The Geranium Girls by Alison Preston Read Free Book Online Page B

she said. “Oh, I did at first. We’d been together almost three years. But Georges had these ideas about what made life good and none of them really agreed with mine.”
    “What do you think makes life good?” Dhani asked.
    “Mmm. A comfortable couch. A fireplace. Chocolate.”
    Dhani pushed the hair back from Beryl’s forehead and she hoped he wasn’t thinking how ugly she looked in the light of the moon.
    They lay near to where she had found the mushroom girl, but not too near. The night was warm after the hot day. The air wasn’t going to cool down tonight.
    “You look pretty,” he said and Beryl thought he was lying.
    “It was close to here that I found her,” she said and sat up, shaking her fine blonde hair back over her forehead.
    Dhani leapt up. He was brown and beautiful — an Indian, born in China, raised in England.
    Beryl missed him terribly, even though he stood right there in front of her.
    “We shouldn’t be here!” Dhani struggled to whip the blanket out from under her.
    “It wasn’t that near,” she said, scrambling to her feet.
    Suddenly she felt that there was something missing from her, from the basic makeup of her personality. Or maybe not missing, but off somehow. Why didn’t it bother her to be near the place, when it upset Dhani so much and he wasn’t even the one who had found her? Maybe it did bother her and she was just too thick to know it. It would manifest itself physically in some way, like with a giant tumour growing inside her head. Something like that.
    “We probably shouldn’t even be in the same park,” Dhani said, as he shook out the blanket. “The mosquitoes are terrible anyway!”
    Beryl hurried after him with her sandals in her hand. I shouldn’t have let myself go when we kissed, she thought. It was way too soon.
    “Dhani, wait!” she cried. “I’m going to step on a wasp if I don’t put my shoes on.”
    He slowed slightly. “Your shoes didn’t protect you the last time.”
    Beryl felt as though it was her fault she had been stung by a wasp, her fault a girl was dead, and that Dhani judged her harshly for not having learned from either experience.
    “What about all the other people in the park?” She gestured towards the shadowy figures of teenagers in the distance. “Should they not be here either?”
    “It’s not the same with them, Beryl. They’re not connected to her like we are.”
    He stopped and touched her face when he said this, but he looked so sad when he did it that Beryl felt as though they might as well walk off in different directions.
    “The only reason you’re connected is because I told you about it,” Beryl said and then wished she could erase the whine of her voice that hung between them in the night air.
    They walked in silence the rest of the way to the car. Dhani started it up but didn’t drive it anywhere.
    “Beryl.”
    “Yes?”
    “That’s like saying, the only reason my mother and I are connected is that she gave birth to me.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Beryl. Surely you see that connections go deeper than that.”
    “Well, yeah, of course. With the mother one anyway.”
    They were quiet for a few minutes as Dhani wheeled the car out onto River Road.
    “If I think long enough about what you said, I know I’m going to start thinking that everything’s connected to everything and that will drive me crazy,” Beryl said. “It’s all very well, but nothing really feels like that on a day-to-day basis.
    “We shouldn’t have kissed,” she added.
    Dhani looked at her and covered her hand with his. “Yes, we should have,” he said. “Most definitely we should have.”
    Beryl sighed and leaned back in the seat. She found a lever and lifted it and the seat went all the way back.
    “Let’s go for a milkshake,” Dhani said.
    She closed her eyes and felt a warm breeze from the car windows fluttering across her bare legs. Dhani didn’t believe in air conditioning and for the moment she was glad.
    When she thought she