Phoebe Morgan - The Wild Girls

Hannah hits send, and leaves the phone in Max’s room as she heads for the shower. She hears it beep instantly again, but this time she ignores it, continues stripping off her clothes, steps into the hot steam of the water and tilts her face upwards into the stream. Her body feels cumbersome, loaded with weight and with worry, and she runs her hands over her stretchmarks and her hips, squeezing the flesh a little bit too hard. Hannah forces her mind to go blank. She doesn’t want to know the answer to her question. Not yet.

Alice

They did a class project on Africa once, at school. The kids drew pictures of the animals – elephants, gazelle, leopards, strange four-legged creatures dotted around the pages of their workbooks, the sky above them a bright line of blue, simple and opaque. They wanted to paint their faces; Alice had said no and felt guilty for the rest of the week. Most of these children will never go to Botswana – most of them will probably never leave Hackney. Would it really have killed her to let them wear a bit of face paint? Tom would say she is too strict, that the way she always plays by the rules stifles the children’s creativity. What he really means is that it stifles him.

On the way home from school, she pulls the invitation from her bag again. Red ink has furred onto the edge, a leaky biro to blame. As she walks, Alice re-reads it, properly this time. It’s only then that she notices the small print at the bottom, like a little afterthought: all expenses paid . She blinks, stops in the middle of the street. A group of teenagers pushes past her, hoods up, gum on their breath, and a woman with a raffia shopping bag tuts loudly, but Alice ignores them all. All expenses paid? God. Is Felicity really so rich that she can pay for her friends to come on holiday? Alice thinks of her own dwindling bank balance, and for a moment, the hot, blind panic that has threatened to overtake her recently rises up, climbing her throat and creating pins and needles in her hands. But while Alice exists on discounted sandwiches and tap water, thanks to the massive weight of their mortgage that hangs over her head like an axe, Felicity rents an apartment in New York yet can somehow afford to fly her friends out to Botswana to celebrate her birthday.

In what world, Alice thinks to herself, is that fair?

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.