Free The Big Lie by Julie Mayhew Page A

finished our essays, we were to quietly leave the classroom, get changed and head off on a cross-country run. The route would take us out of the school grounds, around the playing fields and on through the park. We were meant to come back along the high street, past the lamppost where they hang the traitors, past the other school – which they made us do as an incentive to the children there, I think, so they knew what to aspire to – and then back to our own grounds. But I took a wrong turn.
    I’d stayed to the end of the lesson, right up to the moment Herr Manning said, ‘Put down your pens.’ Almost everyone else had gone. Manda Darby was still there of course, because she was thick. We reckoned she only got her place at the elite school because her father was someone terrifying within the secret police. How on earth had he passed the medical? And how had she? You didn’t need a measuring calliper to know that giant Balto-Slav forehead of hers should have been put in the other school. Or on a fast train to Highpoint.
    I was towards the back of the field of runners when I eventually set off. Most of the time there was no one to follow. I was distracted and dithered at the forks in the path. I hadn’t paid proper attention to the route when it had been explained. So when I suddenly saw GG ahead of me, her long, horse-rider thighs powering away in those white shorts, I was really very grateful. I did all I could to catch up. It didn’t occur to me to wonder why she was so far back in the group. She had finished her essay not long after Clementine and was usually pretty speedy at cross country, always beating the pants off Ruby Heigl. All I was thinking was how I would like to talk to GG about what had gone on that morning at Clementine’s house. GG would know how to blow a raspberry at it all, make my worries seem like nothing. But I was far too embarrassed to speak to her. It would mean explaining why I had stopped going to her house. I purposely hung back a little.
    I trailed her to the slope to the right of the bandstand, through the trees that led towards the lake and then … GG was gone. I blasted up the hill, my heart leaping out of my mouth, then I let myself jog for a moment – and that was when someone leapt out of the bushes. They found a contact point – my neck – and grasped. Keeping to my side, they drove their head to my chest and jerked me backwards into the undergrowth. The grip only shifted to incorporate a hand over my mouth when I started screaming like a loony.
    This was it, I thought – a commie bastard! Come to rape me! I was dead. But then I realised this commie bastard smelt familiar, beneath the grassy pong of sweat – like figs when they’d just been split open, the burnt tang of brown sugar.
    In the clearing, she let me go.
    ‘Good god, GG. I nearly wet my pants!’
    ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t think you’d come willingly.’
    ‘Why’s that?’
    She shrugged, took a moment to find a suitable answer. ‘Because you’d get into trouble?’
    I nodded.
    We were quiet for a few moments, except for my gasps of air. I had my hands on my hips and I was looking down at my running shoes, trying not to vomit. She was right, of course. I desperately wanted to be there with her. But I also desperately wanted to get back on the path.
    ‘Are you all right?’ GG asked. ‘I’ve been worried.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. But then out of nowhere and for no reason I could put my finger on, I burst into tears. GG took hold of me and squeezed me tight. She was horribly sweaty, but then so was I. It didn’t matter one bit. I was just so grateful to be held. It felt safe.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, as I heaved out great gulping breaths. ‘I’m really sorry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’
    ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘It’s okay.’
    She ran a soothing hand over my hair, down the skin of my neck. I could feel my heart thundering against her chest.
    And then I kissed