The Bad Sheep by Julie Cohen Read Free Book Online Page B

be
Joseph.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because he’s—well he’s going to be my husband!’
    ‘You want to snog him, don’t you?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You do.’
    ‘No!’ Lee said again, but she giggled. She did want to.
    ‘He’s good looking,’ I said, ‘but thinks he’s better than
everyone just because he’s rich and goes to boarding school and
lives in that big house.’
    ‘We live in a big house.’

    ‘Our house could fit inside Naughton Hall.’
    ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant do you think people might say
that about us?’
    ‘No! We don’t—we’re not—’ My ten-year-old brain tried
unsuccessfully to articulate the difference between old money and
new. ‘He’s like all big and important and stuck-up. He doesn’t even
talk to anybody.’
    ‘I don’t think he’s stuck-up. I think he’s lovely.’
    ‘And he uses wax to make his hair all messy. Ick.’
    ‘I like it.’ Her cheeks went pink. ‘Imagine if I really did
get married to him. It would be like a fairy tale.’
    ‘Eww.’ I plucked at Baba’s fur. ‘Maybe I could dye my sheep
costume green and be a bush. I’d rather be a bush than a
sheep.’
    ‘Maybe Candace will get sick and you’ll be allowed to be
the star.’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘I’ll think of something.’
    *
    But the day of the pageant arrived and I was still a sheep.
It was December the twenty-third. In the afternoon, Ice Cream
Heaven had its Christmas party and our mother bundled us into
scratchy velvet dresses and walked us down cold country lanes to
the ice cream factory. The inside of the office block was decorated
with tinsel and fairy lights twinkling around the desks and
windows, and it was filled with warm tall grown-ups, their tedious
chatter, and the smell of cigarettes and perfume. Lee and I were
the only children; it was really an employee party, during office
hours. We had our costumes in plastic bags so we could go straight
to the school hall after.
    Lee and I were given a paper cup of lemonade each and put
to work in the small kitchen scooping ice cream into tiny plastic
wine glasses. It was Mulled Wine Magic, this year’s Christmas
limited edition flavour. My hands got sticky right away; I wiped
them on my dress and sniffed the ice cream.
    ‘Do you think it’s alcoholic?’ I asked. It certainly
smelled it.
    ‘Mum said not to have any, so it must be.’
    Lee’s scoops were perfect spheres; mine were shapeless
blobs. I held my nose and tipped one of them into my mouth,
swallowing it as quickly as I could. Then I tipped in another. The
ice cream headache grabbed the front of my brain immediately; I ate
two more scoops straight from the container, shuddering.
    ‘Do I look drunk?’ I asked, squinting against the pain and
rubbing my eyebrows.
    ‘A little,’ said Lee.
    ‘Maybe I should try to nick a tin of beer.’ I washed my
mouth out with lemonade and spat into the sink. ‘Ugh.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because if I’m drunk and tripping all over things, Mum
will send me to my room and I won’t have to do the pageant.’
    Lee crumpled her forehead and bit her lip, as she always
did when she was worried about me, but she didn’t have time to say
anything because our mother appeared in the doorway in her green
Christmas suit. ‘Everyone is waiting, girls.’
    We loaded the cups on trays and circulated amongst the
grown-up employees, delivering to them the fruits of their labour.
Lee took longer at this than I did, because she stopped to chat
with each adult as she went, offering them pretty replies to their
questions about school and the pageant and what she wanted for
Christmas. I was too busy thinking about sheep, and trying to feel
whether I was drunk or not, to do anything but shrug, even though I
felt the force of my mother’s frown all the way across the room. We
were meant to represent the business by being cheerful and cute and
identical, just as we were in the photos for the adverts.
    I went over to Doris Pinchbeck, a wiry lady who’d