Free The Storyteller's Daughter by Maria Goodin

place.”
    She shakes her head and rolls her eyes in the man’s direction as if to say, ‘my daughter, what a loon!’
    He smiles at her.
    â€œWould you like a glass of water, Ewan?” my mother asks politely as she starts to unpack the shopping.
    â€œOnly if it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” he says, looking at me with a smirk.
    I want to crawl under the kitchen table and die.
    â€œOf course not. Get Ewan some water will you, Meg?” she asks, her head already buried inside a cupboard.
    Silent in my humiliation, I pour a glass of water from the tap and hold it out to him, carefully avoiding his eye. He drinks it down in a four swift gulps, wipes his mouth with the back of his grimy hand and passes me back the glass.
    â€œThanks. Very kind of you.”
    I glance at him briefly. His brown eyes are glistening with wry amusement and a smile is playing on his lips. The obvious enjoyment he takes in my acute embarrassment makes me want to hit him.
    â€œNo problem,” I say, forcing a smile.
    I turn and leave the room, calculating how long it might take him to tidy the garden and leave so that I never have to face him again.

Chapter 5
    I almost married Johnny Miller. He was nearly mine for life. It didn’t occur to me that I had only been invited to his birthday party because my mother had become notorious for providing an excellent catering service, depositing me on people’s doorsteps with mountains of sandwiches, fruit jellies, fairy cakes, sausage rolls and meringues. In my eyes, the fact that I was the only girl in Red Class to be invited to his party meant that Johnny must love me.
    â€˜He definitely loves you,’ confirmed Tracey Pratt as we sat writing that fateful paragraph entitled ‘My Earliest Memory’. It was the last time Tracey Pratt would sit next to me in class ever again. ‘Promise me I can be your bridesmaid,’ she said. ‘I want to wear a pink dress with roses on it. I’ll show you.’
    She turned her paper over and started to draw a dress with huge puffy sleeves and love-hearts all over it.
    â€˜I think he’s really handsome,’ I swooned, gazing across the classroom at Johnny who was flicking tiny balls of paper at Podge Parkinson’s back.
    â€˜Me too,’ said Tracey. ‘I think he’s definitely the most handsomest boy in the class. You’re so lucky he loves you!’
    I was in seventh-heaven and saw my whole life with Johnny stretching ahead of me like a blissful dream. I saw myself in a huge white wedding dress, doves fluttering in the sky. I saw two babies, twins perhaps, and a beautiful cottage in the country. I saw myself kissing Johnny goodbye as he set off in his big shiny car to an office where he did something important that involved wearing a suit. We would never have our gas cut off, or catch leaking water in a bucket like my mother and I had to. The landlord would never bang angrily on our door, and pipes wouldn’t knock in the night. We would have kittens and a huge garden, a log fire and exotic holidays, and every evening Johnny would bring me flowers.
    How could I have known that five minutes later my dreams would all be shattered? That I would be standing, red-faced and embarrassed, as Johnny Miller, the love of my life and hope for future happiness, called me ‘dumb’? That Tracey Pratt, my closest friend and prospective bridesmaid, would have turned against me and called me a liar? That I would, for the rest of that term, be shunned by my friends who no longer wanted to be associated with an eight-year-old girl who believed runner beans could run?
    I will never forget that day after school when I walked up to Johnny Miller at the school gates to hand him my invitation reply slip, having proudly ticked the box that read ‘Yes, I would love to come to your party!’
    â€˜I’m really looking forward to it,’ I said politely, feeling myself blush, still