Secret Friends by Elizabeth Laird

Author:Elizabeth Laird
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

Chapter Nine

It was amazing how quickly the gap that Rafaella left at school closed over. For a few days everyone was rather solemn and unusually nice to me, then they forgot, and two weeks later it was as if Rafaella had never even been at the school. I needn’t have worried that people would go on calling her Earwig. They never spoke about her at all.

But the gap didn’t close over inside me. It grew deeper and wider. It bled. I would come home to our cold dark house and wish and wish that I was still a welcome guest in her warm bright one.

After a while school wasn’t too bad. I made a few new friends and I didn’t feel the need to follow the crowd any more. But at night I had to drive the image of Rafaella out of my mind before I could get to sleep. I only ever thought of her as sad and angry. I never remembered the good times we had had.

One night I dreamed about her so vividly that I remember the dream still.

She was at home with her family, happy and lively, but the room slowly changed. The red shaded lamp disappeared, the books and pictures and rugs faded away and we were all at a cold dingy railway station.

‘I’ve got to go away,’ Rafaella said as she climbed into a dark train.

‘And it’s your fault, your fault,’ her mum and dad and Dani all said together, pointing their fingers accusingly at me.

When I woke up my pillow was wet with tears. The dream was so real that I couldn’t shake it off. I had a desperate desire to see the three of them, to tell them I was sorry, that I had truly wanted to be Rafaella’s friend.

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