laoghaire town centre, Clover insists on pushing the buggy. It’s an old black and grey Mamas & Papas thing Dave found on eBay. It was second hand when Alex had it, and it’s even more battered now. I wanted them to get a red Bugaboo for Evie, like you see the cool mums and dads pushing down the pier, but Dave’s really into recycling and said the old buggy was grand. Grand for him maybe. I think Mum was a bit disappointed – she likes the Bugaboos too – but she said Dave was right, it was a waste of money when we had a perfectly good one already.
    “She’s like a little doll,” Clover says, smiling down at Evie.
    “When she’s not crying,” I point out. “Let’s hope she stays asleep or we’ll be thrown out of all the shops for noise pollution. She’s like a fire alarm when she gets going.”
    Clover starts to look concerned.
    I say, “Don’t worry, she’ll stay asleep as long as we keep moving.”
    Clover stops outside a small shop squeezed in beside a flower shop and Dunne’s Stores. “Here we are,” she announces with a wave of her hand. “Una’s.”
    I stare in the pink-framed window. It doesn’t look very promising. There’s a mannequin dressed in the kind of tent-like nightie a granny would wear: plain white brushed cotton with a pink ribbon threaded round the top like a necklace. Beside it is a fan of plain white Sloggi knickers and two matching sensible white lacy bras – the kind my mum usually wears – displayed on clear plastic headless frames. There’s even a pair of stripy blue and white woolly bed socks.
    Clover laughs. “OK, so the window isn’t very inspiring. But Una really knows her stuff.” She nods at the door. “Can you get that for me?”
    Before I have a chance, a tiny woman appears in front of us and whisks open the door. She’s obviously stronger than she looks. She’s wearing a cream rollneck jumper, a tweedy brown skirt, and she has a tape measure hanging round her neck like a scarf. Her own breasts stick out of her jumper like two jelly moulds and I try not to stare. They’re pretty impressive.
    “Hello, Clover,” she says. “What a pleasure. And who’s this young lady?” She smiles at me and her primrose blue eyes twinkle through her gold-rimmed glasses. She must be at least