Free Spirit by Graham Masterton Page A

Gothic nursing homes’. Elizabeth gave her stories titles like ‘Her Finest Hour’ and ‘Janet Wins The Day’.
    When she was writing, Elizabeth felt elegant and happy and attractive. She circled the showjumping rings of the world, her hand raised to acknowledge the amazed applause of the crowds. And, when she dismounted,
he
was waiting for her. Tall, strong and gentle, with ‘dark, hyacinthine curls, and eyes like the restless ocean.’
    There were villains, of course; but these were always ‘sneering and bony-nosed’ and met various sticky ends, including two who died by spontaneous combustion – ‘incinerated in their own inner iniquity’.
    Nobody had read her stories yet; and nobody knew how much she needed them. Ever since Peggy’s death, her life at home had been discordant and unsettling. It was like four different radios playing at once. Father would say one thing; and then he would talk to mommy and mommy would say something else altogether; and then Laura would throw a tantrum and they would all end up saying totally the opposite.
    What was worse, she herself was changing so much. Her face seemed to grow uglier and uglier every day, with a long nose just like father’s, and sticky-outy ears, and a neck that went on and on just like a giraffe. She had grown much taller, too. In fact she had grown so much taller than Laura, and so much taller than anybody else in her class, that she walked everywhere with her books clutched to her chest and her shouldershunched, so that nobody would notice her extreme height. She kept her hair long and straight, held back from her forehead with an Alice band, because she thought it concealed her giraffe-like neck, and she wore her favourite summer dress almost every day. Father had bought it too big for her, in the expectation that she would ‘grow into it’, and she had cried when she had first tried it on, because it made her feel so old-maidish. But she liked it now. At least her shoulders didn’t strain the stitches around the yoke and her wrists didn’t dangle miles beyond her cuffs, like they did with her other dresses, and at least the bodice was loose enough to hide her swelling nipples, about which she was deeply embarrassed. The dress was covered in tiny blue-and-yellow flowers, with a double collar edged in blue-and-yellow piping, and Elizabeth always wore her blue enamel pony club badge with it. She was founder, president, chairwoman and only member of the secret and very exclusive Lake Candlewood Pony Club; and she didn’t even own a pony.
    As they walked the whole length of Oak Street, along the hot afternoon sidewalk, the three girls didn’t have to discuss where they were going next. Laura took hold of every telegraph pole she passed, and swung around it, and sang ‘
Don’t sit under the apple tree . . . with anyone else but me . . . anyone else but me . . .
’ Laura, who had been eleven in April, was prettier than ever. The sun had bleached her blonde curls so that they shone even brighter, and she was petite and trim and easily the most popular girl in the third grade.
    â€˜Do you think Dick Bracewaite ever thinks about girls?’ asked Molly.
    â€˜Well, of course, silly!’ said Laura. ‘He’s a man, isn’t he, and men are always thinking about girls. That’s what Aunt Beverley says, and she should know.’
    â€˜Oh, sure,’ Molly retorted. ‘Your Aunt Beverley is practically a man herself.’
    â€˜She is not!’
    â€˜She is too! My father says you’d only have to cut her hair short and you wouldn’t be able to tell her from Robert Taylor.’
    Laura swung her schoolbooks and hit Molly on the shoulder with them. The strap came undone, and they scattered across the sidewalk. Molly chased Laura around and around a telephone pole while Elizabeth tried to rescue them. Loose pages were fluttering everywhere. Molly caught up