Free Alice in Time by Penelope Bush

the week. I spend every day in a state of nervous anticipation and don’t even notice Sasha’s snide remarks when I get on the bus every morning. I’m too busy scanning the back rows for a sight of him. By Friday, I’m beginning to wonder if I imagined the whole thing.
    I spend the morning break hoping that he’ll come and find me and fearful in case he does and I have to explain him to Imogen. I would have gone through the same agonies at lunch time, no doubt, only I hear someone saying that most of the Sixth Formers are away on a trip or something. I’m hugely relieved because now I can stop worrying about bumping into him and also because I’ve finally heard someone talking about something other than Sasha’s birthday party. It’s certainly all Sasha’s been talking about all week, raising her voice on the subject whenever Imogen and I are in the vicinity. It’s driving me insane. What’s more, next week we’ll have to endure hergoing on about how awesome it was, who she spent the night snogging, how many cool Sixth Formers turned up, etc, etc, ad infinitum. Aaaargh!
    Imogen and I decide to meet up in town on Saturday morning, do some shopping and then go back to her house. She wanted to meet up in the afternoon but I persuade her to make it earlier because I don’t want to be stuck at home all morning with Mum and Rory. Saturday mornings are when Mum ‘tries to catch up on the housework’ and attempts to rope me in, totally disregarding the fact that Saturday mornings are when I like to catch up on a bit of sleep.
    The first time I met Imogen’s mum she told me to call her Claire. ‘Mrs Crawford sounds so stuffy, don’t you think?’ she said to me, like I was a grown up and not a little girl of seven, which I was at the time.
    Not that I get much chance to call her anything, mind you, because I don’t go to Imogen’s very often, and when I do, we spend most of our time in her bedroom so that we don’t disturb Claire’s ‘artistic flow’. She seems to wander round in an artistic trance most of the time.
    I wonder if Imogen knows how lucky she is to have such a laidback mum. One who isn’t always out at work and worrying about everything. Also, it must be great to have something in common. They’re both totally into art. I can’t think of one tiny thing that Mum and I have in common, except that we hate each other and I don’t think that counts.
    When I meet up with Imogen on Saturday, she tells me that she has to go to the art shop because she needs to buy some felt pens.
    ‘Can’t you get them at W.H. Smith’s?’ I say, because the art shop is such a long walk.
    ‘No, they’re special ones,’ she informs me quite sharply. She’s in a mood today so I decide not to complain too much and we set off a bit too briskly for my liking. It’s all right for her. She’s not carrying a bag, but I’m lugging all my overnight things with me. Which is really annoying, because if my plan works then I won’t actually need any of them. As I hurry along beside Imogen, I go over the plan in my head to check that I’ve got it straight. When I left the house this morning, I told Mum I was going to spend the night at Imogen’s and I packed all my stuff – except I made sure I had a stunning outfit in the bag. Well, I say stunning, I don’t actually own anything
stunning
, unless of course Seth is stunned by how naff I look. I have a bit of a problem with clothes, to tell the truth. Everything I own is deadly boring and I can’t even raid Mum’s wardrobe because everything in there is even more boring than my stuff, if that is at all possible.
    So sometime in the afternoon when I’m at Imogen’s, I’ll change for my date with Seth and then at about half past six I’ll tell Imogen that I’ve had a call from Mum asking me to go home because she has to go into work – some emergency or other – and needs me to look after Rory. I’ll then leave Imogen’s and go and meet Seth and then, depending