Free Malcolm and Juliet by Bernard Beckett Page A

her discomfort and made it worse by asking her what was wrong, again and again and again.
    Charlotte played every one of her ten favourite romances on the large flat-screen television in her room, but none of them helped explain why Malcolm remained so cold and distant. Perhaps there was an irony to be appreciated in the situation, the sort that would play well in black and white. But in Charlotte’s mind, her own scenario—the fact that the first boy she had ever been interested in, properly intensely interested in, was also the first boy not to be interested in her—spoke of a director who had grown old and bitter and should have moved over to make way for a more optimistic generation.
    Brian tried to pretend it wasn’t true, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. The Woman on the Phone. Juliet. Much as it pained him to admit it, he wanted her. But wanting wasn’t having and, although every morning began with the same promise to himself, that he would find a way of seeking her out, every night finished with the same admission, that when it came to this, he had lost his nerve. It was even true that, should you have happened by Brian’s bedroom window on a night like this, you would have heard the sound of a stifled sob or two, for Brian wasn’t used to complications.
    Even Kevin, resolutely patient Kevin, slowly chipping away at the granite of Brian’s masculine heart, had moments when he wondered. When the shape before him appeared no more refined than the shape he had started with, and he doubted he would ever find any expression there. He would simply chip on and on, until he or the rock were there no more.
    And then there was Malcolm. Malcolm was broken, too dispirited even to feel frustration, for frustration requires a certain force against which it can push. Indeed these were troubled times, times of distracted days and restless nights, times in need of a cure.

A Cure
    ‘Malcolm I’m in trouble,’ Juliet announced, opening the door without knocking (not unusual) and heading straight for the fridge (ditto). Malcolm, who hadn’t spoken to Juliet since his failure, decided to get things out in the open.
    ‘You’re in trouble?’ he said. ‘What about me?’
    ‘Oh, what’s wrong with you?’ Juliet asked, pulling back out of the fridge. ‘You want some cheese on crackers?’
    ‘No. Um, you know. You were there.’
    ‘What?’ Juliet looked genuinely puzzled and Malcolm was forced to tilt his head in the direction of the bedroom.
    ‘Oh, that? Happens all the time. No biggie. Tell me when you want to try again.’
    And so she dismissed the second biggest calamity in Malcolm’s life to date (after last year’s Science Fair) with a wave of her hand. That hardly seemed just. Over the last day and a half Malcolm had grown used to his pain and he wasn’t about to let it go without a fight.
    ‘No, not just that. I was thinking more about my other problem, with Mr Ramsay, and the Science Fair. He isn’t going to let me enter.’
    ‘Oh my God, Malcolm. I’m sorry.’ She stepped forward and gave him half a hug, her other hand still holding the cheese. ‘How come?’
    ‘He says I’m a pervert.’
    ‘Well you are, but is that a bad thing? Can he really do that?’
    ‘He’s the principal.’
    ‘Well that’s outrageous, it really is.’
    So outrageous that Juliet paused between mouthfuls. Malcolm looked at her with renewed affection. He really was quite lucky, having a friend like her.
    ‘Anyway, what about you?’ he remembered. ‘What trouble? Is it still this money thing?’
    ‘Okay, you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone.’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘Not even if they promise to have sex with you.’
    ‘Like I’d fall for that twice.’
    ‘Okay. Well it sort of started last year, when Dad got me moved into that Maths accelerated group.’
    By the time Juliet’s tale of fraud and extortion had finished Malcolm had to agree that in the world of problems Juliet had just moved him out of medal