Free The Vintage Summer Wedding by Jenny Oliver Page B

care.
Call her a bitch. That was good. It was good not to be liked. All those teachers with canes and detentions in the past, good old-fashioned discipline, they didn’t care if they were liked. In fact, it was better this way. Hate her. Yes. That was much easier.
    ‘Are you OK?’ asked Seb.
    ‘Yeah,’ she shrugged, nonchalant. ‘Fine.’
    He paused and she could tell he was debating whether to say something else.
    ‘Anna—’ he started.
    Here we go, she thought.
    ‘The thing is, with kids you have to connect with them. You know, you can’t just tell them what to do.’
    ‘Thanks for that, Seb,’ she muttered. Codswallop, she thought. You want something, you work damn hard to achieve it.
    Seb sighed and shook his head, then gave her shoulder another squeeze before she straightened herself up tall and pulled on her sunglasses.
    ‘Shall we go home?’ she said, as if the whole previous conversation hadn’t happened.
    If people sense your weakness, Anna, they take advantage of it.
She remembered her mum saying that as they walked back to the pokey flat, the vintage Chanel clutched in her hands, beige nail varnish shimmering.
If you have any problems, you talk to me not them.
Anna remembered nodding, wondering how she was going to be able to ring her dad to let him know that she’d got in. The phone was in the living room where her mum slept.
If you’re injured, you dance through it, we’ll fix it. If they know, you’ll be marred with being weak for ever, Anna. And no one associates winning with weakness.
    They drove home in silence, the countryside streaking past the window in bright lines of green, red and yellow, but Anna stared ahead at the grey Tarmac.
    ‘Look, don’t worry about the kids, Anna. It’ll get better,’ Seb said as they pulled up outside Primrose Cottage.
    ‘Too right it will,’ she said, glancing at him briefly before opening the car door. ‘Because I’m never helping those little shits again.’
    She felt him put his hand on her thigh. An image of her kiss on his cheek just ten minutes ago made her wonder if she could put her hand over his where it rested on her skin but her body wouldn’t let her. Instead, she stepped out of the car and walked over to drag open the rusty garden gate, lifting it on its broken hinge. As she walked up the path, the thorns on the big fat yellow roses caught her top, the stems sagging even further under the weight of their grotesque petals and heady aroma. ‘These fucking flowers,’ she shouted, ripping them off her before storming up to the door.
    At the end of her first year at the EBC School, they had staged a performance of
Swan Lake
. Anna had felt a rush of triumph when cast as one of the four in the
Danse Des Petits Cygnes
.
    Linked with three others, Anna? Is that what you want?
her mum had said, glancing up only briefly from a minestrone soup she was stirring.
It’s a good start, but I’ll come and watch you when you’re The Swan Queen, Anna. When you’re Odette.
The soup bubbled in the pot and when she flicked the spoon to rest it on the side, it sprayed drops of red against the white tiles. Anna had watched them trickle down, holding her breath and keeping her eyes wide so she wouldn’t cry.
    I’m not saying this to punish you, Anna darling. I’m saying it to make you better. Don’t settle for what they tell you is good. You decide what is good, what is the best. If you believe in something enough, and you’re determined, you’ll get it. I want to spur you to do better,
she had said, taking a sip of the soup at the same time as ripping off a piece of kitchen towel so Anna could wipe her eyes.
You have to go out and grasp what you want.
    The photo of the girl, two years above, playing The Swan Queen had been glued neatly into Anna’s book.
    She paused at the shabby door of the cottage, the rose scratches just welling with blood on her arms, the air burning her lungs like a sauna, and thought, I don’t want this. I’m better than