When Good Friends Go Bad by Ellie Campbell Read Free Book Online Page A

to tell us but she was running out of coins and it could wait till we met.'
    'I tried to call her when I first got back to the UK a year ago. But all I got was her crazy mom.'
    It was irrational for Jen to feel stabbed, wondering why Meg had tried to reach Rowan instead of her, although she, Jen, had made no effort to contact Meg. But that was the way it had always been. Among little girls you couldn't avoid occasional bitching and jealousy.
    Some days one would be your very best friend, some days another. Rowan and Meg often hung out together while Georgina monopolised the horse-mad Jen with her two ponies, boarded at Angela Morgan's equestrian centre. But then Rowan loved horses too, even if she was fearful of riding, and she and Jen spent many happy hours at Angela's long after Georgina got bored and her mares were sold.
    When they were only eleven or twelve Georgina liked to invite Rowan alone back to her fancy home to play with her mother's cosmetics. Georgina would style Rowan's black hair as if she were a living doll. And whenever Jen or Meg needed an accomplice for a piece of mischief they naturally gravitated together, Georgina and Rowan being too goody-goody for them at times.
    Despite the occasional rocky patches – Meg trying to ostracise Georgina, Georgina trying to ostracise Meg – the miracle was how long and faithfully the four of them had stuck together. Right up until boys got in the way, in fact. Or one boy in particular.
    'What did Ma Howard have to say?' Jen asked.
    'Zippo. That woman's a total wack job. Wouldn't tell me squat. Obviously still sees me as a real bad influence. Probably strings garlic around Rowan's neck to keep me away.'
    'With a cross between each clove to be safe,' Jen laughed. 'Vampire-proof jewellery. Could be a new trend.'
    'So how are Clover and Herb, by the way?' Jen asked, while they were on the subject of parents. Meg's parents had insisted on being called by their Christian names. Clover was a hip thirty-four when the girls were all fifteen, Herb four years older. They'd been nothing like anyone else's parents. Jen's dad was quiet, introverted and often bewildered by his single-parent role. Rowan's mum was terrifyingly strict and religious and Georgina's parents were overbearing, obsessed with appearances and, Jen had heard Herb say once, completely up their own arses.
    Clover and Herb, by contrast, thought nothing of smoking dope in front of the kids, hanging out with – and openly sleeping with – masses of artists, writers, and musicians. Herb had transitioned from wannabe rock star to guitar technician, session musician and producer of Clover's records. He knew all the famous faces, was in demand for his pitch-perfect ear and virtuoso skills, but was such a pain in the butt no band could put up with him for long. Clover was a one-hit wonder, a female Donovan whose successful single still got airplay but was never followed by another. Meg's first four years, when not on the road, had been spent in some kind of a commune with her aunt. It was the weirdest life Jen could imagine.
    In Meg's household everyone argued and talked back, there was none of this children are lesser beings kind of twaddle. You could drink alcohol, stay out all night, have boyfriends over. There was only one rule. Never wake Clover when she was hung-over, no matter how late in the day.
    Herb and Clover were far too wrapped up in their own lives to worry much about their two offspring, let alone those offspring's friends, but it was often an eye-opener to visit their chaotic household. And frequently embarrassing. Jen never knew if she'd find Herb walking around naked or bringing a couple of swingers to afternoon tea, or Clover in bed with her astrologer. The biggest, maybe the only, crime in the Lennox world was to be boring.
    'Loopy as ever. Still living the sixties dream.' Meg snorted into her drink. 'At least they haven't sold out and become realtors or car salesmen like half those baby boomers.