The View on the Way Down by Rebecca Wait

Author:Rebecca Wait [Wait, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447224716
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Part Three

1

If Emma looked back at the last six months, she had to admit that she’d expected more than this. It had been naive of her, obviously. (‘Naive’ was a word she’d encountered a lot in Literature Club, and was determined not to be any longer.) But she was younger then, and you were naive when you were young. Now she was fifteen and she could see that it was stupid to have expected things to change, when all her experience of the past few years had told her that things never changed, but went on in their grey old way until it made you want to scream, or run away and become a missionary.

That was another thing she’d been stupid about. There was a time when she’d dreamed of escaping to do the Lord’s work far away. But you couldn’t just run away to Africa and be a missionary. It wasn’t practical. In a fit of irritation with herself, Emma had thrown out the last board game she’d made, even though it had been one of her best efforts: complex, satisfying and artistically accomplished. It had been missionary-themed, and she’d called it The Lord’s Song in a Strange Land. The rats at the landfill site were probably playing with it now, fighting over who got to be St Paul.

It almost embarrassed her to remember how different she’d thought things would be once she found Jamie. What had she expected him to do? Magically transform her life? Make her thin and stop the girls at school being horrible to her? Jamie hadn’t made the slightest bit of difference, really. She never saw him, and he still hadn’t got back to her about when she could visit, even though he’d said he would. If she was honest, he’d been a bit of a let-down.

Nevertheless, Emma had contemplated asking her parents if Jamie could come to her birthday dinner. It was a special occasion, because fifteen was an important age, and Jamie was family after all, and it was her birthday. But in the end she’d decided it wasn’t worth asking. She knew what the answer would be, because her parents were still weird about Jamie, and there was no point in making things uncomfortable when you wouldn’t gain anything from it.

All the same, her birthday had turned out really well. One of the best moments was when she opened up a soft parcel from her parents and saw a glimpse of shining pink silk, and then the kimono jacket she’d wanted ages ago slithered out onto her lap in all its gorgeous finery.

‘I can’t believe it!’ Emma said, and saw her mother look radiantly happy for a moment.

Emma hesitated briefly, aware that she hadn’t earned the jacket like she was supposed to through her healthy-eating chart. But it was so beautiful that she decided she didn’t care. She held it up to admire it for a few moments, then slipped it on over her jumper.

Her dad handed her another parcel, and said they’d got her this as well.

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