Free Every Good Girl by Judy Astley Page A

butter-coloured leather. Within seconds, she’d decided they were a gay couple, about to fill their house with interesting treasures, with souvenirs of unusually exquisite taste from foreign travel and that they’d hang soft silky kelims on the walls. They’d grow their own herbs. As an afterthought she gave them a small and ugly dog which they would make fat from treating it to Smarties. As she turned back to the book-sorting, smiling at her own ludicrous assumptions, she decided to take them a box of Maison Blanc’s most delectable cakes as a moving-in token, and she already planned to be thoroughly disappointed if they didn’t eat them with a stunning set of art nouveau cake forks.
    â€˜Hello Catherine? It’s me, Emily. Emily Malone.’
    Emily’s feet felt cold, even on the sitting room carpet. She curled herself on to the sofa and wedged her knees up under the big T-shirt, and then quickly unfolded her legs again, smoothing the fabric down and crossing her legs neatly in a way that felt more suitable for talking to the immaculate Catherine. She imagined her, even at just after seven in the morning, already made up for work and wearing a sheeny Joseph suit set off with one of the horribly twiddly little gold-chain necklaces that she seemed to like. If I had clothes like that, she thought now as she had before, I’d wear chunky stone jewellery, or stark wide silver bands.
    â€˜It’s awfully early.’ Catherine’s voice sounded likeMrs Hutchins whingeing about an overdue essay. She didn’t actually go on to say ‘What do you want?’ in a really rude way, but Emily could sense that she’d like to. Perhaps Joe was in the room with her, she thought, trying really hard to keep the picture of a fully dressed-for-the-office Catherine in her head and not replace it with one of her in bed wearing nothing but something tiny, rude and lacy.
    â€˜I’m really sorry,’ Emily apologized resentfully. ‘It’s just the only time I can be sure to catch you at home and it is a bit of an emergency. You know your brother, Simon?’
    â€˜Well of course I do,’ Catherine snapped. ‘What about him?’
    Fierce and unexpected tears stung Emily’s eyes at this impatient rebuke. I hate her, she thought, but continued, trying to smile to make herself sound like a sweet, nice girl: ‘Well it’s just that when I met him we got talking about A-levels and he mentioned that he’d done a lot about Wordsworth for his degree and that he still had the essays and notes . . .’ Emily paused for breath, sure that she was gabbling in a stupidly desperate, juvenile way. Catherine remained silent. Emily imagined her inspecting her fingers, picking a teeny crumb of stray wholemeal toast that had dared to creep under one perfectly varnished nail. A big tear trickled down Emily’s face. What was her dad doing living with the kind of woman who spent a whole hour doing the base, polish and topcoat ritual with nail varnish? What went through her head while she did it? Why isn’t she pleased to hear from me,
why doesn’t she even ask how I am
?
    â€˜It’s just that he said I should call him if I had any problems about the Wordsworth stuff, and I haven’t got his number. So please could you give it to me?’
    It felt like begging, especially into the prim silence that was at Catherine’s end of the phone. If Emily told Nina, Nina would probably say something kind like ‘Oh perhaps she’s shy, not everyone’s comfortable talking to teenagers.’ Too generous by three-quarters, that was the trouble with Mum. What would it take for her to know, just
know
that Catherine was a cow?
    â€˜Your father could have given you the number at a more reasonable time of the day. It’s in his address book too, you know. Just wait a moment.’ Catherine put the phone down and Emily could hear her footsteps trit-trotting