Clare Chambers - Bright Girls

To Christabel and Florence

Cover Page

Title Page Bright Girls Clare Chambers

One The Arrival

Two The Neighbours

Three Auntie Jackie

Four Big Sister, Little Sister

Five The Bucket and the Bell

Six Adam

Seven Of Rats and Men

Eight Experience Preferred

Nine Oxford

Ten The Handyman

Eleven Total Peace of Mind

Twelve Brass

Thirteen Dark Chocolate

Fourteen An Invitation

Fifteen A Quick Exit

Sixteen Evacuation

Seventeen A Little Favour

Eighteen A Promise is (usually) a Promise

Nineteen Confusing Behaviour

Twenty LBDs and All that Jazz

Twenty-one Mr Elkington

Twenty-two Bad Behaviour

Twenty-three Confessions of an Understudy

Twenty-four Cinders

Twenty-five I could Have Danced All Night (But not in these shoes)

Twenty-Six Alice

Twenty-seven The Gambler

Twenty-eight The Visitor

Twenty-nine Practically Famous

Thirty Charlie’s Revenge

Thirty-one On the Sofa

Thirty-two A Genuine Fake

Thirty-three Ruth

Thirty-four The Jealous Guy

Thirty-five A Roof Over Her Head

Thirty-six Mr Elkington’s Revenge

Copyright

About the Publisher

There was no one to meet us at the station, which didn’t surprise me. My only distinct memory of Auntie Jackie, along with various hints dropped by Dad, had convinced me that she wasn’t a hundred per cent reliable.

Rachel and I stood on the forecourt with our luggage, in the evening sunshine, scanning the cars as they pulled in to collect or deposit passengers, our attention continually drawn away down the hill to the horizon and the blue wedge of sea. Living in Oxford, almost as far from a proper beach as you can get in Great Britain, we had only been to the coast on a handful of occasions, and the seaside still seemed something full of mystery and promise.

“Would you recognise her?” I asked, when the crowd of commuters had melted away and no one had come forward to claim us.

Rachel nodded. “Old people don’t change that much,” she said confidently (Auntie Jackie is thirty-nine.) After about five minutes, a man approached us. This often happens when I’m out with Rachel. “Are you all right, ladies? You’re looking a bit lost.” He was wearing an open-necked shirt, white trousers and flip-flops, revealing horribly craggy male toes. A pair of mirrored sunglasses, which replaced his eyes with blank discs of sky, made him look more unsavoury still.

“We’re fine thanks. We’re just waiting for a lift,” said Rachel, giving more information than I felt was strictly necessary.

“You look familiar,” he said to her, undeterred. “Are you off the telly?”

She laughed and shook her head. “‘Fraid not.”

“Oh well.” He sauntered off, with the swinging arms and sucked-in stomach of a man who thinks he’s being watched.

“Creep,” muttered Rachel.

“Did you see his feet?” We both shuddered.

A minute or so passed. “We could phone, I suppose,” said Rachel, who was generally reluctant to waste her credit on practical matters. “Only my battery’s a bit low.” She had been firing off texts almost constantly since we’d got on the train at Victoria, so this was hardly news.

From the chaos of her bag she produced a piece of paper on which Dad had written Auntie Jackie’s address and phone number, and passed it across to me. My phone was, of course, topped up and fully charged for just this sort of eventuality because I am the Sensible One.

I thumbed in the number and it rang and rang unanswered. “She must be on her way.”

We sat at the bus stop to wait, our feet propped on our suitcases, determined not to waste the last of the day’s sunshine. Although it was after six it was still warm and Rachel rolled her skirt up as far as it could go and still be called a skirt – to soak up the maximum amount of dangerous UVB.

We’d set off from home before lunch and I was surprised how tired I was, considering that I’d been sitting down almost all day on one train or another. I suppose it was that two-hour interlude in London, lugging my suitcase the length of Oxford Street while Rachel was bargain hunting in the summer sales. Her case was one of those zippy new ones on wheels – an eighteenth-birthday present which she’d considered thoroughly uninspiring at the time, but was rather pleased with now that she’d seen my struggles. Mine was an ancient family heirloom which obviously predated the invention of the wheel, as it had to be carried everywhere – all twenty kilos of it. I was seriously considering ditching it at the end of the summer and posting my clothes back home in Jiffy bags. That’s if we ever got home of course.

“Oh, this is ridiculous. Let’s get a cab,” said Rachel. A bank of bright cloud had boiled up over the rooftops, throwing our bench into the shade, so there was no point in further sunbathing. “You’ve got the money haven’t you?”

Dad had handed me a bundle of notes as we said our goodbyes on the station platform that morning. I resisted the temptation to count them straightaway, in case it looked grasping. “I’m giving it to you to look after because Rachel would spend it before you were halfway to Brighton,” he said. She had overheard this and protested, so he’d relented and given her fifty quid of her own, which she had blown in Topshop at Oxford Circus.

“What if she turns up and we’re not here?” I asked. I didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot.

“Well, it’s her fault for being so late.”

She set off at a brisk pace towards the taxi rank, wheeling her case, while I staggered behind. The driver sprang out of the car and almost fell up the kerb in his haste to help her put the bags in the boot. “Where to, ladies?” he asked.

“Cliff Street,” I said, consulting Dad’s scrap of paper again, wondering how far away it was, and how much of that precious £100 it would cost.

“Here on holiday, are we?” he said over his shoulder as he swung out into the traffic. Rachel and I exchanged significant looks.

“Not exactly,” she replied. We were both remembering Dad’s instructions: Don’t tell anyone in Oxford where you’re going, and don’t tell anyone in Brighton why you’re there. You don’t need to lie. Just be vague.

“Oh, I don’t mind lying,” Rachel had volunteered cheerfully. “That’s the fun bit.”

The inside of the cab smelled strongly of pine air-freshener, and the radio was tuned to drive-time on one of those easy-listening stations that refuse to play eighties music because it’s too modern. I meant to pay attention to the route so I’d know how to find my way around, but after a right and a left I lost concentration because a thought had just struck me. If there was no one at Auntie Jackie’s to answer the phone, then presumably there would be no one there to answer the doorbell either. This complication didn’t seem to have occurred to Rachel, who was sitting back, admiring the view, thoroughly at ease in her favourite form of transport.

29 Cliff Street was a tall, terraced house with railings outside and a basement window below the level of the pavement. Once white, it was now streaked with grey – not unlike a cliff in fact. There was a general air of shabbiness about the street, which made me feel quite sad. While I produced a ten-pound note from the mugger-proof zip pocket of my trousers, the driver unloaded the cases and carried them up to the front door – a piece of chivalry worth every penny of his 50p tip.