Zelah Green by Vanessa Curtis

Author:Vanessa Curtis [Curtis, Vanessa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Egmont
Published: 2011-09-18T20:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The radio’s on in the kitchen and Alice is standing over a brown pottery bowl, beating something to death.

‘Morning,’ she says. ‘Caro’s birthday.’

I’m nearing the end of my second week at Forest Hill House and getting used to the routine. Alice and Lib are the first ones down for breakfast so that they can chat without Caro’s sarcastic comments. Sol slopes in half an hour later. And Caro has to be dragged out of her bed with huge dark circles under her eyes.

Alice is waving something in my direction. Her thin arm holds out a wooden spoon dripping with cake mix. The arm trembles with the strain of holding it up long enough for me to clap my mouth round the mix without touching the wood of the spoon.

‘It’s gorgeous,’ I say. Alice flushes with embarrassment and disappears under her hair to carry on beating.

‘I wish someone had told me,’ I say. ‘I haven’t even got her a card.’

Alice slops the cake mix from her bowl into a round tin and observes me from behind her right-hand wing of hair.

‘Maybe the Doc thought you had more important things to worry about,’ she says. ‘But actually I’m rubbish at icing, so maybe that could be your present to Caro?’

I leap up, turn the radio up to full blast, and hunt around in the kitchen drawer for nozzles and syringes.

By the time Caro staggers in, rubbing her eyes and complaining at the racket, a sticky, uneven chocolate cake sits in the middle of the kitchen table.

Caro holds the plate up to the light and inspects the lumpy layers and amateur icing.

‘Random, or what!’ she says. The smile fades from Alice’s face. I flash my eyes at Caro and tilt my head towards Alice.

Caro gets it. She puts the cake down.

‘Thanks, Alice,’ she says. ‘Sorry. I thought that OCD here had made it. In which case she’d still have been counting out the ingredients.’

I ignore the barb and wrap a tissue round the handle of the bread knife.

‘Breakfast cake, anyone?’ I say.

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