Dead Romantic by C. J. Skuse Read Free Book Online Page A

really.’
    â€˜Me either,’ he said, as his boots went clomp clomp on the boardwalk. Then he talked about the weather for a bit and I talked about how I wished I’d brought a coat but pretty soon our conversation ground to a halt.
    â€˜Do you like fish?’ he said suddenly.
    â€˜Um. They’re all right in batter. Not keen on tinned.’
    Louis held up his phone and showed me his screen saver. It was a picture of a large fish tank. I recognised it as the big one from inside the Chinese fish restaurant in town. ‘That’s the main tank at Fat Pang’s,’ he told me. ‘I’m trying to convince my dad to get a bigger one for the reception area of our place.’
    â€˜Yeah, I’ve seen it in there before. It’s got sharks in, hasn’t it?’
    â€˜Yeah, tinker sharks,’ he said as his boots clonked in time with my Mary Jane heels along the boardwalk. ‘They’re vegetarian ones.’
    â€˜Oh right,’ I nodded, trying so hard to be interested my brain was hurting.
    â€˜They’ve just got in the most amazing shoal of samurai carp in it too.’ He held out the phone to show me another picture. ‘Damian thinks I’m sad. I love it. I’d love to, like, live underwater or something. I’d love it if humans could do that.’
    â€˜Yeah,’ I said, looking at a picture of some little blue and yellow fish nosing about in a clump of rocks. ‘It’s really . . . full of fish, isn’t it?’
    There was nowhere to go with the conversation. I wasn’t interested in fish. I’d had a couple of guppies once upon a time. We used to keep them in a tank in our kitchen. They weren’t very friendly and the tank was such a pain to clean out. One of them flung itself into our waste disposal unit and got mangled to death.
    â€˜Do you want some?’ he said, nodding towards his plate. ‘I got another fork.’
    â€˜No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m watching my weight.’
    â€˜I’ll never understand girls and weight,’ he laughed. ‘In the water, we’re all the same weight anyway. Whales can eat up to a tonne of fish every single day. They don’t care how much they weigh.’
    â€˜Are you saying I’m a whale?’ I asked flatly.
    â€˜No, no,’ he said and our conversation came to another halt.
    I sighed. ‘I was a chubby little girl and I don’t want togo back there. I have to be strong about what I eat.’
    â€˜Why?’ said Louis. ‘You were quite happy as a kid. I remember.’
    â€˜How do you remember?’ I snipped.
    â€˜Cos I was at the same primary school as you, wasn’t I? For a bit.’
    I couldn’t remember much about him from school. Quiet. Scruffy shoes. Peed his pants at Harvest Festival. They were the only memories I had. ‘Didn’t you leave?’
    â€˜Yeah. I had to in the end,’ he said, but he didn’t say why.
    â€˜And we didn’t hang out, did we? So you can’t remember me that well.’
    He scooped up a forkful of pancake and ice cream and golloped it. ‘You always used to hang out by yourself, eating sweets and collecting insects and stuff.’
    â€˜Yeah,’ I said, slightly cringing at the memory of my evil school enemy Jessica Runnybum throwing my favourite snail shell over the garden wall. And her friend Lucy Eggybreath crushing my ladybird under her stupid flat foot.
    â€˜I remember that day you found me in the boys’ toilets,’ said Louis.
    I stopped walking. ‘I’ve never been in a boys’ toilets in my life.’
    â€˜You did,’ he said, chewing. ‘I was in the toilet, hiding . . .’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Just playing hide-and-seek,’ he said. ‘And I was sitting up on a toilet seat and all of a sudden this thing camewhizzing under the cubicle door. Do you remember what it was?’ I shook my head. ‘It was a