Strawberry Sisters (15 page)

She looked down at the ground and then at the sky. ‘Maybe. I do get shy.’

‘I know, but you usually manage a hello. I hope Greg doesn’t think you were rude.’ Then she looked so upset that Mum’s check-shirted boyfriend might think she had no
manners that I said, ‘It doesn’t matter; I don’t think he even noticed. He was too busy making kissy faces at Mum.’

Ella looked like she might faint. ‘He wasn’t, was he?’

Suddenly I missed Lauren. When I say outrageous things to her, she says something outrageous right back. Ella is way too sensitive for my sense of humour. ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘He
didn’t. Don’t worry about it.’

But, even though she didn’t say anything more about it, I’m not sure she took my advice.

Dad woke us up crazy early to go swimming. I’m not kidding: it was still dark. I’m not a big fan of early mornings, especially at the weekend, but I dragged myself
out of bed and into some clothes. When we got to the pool, I had to admit that it was worth the effort because we were almost the only people there. We didn’t have to queue for the slides or
share the wave pool or anything.

Eventually, Dad said that we’d better get going or Lucy would be late for ballet, so we headed for the changing rooms.

‘Are you going straight to rugby?’ I asked Chloe.

‘Yep,’ she grinned. ‘And it’s going to be awesome.’

‘What about you, Ella?’ I asked quickly, not wanting Chloe to get stuck on the subject of rugby. Ever since someone important at the rugby club rang her personally to say that they
hoped she’d be signing up for the girls’ training sessions, she’d hardly spoken about anything else.

‘I’m going to the cinema with Crystal and Kayleigh and Ashandra later,’ Ella said.

I squeezed the water out of my hair. ‘Really? I thought after last time you wouldn’t want to spend any more time with Crystal.’

‘I just don’t want to go to her house because I don’t like being there when she’s horrible to her mum. The cinema will be fine. Ash and Kay will be there
anyway.’

I told Dad I was going to Lauren’s house and that I’d walk because I knew her mum insisted that she got extra sleep at the weekends and I thought if I strolled there slowly
she’d have had plenty of time for a lie-in. But when I knocked on Lauren’s door and her mum opened it she said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Amelia, Lauren’s not here.’

Which doesn’t sound like a particularly crazy thing for someone’s mum to say but for such a long time Lauren has only been at home (or school) so I couldn’t quite believe that
she wasn’t there. I was pretty sure she hadn’t been anywhere since we went to the milkshake bar weeks ago. It seemed impossible that she could be out. Anybody else’s mum might
have told me where she was. But Mrs Anderson didn’t say and I couldn’t bring myself to ask. In fact, she was clearly waiting for me to push off. ‘You hadn’t made plans, had
you?’ she asked.

‘No.’ I’d not even thought to ring Lauren to say I was coming because I’d just assumed she’d be in. ‘No, it’s OK, I’ll call her later.’

I didn’t know what to do with myself then. I thought about ringing Lauren now, but she obviously wasn’t interested in seeing me, otherwise she’d have let me know that she was
up to going out today. So I rang Jasveen instead. She and Milly were in town so I decided to go and hang out with them.

I caught the bus and took a seat at the front. I tried to put Lauren out of my mind, but I couldn’t help wondering where she was. I’d just managed to focus on what I was going to
wear for the Christmas concert when, out of the window, I saw Lauren. She was sitting on the low wall that boys lean their bikes against outside KFC. Cute Josh was sitting next to her. My jaw
dropped open. I turned my head to watch them as the bus sped past. What on earth? Why was Lauren with Josh? Was it a date? Did her mum know about this? Why didn’t I know about this?

By the time I got off the bus, I was still in a daze. The image of the pair of them flashed into my mind. Lauren hadn’t looked tired at all. In fact, she’d been laughing. So had
Josh. She hadn’t been to my house in ages, and couldn’t last a whole day at school, but now suddenly she had the energy to walk all the way to KFC and roll about laughing with Josh?

I don’t think going round the shops with me was much fun for Jasveen and Milly. I didn’t say much and every time one of them mentioned Lauren’s name I flinched. In the end, I
just left them to it.

When I got back to Dad’s house, Chloe was blocking the hallway and talking excitedly to Ella.

‘Where’s Dad?’ I asked Ella.

‘He and Suvi have taken Lucy and Kirsti to the supermarket; they’ll be back soon.’

‘Are you all right?’ Chloe asked.

‘Fine. Stop staring at me.’

‘You look a bit funny.’

I wasn’t in the mood for Chloe’s smart remarks. ‘You’re the one covered in mud.’

‘I’ve just had rugby. Remember? It was my first session today.’

‘Oh yeah, I can’t think how that slipped my mind. I ringed it on my calendar and everything.’

‘It was amazing.’

She had hair sticking up all over the place, a dirt smudge across her cheek and it was obvious that she’d been worked pretty hard because she had clearly visible sweat rings on the pale
blue rugby shirt she was wearing.

‘Is that the team shirt?’ Ella asked. Chloe had gone on and on about how Thunder and the other youth squad members had been given swish shirts with their names printed on the
back.

Chloe shook her head. ‘They didn’t give us shirts. This is an old one of Thunder’s; he grew out of it.’

Ella and I stared at the shirt. It was gigantic.

‘Well, you look like a proper rugby player,’ Ella said.

‘Uh-huh and you smell like one too,’ I added.

‘What was the stadium like?’ Ella asked quickly.

Chloe’s face fell. ‘It wasn’t at the stadium; the girls are going to do their training at Langley Fields.’

‘Oh,’ Ella said.

