Stir-Fry by Emma Donoghue Read Free Book Online Page A

opening her eyes. “She used to intimidate me too, until I learned how to get under her skin.”
    “How’s it done? Will you teach me that instead of cookery?”
    “Sure you’d really want to?” asked Ruth lightly. “Under Jael’s skin is not the most comfortable place to be.”
    “I thought age was meant to calm people down, but she’s so over the top,” said Maria, crushing a rusty leaf to fragments in her palm. “I mean the other day, right, I found myself snared in some kind of intense ambiguity when as far as I knew we’d been discussing the price of teabags.”
    Ruth’s mouth twisted up at one corner. Her eyes were closed against the sunshine.
    “You won’t tell her I said any of this, will you?” asked Maria, brushing her hands clean. “She probably thinks I’m a moron anyway.”
    White lines made a delicate tracery around Ruth’s eyes. “Don’t mind her slagging,” she murmured. “She only mocks people she thinks highly of.”
    “Really?”
    “Like I only give cookery lessons to people I think highly of.”
    Maria sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees. If there was one thing she could not bear, it was the suspicion that someone might think she had been fishing for compliments. There is nothing more juvenile, she told herself. And few things more pathetic than sucking up to a flatmate because you can’t make friends your own age.
    “Has Jael been giving you a hard time?” Ruth was watching; her voice was suddenly concerned.
    “No, no. I’m sure she just takes a while to get used to.”
    “Listen, if she’s ever really—if she makes you feel uncomfortable, tell me.”
    “And what’ll you do?” asked Maria cheekily.
    “Oh, probably beat her to death with the shower attachment.”
    Maria’s hands, suddenly warm, scooped a pile of leaves together on the concrete. “I’m sure I’ll grow out of being scared of her. Suppose you’ve known each other for decades?”
    “We only met the spring before last, and we’ve had the flat just over a year.”
    “But I presumed you were at school together.”
    “No way,” said Ruth in amusement. “Madam went to a posh boarding school. And I haven’t kept any of my pals from the convent. The good girls were boring, and the baddies got pregnant and left early.”
    Maria nodded eagerly. “But the baddies were more fun, weren’t they? In primary school I was a good girl. We swapped
Chalet School
books and went ahead with our mitten patterns during lunch break.”
    “Don’t remind me!”
    “But then these twins—I can’t remember their names,” Maria began, her forehead creased with effort. “Never mindwhat they were called, all that matters is that they were cool. They stayed back to repeat sixth class, and claimed me for their gang. They wore their socks down around their ankles, and they could roll their tongues into the shape of brandy snaps.”
    Ruth sat up, coughing. “You have a lurid imagination, Maria.”
    “But it’s true.”
    “A lurid memory, then. But why did they want you, what strange anatomical feat could you perform?”
    “I think it was because I pretended to know all about what we called the Facts.”
    “Mmm, I remember them. Should have been called the Wild Guesses.”
    “The Stabs in the Dark,” Maria contributed, then winced and said, “that’s literally what we thought it was. Anyway, these twins dared me to chalk ‘Father Malone has a ginor-mous willy’ on the back wall of the bike shed, and I did.”
    “And had he?”
    “It was a rough estimate, based on the size of his ego.”
    “Well, good for you anyway, you wee vandal.” Ruth smoothed her black wool tights and picked a tiny twig off one knee. “So you became a bad girl?”
    “Not for long. Sister Miriam—the head nun—she tried to break us up. She called me over one lunch break and said she didn’t think my mammy would like me to be friends with those twins, they weren’t my sort, and why didn’t I have a chat with Baby Jesus