Free The Four of Us by Margaret Pemberton

world, Artemis wanted Francis as her boyfriend. Geraldine, though, was so possessive of his time she made such a scenario near impossible. ‘Why don’t you tell Geraldine that you want Francis to ask you out?’ Primmie had said to her practically. ‘Then maybe she could find out how he feels about you?’ It was a thought that had filled her with horror. She wanted Francis to ask her out without any interference from Geraldine – which he might well do if only she could spend time with him without Geraldine being always only inches away.
    As her father turned off the main road and into the warren of small streets that ran down to the docks and the river, her stomach muscles tightened. It was snobbish, she knew, but she hated visiting Primmie’s home. Mr and Mrs Surtees were always nice to her, but they were also dreadfully common and when her father had once said that Mrs Surtees reminded him of his mother, the grandma who had died before she, Artemis, had been born, the horror of it had made her feel physically ill. If Primmie was aware of how she felt about visiting Rotherhithe, she never let on, but then Primmie never did say anything that made her feel uncomfortable – which couldn’t be said for Kiki or even, sometimes, for Geraldine.
    Ever since her date with Ty the previous Saturday, Kiki had declared that he was now her boyfriend and she’d also told everyone at school that he wasn’t just a biker, but that he was a Hell’s Angel. To Artemis’s stunned amazement, instead of this exaggeration making Kiki a pariah it had, instead, sent her reputation soaring.
    As the Rolls glided to a halt, she dug her nails deep into her palms. She wasn’t going to settle for a working-class boyfriend covered in tattoos. When she got herself a boyfriend it was going to be someone so genuinely upper class no one would be able to sneer at him – or her. It was going to be someone who had a home that had been in their family for centuries; someone who had been educated at Eton or Rugby; someone who was wealthy. Someone like Francis.
    Burning with the determination to be his girlfriend she stepped out of the car in order to knock on the Surtees’door. She needn’t have bothered. Having seen the Rolls enter the street Primmie’s mother, in pinny and slippers, was already rushing down the short front path to greet them, calling out in a voice that that could have been heard in Purley, ‘Nice to see yer, Artemis darlin’. An’you too, Mr Lowther. The Rolls is lookin’nice today, ain’t it? Are yer comin’ in for a cuppa?’

Chapter Seven
March 1968
    Geraldine leaned back against the Drum’s shabby red plush seating. On one side of her Primmie was giggling with laughter at a joke someone had just told and on the other side of her Primmie’s mum was shouting across to the landlord that they needed another round of drinks, thank you very much.
    Her parents didn’t know, of course, that when she stayed over on a Saturday night with Primmie, she and Primmie always went to the Drum with Primmie’s mum and dad. Their still being a year under age wasn’t something the Drum’s landlord gave much heed to, unlike the landlord of the Three Foxes at Chislehurst.
    He would single Primmie out, saying darkly, ‘She’s underage, and if she’s underage and you’re her friends, you three are probably underage as well.’
    When there was music playing and lots of talent from St Dunstan’s and Dulwich College sixth forms crowding the bar, his turning them out of the pub was infuriating. It was Kiki, as always, who found a way round it. ‘She’s my little sister,’ she would say, ‘and there’s no one in at home so I can’t leave her there, can I? All she wants is a glass of orange and a packet of crisps.’
    Because Kiki sang there on the first Friday of every month with the group Ty now