Jean Ure - Secret Meeting

“If you can’t be trusted,” she said, “you can go downstairs.”

“We’re not doing anything,” said Annie.

“I still think it would be better if you went downstairs.”

“We don’t want to go downstairs! We’re happy up here.”

“Yes, well, I’m not happy with you up here! I’m the one that’ll catch it if you do something you’re not supposed to.”

Annie flounced, and huffed, but I knew, really, that Rachel was right. Another minute and I might have given way to temptation. I had to admit that I didn’t personally see anything so wrong in visiting a chatroom for bookworms; I mean you’d think it would be classed as educational, but I had given Mum my word. It was the only reason she let me go round to Annie’s. I knew she wasn’t terribly happy about it, because of Annie having her own computer and her mum and dad being a bit what Mum calls lax; but Mum couldn’t always get time off in school holidays.

“I just have to trust you,” she said.

It was probably all for the best that Rachel had stepped in. I don’t think I would have been tempted, because in spite of what Mrs Gibson and Mum believe, I do quite often stand up to Annie. Not if it’s just something daft that she wants us to do, but if it’s something I actually think is wrong. Like one time she showed me a packet of cigarettes she’d found and wanted us to try smoking one. I didn’t do it because I think smoking cigarettes is just too gross. In the end Annie agreed with me and threw them away.

Then there was this other time when she thought it might be fun to write jokey comments in library books, such as “Ho ho!” or “Ha ha!” or “Yuck!” I told her off about that one. I said it was vandalism and that I really, truly hated people that wrote things in books. Or turned down the corners of the pages. That is another thing I hate. I don’t so much mind them doing graffiti in the school toilets as the school toilets are quite dim and dismal places and graffiti can sometimes make them brighter and more interesting. But books are precious! Well, they are to me. I know they are not to Annie, but after I’d lectured her she got quite ashamed and said that if I felt that strongly, she wouldn’t do it. She does listen to me! Sometimes.

But she hardly listens to Rachel at all. She grumbled all the way downstairs.

“We don’t want to go downstairs! There isn’t anything to do downstairs. We want to stay in my bedroom. It’s not fair! It’s my house as much as yours! What right have you got to tell me where I can go in my own house?”

“Every right!” snarled Rachel. “I’m the one who’s been left in charge!”

“You’re not supposed to push us about. You’re only here to protect us in case anyone breaks in.”

“I’m here to make sure you behave yourself!” shouted Rachel.

“I was behaving myself!”

“You were going to use that computer. You were going to do things you’re not supposed to do! You get down there.” Rachel gave Annie and me a little shove along the hall. “And you stay there!”

“But there isn’t anything to do down here!” wailed Annie.

“Oh, don’t be so useless!” Rachel herded us into the kitchen. “Go out in the garden and get some exercise!”

Rachel is a great one for exercise. She is an exercise freak. She is for ever charging fiercely up and down the hockey field, billowing clouds of steam, or dashing madly to and fro across the netball court. She also goes to the sports club twice a week and swims and jogs and does things with weights. This is why she is so lean and toned. In other words, super-fit. She thinks Annie and I ought to be super-fit, too. She is going to join the police when she is older. I just hope she goes and joins them up in Birmingham, or Manchester, or somewhere. Anywhere, so long as it is miles away from here! Here being Stone Heath, which is near Salisbury, and very quiet and peaceful, which it most certainly would not be if Rachel started bashing about with a truncheon. She’d whack people over the head just for breathing.

“Go on! Get out there,” she said, flinging open the back door. “Go and get some fresh air, for a change. You’re like a couple of couch potatoes!”

I said, “What’s couch potatoes?”

“Human beings that sit around doing nothing all day, like vegetables. Look at you! Megan’s like a stick of celery, and as for you” – she poked poor Annie in the stomach – “you’re like a water melon!”

“Water melon’s a fruit,” I said.

“ Thank you, Miss Know-it-All!”

“Don’t you treat my friend like that,” said Annie. “You’ve got no right to treat my friend like that, and just stop shoving me ! Ow! Ouch! You’re hurting!”

Rachel took absolutely no notice of Annie’s howls; she is a really ruthless kind of person. She must have a heart like a block of cement. She drove me and Annie into the garden and for over an hour she made us throw balls at her so that she could whack them with a rounders bat. By the time she let us go back indoors we were completely exhausted.

“See what I mean?” she said. “You’re so out of condition it’s unbelievable! When I was your age I could run right round the playing field without even noticing it. You can’t even run round the garden!”

She still wouldn’t let us go back upstairs. She said she was going upstairs, and we were to stay in the sitting room until Mum came to collect me. Well! Quite honestly, we were so faint and wobbly from all the crashing about we’d done, chasing after the balls she’d whacked, we just sank down side by side on the sofa – a big shiny water melon and a little trembly stick of celery – and watched videos all afternoon. One of them was Candyfloss , which was the very first Harriet Chance I ever read! I know the film practically off by heart, word for word. If ever we did it as a school production, I could play the part of Candy, no problem! I would already know all my lines. Except that Candy has bright blue eyes “the colour of periwinkles”, and blonde hair which “froths and bubbles”, whereas I have brown eyes, more the colour of mud, I would say, and mousy flat hair, not a bubble in sight; so probably no one would ever cast me as Candy, more is the pity. But it doesn’t really bother me; I wouldn’t want to be an actor. I am going to be a writer, like Harriet!

I am just SO SICK of baby-sitting. Mum says, “For heaven’s sake, Rachel! It’s only a few weeks in the year.” She also points out that I am being well paid for it, which is perfectly true. Mum and Dad pay me more than Jem gets paid for stacking shelves, AND I don’t have to take fares out of it. Or food. But as I said to Mum, there is more to life than just money.

Mum pretended to be very surprised when I said this. Her eyebrows flew up and she went all sarcastic, saying, “Oh, really?” in this silly artificial voice. “Well, that’s nice to know. You could certainly have fooled me!” A reference, I presume, to Christmas, when I was moaning – QUITE JUSTIFIABLY – about Gran giving me a box of bath salts. Bath salts, I ask you! LAVENDER bath salts. And a titchy little box, at that.

Mum was quite cross. She reminded me that it was the thought that counted, to which I retorted that in Gran’s case the thought obviously hadn’t counted very much. Mum then told me not to be so grasping, but I don’t see that it WAS grasping, considering Gran spends a small fortune going off on cruises every year, and that me and Annie are her only and dearly beloved grandchildren.