Every Good Girl by Judy Astley Read Free Book Online Page A

a black crumpled jumper, sniffed at it and hurled it towards her overflowing laundry basket. ‘Me and Chloe couldn’t find an ashtray so we used it, well half of it anyway. It’s probably still in the garden. Look, the other half’s right here.’
    From among the dusty muddle of discarded homework, candlewax, old tissues and cluttered make-up on her desk under the window she picked up a half-sphere of transparent plastic, part of the ball in which their hamster liked to roll around the sitting room, looking exactly like, Emily remembered her dad saying, a total loser from
Gladiators
. She felt a twinge of guilt about that; he’d also said, one of the last things before he moved out, something really obvious about making sure the cat didn’t get in while Humphrey was running around. He’d said it as if he was trying to think of things to say that would make them remember him, so they’d go round the house saying ‘Dad says . . .’ and keeping him with them. It had made her really angry that this way he was doing leaving and staying at the same time. The very next time she’d been in the house on her own, she’d hauled the cat out of its sleep on the top stair to show it the rolling hamster, and had watched, wondering if she really had the cold soul of a torturer, while the frantic cat batted the helpless little rodent round the room.
    â€˜It was Dad’s fault,’ she muttered now, like a lifesaving mantra as she shuffled through the knickers in her drawer, looking for some that didn’t really matter, seeing as it was only a boring Sunday, with just Gran (or
Grandmama
as she preferred being called) coming for lunch.
    â€˜What’s Dad’s fault?’ Lucy still hovered by the door. She was very interested in breasts at the moment and hoped to catch sight of Emily’s, so she would know, if these things ran in the family, what she could expect hers to look like quite soon.
    â€˜Oh nothing, just sod off,’ Emily hissed at her, throwing her copy of
Man-Date
at her.
    â€˜Mind my face!’ Lucy yelled, chucking a shoe back, ‘I’ve got a re-call for
Barbados
next week!’
    Emily stalked across and slammed the door, though Lucy, fearing more violence, was already halfway down the stairs. ‘You and your fucking
beauty
!’ Emily shrieked after her.
    â€˜Goodness, that girl’s got your temper!’ Monica said to Nina in the kitchen. She pattered about, dipping her finger in the mint sauce, looking for napkins in the wrong drawer and downing most of her sherry in three fast slugs. Nina concentrated on stirring the gravy, wondering what would be the least petulant and childish reply to that little comment of her mother’s. Only Monica had really been allowed full use of good old-fashioned anger in the house when Nina had been a child. Lack of consideration of any sort would set her off, directing equal rage towards a neighbour with a waywardly overhanging tree and towards her husband for going off to Bognor with a barmaid. Any display of rebellious fury by Nina or Graham would be skilfully quashed by recourse to a threatened migraine. ‘You’re making me
ill
,’ Monica would plead as teenage Nina stormed ‘It’s not
fair
!’ when Graham, two years younger, was allowed to stay nights with friends and Nina had to be home by ten. Monica would drape a purple crocheted shawl round her broad shoulders and put one delicately probing cyclamen pink fingernail to the pulse on her temple. ‘
Throbbing
, my skull is
throbbing
!’ she would wail, throwing herself on the lavender chenille sofa and pleading for the curtains to be closed and camomile tea to be brought. Graham learned very young that anger was a profitless emotion and became doggedly passive, learning how to get his own way by appealing to his mother’s awe of his male supremacy, watching, placid, treasured and contented as Nina battled her