Jenny Valentine--4 Book Award-winning Collection (Finding Violet Park, Broken Soup, the Ant Colony, the Double Life of Cassiel Roadnight) by Jenny Valentine

Author:Jenny Valentine [Jenny Valentine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-11-11T05:00:00+00:00

I watched myself in that car, my head leaning against the water-beaded window, my mind on a lot of nothing. I watched from where I was sitting in a room in Camden with black floorboards, and I thought, if you knew when your life was about to start going wrong, would you change it before it was too late?

Four (Bohemia)

The old lady with the dog was called Isabel. She seemed all right to me. Mum told me to watch out cos people like that were never nice for nothing. I was watching out, but I was just walking past her door when she said, “Come on in, whoever you are.”

It was like walking past a phone box when it rings. I’ve always wanted to do that. And then for the phone call to actually be for me.

She was in the kitchen. She said, “Help me get the lid off this bloody yoghurt. Damn stuff is supposed to be good for you and the stress of it is going to finish me.”

She had the pliers out and everything. She’d been trying to pull off the side of the pot cos she couldn’t see where the lid started. I flipped it open in about three seconds. First she looked angry with it and then she laughed.

“I’m Isabel,” she said. “I saw your nice door sticker. Is your name Cherry or Bohemia?”

“Bohemia.”

“Where did you get a name like that?” she said.

I shrugged. “Most people just call me Bo.”

“Well, it’s not a piece of fruit at least,” she said, sort of under her breath so I wouldn’t hear it, except I did. “Cherry your mum’s real name, is it?”

“I think so,” I said, because I’d never been asked that question before.

“Cherry Chapstick?”

“No, Cherry Hoban,” I said.

She started spooning yoghurt into a mug. I was looking at it so she asked me if I wanted some and handed me the rest of the pot. She asked me how old I was and I told her I was ten.

“Why aren’t you at school, Bohemia Hoban?” she said.

I liked that she used my whole name. It made me feel like somebody important. I said I was home-schooled cos that’s what Mum says.

Isabel put her hands on her hips then and clucked her tongue and said, “What lesson is it now then?”

“Yoghurt opening,” I told her, and she laughed.

She said being home-schooled was a lot more than wandering about the place waiting for my mum to wake up.

“She is awake,’ I said, which was actually true.

She said, “If your mum got a whiff of what home-school was about you’d be down the local primary in a second. Home-skiving’s what you’re doing.”

See? That’s why Mum didn’t like Isabel.

I didn’t look at her, even though I know she was looking at me. I ate some more yoghurt before she could ask for it back.

“So you’ve met us all then,” she said.

“I’ve met you and the landlord with the face.”

“That’s Steve,” she said. “Don’t stare. It was an accident with a facial peel.

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