Cross Your Heart, Connie Pickles by Sabine Durrant

Author:Sabine Durrant
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Social Issues - General, Social Issues, Humorous Stories, England, Teenage girls, Family, Diaries, Diary fiction, Children: Young Adult (Gr. 7-9), Juvenile Fiction, Mothers and daughters, Fiction, Girls & Women, Family - General, Social Issues - Emotions & Feelings, Social Issues - Adolescence, Emotions & Feelings, General, Friendship, Children's Books - Young Adult Fiction, Adolescence
ISBN: 9780060854799
Publisher: HarperTempest
Published: 2007-04-03T10:53:16.530000+00:00

Thursday 6 March

Still in bed, 9.20 p.m.

I didn’t go to school today. I knew we’d have double French with everyone flashing their latest French-exchange letters about. And I didn’t even have to work on an excuse. Mother asked how I was the moment I came down. ‘Still feeling poorly, chérie?’ she said, so I only had to nod.

Mr Spence was sitting at the table in the back bit of the sitting room, drinking tea and eating toast. He seems to get here earlier and earlier. He and Cyril were discussing the relative merits of crunchy versus smooth peanut butter. I heard him say, ‘I like crunchy on top of ordinary butter, particularly combined with jam, but smooth if I’m just having a cracker. What about you?’

‘Same,’ said Cyril.

Mr Spence said, ‘You’re just copying.’ Cyril and Marie giggled. Honestly, the last thing Mother needs is another child at the table.

‘Yeah, well, I think I’d better stay at home today,’ I said. Mr Spence and Mother exchanged a glance. I should have seen what was coming. He said, ‘Well, I’m here all day. So I can tend to the invalid if ness.’ He was wearing a tight red top with a show-off logo on the shoulder and the kind of narrow jeans Julie calls ‘ankle-thinners’.

I shot Mother a pleading look. ‘Can’t I come to work with you?’ I said. ‘I don’t feel ill ill, just sort of not well. But I won’t be sick or anything.’

She ummed and ahhed. Mr Spence went into the kitchen and changed into his work clothes. I saw a flash of white leg and royal-blue he-man knickers. Yuk. ‘Please,’ I said, shuddering. ‘I’ll be very good. I don’t want to be –’ I rolled my eyes in his direction (she must know how creepy he is) – ‘left.’

She studied me for a moment, all sorts of thoughts chasing themselves across her face. ‘Oh. OK,’ she said finally. ‘But be good, huh? Bring a book.’

I hadn’t realized what a rush it was for her to get C and Μ to school, catch the train, change at Clapham Junction and get to work in time for 9.30 a.m. We had to stand all the way too. No wonder her legs ache all the time.

Pritchard & Benning Corsetières is tucked away in a backstreet off a backstreet behind Victoria Station, between a tanning shop and a dry cleaner’s. It has a very unprepossessing shopfront and when it’s shuttered up, as it was when we arrived, gives no outward indication of the wares inside. It’s like something from the olden days. You’d imagine only very ancient and grand ladies totter here to buy 18-hour girdles and Cross Your Heart bras. But actually it’s very much ‘on the map’, as Mrs Pritchard puts it. Posh women – or ‘girls’ – flock in their kitten heels from Hampstead and Notting Hill for their expert fittings. It is in certain circles the only place to get your bosom measured.

Last time I came was at

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