Free Break Point by Kate Rigby Page B

like Anne knocked out but then Wimbledon's
always full of surprises. Karen's been and gone too but Karen had a
much lower ranking and was never going to be able to sustain any
sort of consistent performance, and what are we to make of Robina?
Oh, Robina doesn't always live up to her seeding, though she's
stayed the course so far - I will say that for her.
    The voices
stay low until Mrs Parrott says, "Anyway I hope you'll be all right
this weekend because don't forget we're off to Lincoln tomorrow for
a few days so we shan't be able to take you out. Do tell your
helper girl to pick more strawberries or anything else in our
garden while we're away, won't you? I'll see you on Monday
then."
     

SECOND
THURSDAY
     
     
    Hazel phoned
again this morning. "We're sending someone over at lunchtime," she
said. "A youngster called Shari Mott."
    A
youngster called Shari? The Shari, I shouldn't wonder, from Kingham Community
with her skirt up her bum.
    Later, I open
the door to the youngster. Her blond hair's all bound up with white
braid in a top knot and paler lips you never saw. She's not wearing
the official Carewise uniform either but is kitted out in this
white lace-trimmed short-sleeved blouse and a high white skirt and
frilly apron.
    White for
tennis. But it's like something a waitress in one of them oldie
worldie tea shops would wear, and I'm sure she is the Kingham Shari
who passed Elliot's every day.
    "Hi, I'm
Shari." She's got a sugar-coated voice. “I’ve been sent from
Carewise."
    People aren't
just a few years younger than me these days, not even a decade.
They're yarns younger, by half a lifetime.
    "Gwen, your
new carer's here. Shari."
    "Shari? What
kind of a name ... ? Good Lord. They didn't tell me they were
sending along a schoolgirl. How old are you, child?"
    "Seventeen."
    "I'll make us
all a cup of tea," I say.
    "You'll do no
such thing," says Gwen. "Isn't it time for your tennis? Besides, I
want to see how the newcomer shapes up."
    So I'm
dispatched off upstairs but having a new carer downstairs, one this
young, whose ways I don't know, isn't as good as it sounds. It's a
big distraction. She might need to borrow me for my experience and
so I'm on guard, waiting for the ball to come from any
direction.
    Just like
Venus and Steffi. The great black Venus is wearing a clingy white
halter-neck tunic, tiny above her long legs with the dark purple
knees. Her beaded hair shimmies and clacks above her bare
shoulders. It's like she's dancing. Anyway, I think Venus is
stunning, she'll win it one day, but I can hear girlie footsteps on
the stairs, a dainty knock on my door, and it's Tracey Austin
walking out on court for the first time in her Alice-in-Wonderland
frock. With her bunches and braces and two-handed
backhand.
    "Mrs McMahon
told me to have a good look round the house," says Shari, all sort
of simpery.
    I open the
door wider and she slithers in.
    "It was Gwen's
old room but she spends most of her time downstairs
now."
    Shari's got
thin bits of jewellery shining on her wrist and neck and ears. "You
don't mind me looking around, do you?"
    She has a look
about, and I'm suddenly craving a male workmate. Sometimes working
around women all day gets dead claustrophobic. I used to love being
among the bus drivers and going into a den of men first thing.
Because men don't stick together in their den. They go out into the
world.
    "She whinges
on a bit sometimes, doesn't she?"
    "You'll get
used to her, duck."
    Shari sits on
the padded stool where Anne The Great sat.
    "Done much
work with the elderly before, have you?"
    "Not much,”
she says. “Did a bit in a nursing home."
    "Oh yeah?
Which one?"
    "Oh it was in
Newminster. I've looked after my grandfather too."
    She brushes
off my attempts to glean any more on the matter.
    "You still at
school?" I ask.
    "Why?"
    "Thought I'd
seen you in school uniform. Kingham, ain't it?"
    She twiddles
with the sliver of chain on her collar bone. "You know what she
said to me?" Her skin is so