Free Six Steps to a Girl by Sophie McKenzie Page A

would be no chance of me getting away to the gallery. Plus, once Chloe reappeared, Mum would ground her again. Which would mean no end to all the rows that were doing my head in.
    It was an easy decision to make.
    “She’s asleep, Mum,” I shouted, “with her headphones on. That’s why she can’t hear you knocking.”
    As I clambered off the roof I eased my conscience with the thought that when Chloe finally came home, I would tell her how I’d covered for her – and demand that she stopped sneaking out.
    Mum hugged me. “Thanks, sweetheart,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
    Feeling guilty, I jogged off down the road.
    It was five past ten when I arrived at the gallery. There was no sign of Eve outside, so I went in and had a quick look round. It was a small building with just three rooms full of pictures and posters and a bored-looking woman at the front desk. There was no one else there. I sat outside on the steps for a while, staring up at the advertisement for the exhibition. Faces of the Eighties.
    By eleven o’clock the exhibition had had fewer than five visitors and there was still no sign of Eve. I was hungry and freezing and trying not to listen to the voice in my head which kept telling me she wasn’t coming. I decided that as long as I was here, I might as well go inside and look at the posters.
    The woman at the front desk was reading a magazine. She didn’t look up as I went through to the first room. I wandered from picture to picture, looking at the faces with their weird hair and old-fashioned clothes. I grinned as I walked past a picture of a man naked to the waist, holding a baby. A pair of old ladies – the only other people in the building at the moment – had been standing in front of it for several minutes, tutting about how disgusting it was that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.
    I stopped in front of a poster of a mini-skirted woman with straggly blonde hair. The caption underneath said: Deborah Harry, lead singer with the band, Blondie. I vaguely remembered one of Dad’s records was by Blondie. The woman was hot. Massively.
    I stared at her, wondering if my dad had ever fancied her.
    “You can put your tongue away,” said a soft, raspy voice in my ear. “She’s about a hundred now.”
    I spun round. Eve was standing behind me, her lips curled in a mocking smile.
    My stomach did several somersaults in quick succession. I could feel my face reddening. Eve’s smile broadened with delight at my embarrassment.
    “Come on, there’s something I want to show you,” she said.
    She grabbed my arm and dragged me into the next room. I was still in a state of total confusion when she stopped at a picture halfway down the wall. It showed the face of another blonde woman, this time on the cover of a magazine – I didn’t notice the title. I stared at the woman. Her pale blue eyes looked coyly up out of the picture through thick, black lashes.
    I knew immediately who she was.
    “She’s beautiful,” I said.
    “That’s my mum,” Eve said, proudly. “When she was twenty-one. I wish I looked like her.”
    I glanced at her. “You do,” I said.
    Eve flushed slightly, but didn’t say anything. We walked together round the whole exhibition. Neither of us mentioned the fact that we both knew it wasn’t closing at midday. Eve knew loads about some of the pictures – she’d already been round last week with her mum. It crossed my mind to ask Eve why she was here again, but she soon supplied the answer herself.
    She loved the exhibition.
    We walked round slowly, Eve chattering away, her eyes shining. Most of what she said about the pictures wasn’t very interesting, to be honest. But I tried hard to listen. Or, at least, to look as if I was listening. It was difficult not to be distracted by her face, especially when her lips stretched into that slow, sexy smile of hers.
    At last we came to the final picture. And then there was nothing else to do except leave. We