I couldn’t be bothered with this. I sat down at the bottom of the stairs and started unlacing my boots. ‘Does it matter where you are?’ I snapped. ‘As long as you all get
to roll around in the mud and end up smelling like overweight warthogs on a hot day. That’s the point of it, isn’t it?’

Chloe glared at me. ‘The point is rugby.’

‘And what was that like?’ Ella asked in an annoyingly sweet voice.

Chloe stopped glaring. ‘Well, actually, that was really good. We did some throwing and kicking drills and they said that one week we might go and watch a women’s match.’

I trudged upstairs towards our room. I needed to be alone to try and think about Lauren and what was going on with her.

Chloe followed me, peeling off layers of muddy clothing as she went. ‘It was good,’ she said to me, as if I’d shown any interest whatsoever. ‘But I still don’t see
why we couldn’t have shirts and protein drinks and everything that the boys are getting. We deserve them.’

‘Yeah, well, people don’t always get what they deserve,’ I said. ‘You might think you deserve special shirts and drinks, or a best friend who doesn’t lie to you,
but that doesn’t mean that that’s what you’re going to get.’

‘It’s not very fair,’ Chloe said, pushing open the bathroom door.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not.’

Then I did something a bit stupid. You’d think by now that I’d know that I’m not very good at having a sensible conversation with anyone when I’m angry, but I wanted some
answers. So I phoned Lauren.

Except Lauren didn’t answer. Her mum did.

‘She’s resting, Amelia,’ she said. She sounded annoyed before I’d even said a word. But I was annoyed too.

‘I need to speak to her,’ I said. If she wasn’t going to bother to be polite, neither was I.

‘I’ll see if she feels up to calling you later,’ she said as if she was doing me a huge favour.

‘This is really important.’

She sighed. ‘I’m sure you think it’s important, Amelia. But, if you don’t mind me saying, you sound rather aggressive and I can only assume that once again there’s
some sort of issue between you and Lauren, which, as I believe I’ve mentioned, disrupts the peace and calm that Lauren needs at the moment.’

‘It’s not me that’s being disruptive!’ I said.

‘Please don’t shout. I know that Lauren wasn’t entirely clear about her condition before but you do understand now that she has a serious illness, don’t you? She really
needs you to be considerate.’

The image of Lauren and Josh flashed into my mind again. ‘She’s the one being inconsiderate!’ I snapped.

‘Amelia,’ she said in a voice of ice. ‘This selfish behaviour is not helping Lauren. I trust you won’t continue this silliness when you see her at school.’

And she rang off.

Unbelievable. What a witch! I was so angry I was shaking. She was treating me like a selfish toddler, as if Lauren was a perfect angel who I was making sick. The way she’d said
‘serious illness’ made it sound as if Lauren was gasping her last breath and I was just bothering her with my silly complaints about the fact she’d lied to me again. My chest felt
like someone was piling bricks on top of me. I could hardly catch my breath. I lay on my bed and the tears started to fall. And they kept on coming.

I don’t think anyone noticed my blotchy face at teatime. Once I’d stopped bawling, I decided that I didn’t want to talk to anyone about Lauren. I’d
already snapped at Chloe earlier and I didn’t want to bring anyone else down by talking about my rubbish life.

Instead, I agreed to play cards with Ella and Chloe. There’s no TV at Dad’s house because Suvi says it rots the imagination so Ella and Chloe are always playing cards, as if it was
during the war or something. I usually say no, but this time I was glad to have something to concentrate on.

‘What did you eat at the cinema?’ Chloe asked Ella, while she dealt out the cards.

When you go to see a film, normal people ask you what you thought of it, but Chloe doesn’t care about that; she just likes to hear what snacks you ate while you were watching it.

‘I had one of those little tubs of ice cream,’ Ella said.

‘What flavour?’

‘Chocolate.’

‘You should’ve got some of those nachos. I love that runny cheese they put on them.’

‘We’ve all seen you eating nachos with runny cheese,’ I said. ‘And I’m pretty sure no one wants to be reminded of that image.’ I turned to Ella. ‘Was
the film good?’

‘It was OK.’ Her forehead was creased again.

‘Was Crystal all right today?’ I asked.

Ella studied her cards carefully.

Chloe nudged Ella. ‘What did she do?’

‘She never does anything bad to me,’ Ella insisted.

I laid down a card. ‘So who was she bad to?’

‘She was rude to the lady selling the tickets. And after the film was over and we were leaving she said, “I’m not coming back to this dump again.” It was really
embarrassing.’

‘She sounds horrible,’ Chloe said.

Ella sighed. ‘But she’s not horrible other times. She’s never mean to people at school, not like Jasmine is.’

Jasmine is the meanest girl in Ella’s class. She’s so mean that she’s even horrible to Ella and that’s like being nasty to a kitten.

Ella screwed up her face. ‘Ashandra says that Crystal talks about herself a lot, but I don’t really mind that because she does lots of interesting things and she’s fun and
she’s generous.’

Chloe looked surprised. ‘Do you mean you like her because she gives you stuff?’

‘Of course she doesn’t,’ I said. That didn’t sound like Ella at all.

‘She
does
give people chocolate and presents and things,’ Ella said thoughtfully. ‘But she does other things too, like she spent ages helping me and Kayleigh at hockey.
I don’t understand how anyone who’s kind like that can be so horrible to their mum and nice cinema ladies that smile at you.’

‘People aren’t just all good or all bad,’ I pointed out. ‘Look at me: you’d think that someone as obviously brilliant and intelligent as me would never have blazing
rows with people but I have been known to.’

Ella chewed her lip.

‘I don’t think you have to tie yourself in knots trying to understand Crystal,’ I said. ‘The way she talks to people makes you uncomfortable so I don’t think you
should hang around with her.’