LITMIR.BIZ

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the kitchen, where Mr Young and Hal’s little sister were debating the nutritional value of Honey Loops, and so to Hal’s room.

      Hal was tilting a tray of school books into his backpack.

      “How’s our project going?” Mardy asked. “I want a full report.”

      “See for yourself,” said Hal, nodding to a computer screen.

      Mardy looked. One half of the screen displayed a photograph of a sheep in a field. In the other a second sheep (which Mardy vaguely recognised) was sitting in a railway carriage with some knitting. Above this picture Hal had printed “THE SHEEP OF THINGS TO COME?” in lurid letters, dripping blood.

      “I know it’s not exactly right for the ‘Ethics of Cloning’, but I got carried away.”

      “It’s great,” Mardy said encouragingly. “Just Yarrow’s thing. You’re a marvel, Hal, a marvel.”

      Hal looked relieved. “I’ll work on it some more tonight.”

      They left the house – Mardy leading, as was her right. At primary school Mardy and Hal had not been close. There, Mardy had been the queen of her own court, the most popular child in class. Hal, at best, had been her court jester. Popularity was a strange thing. Mardy had been neither the prettiest, nor the cleverest, nor the nicest person in her year. She dressed well enough, but was not spectacularly fashionable. She was barely above average in art, in sport decidedly below. Yet she was the one whose friendship counted – and whose dislike could send a child to lonely exile at the fringes of the class. Mardy could not have explained this herself, but had seen no reason to question an arrangement so much to her own advantage. She had assumed it would go on for ever.

      Then came secondary school. Most of Mardy’s friends were heading to Marshall Community. Juanita, Carrie and Charlotte were all going there, along with half a dozen more of her hangers-on. The only one of her group destined for Bellevue School was Hal Young. At the time she had thought of Hal as a kind of consolation prize. Not that Mardy had been worried. True, she would miss her old friends, but soon she would be enthroned at the centre of a fresh set of admirers.

      Yet Bellevue School had remained indifferent. Mardy’s face was just one among hundreds. Most of her new classmates had arrived with friendships intact and felt no need of her. She was not disliked, no one bullied her – but no one sought her out either. When it came to picking teams, she found herself relegated to the middle of the list.

      If Mardy had been a weaker girl, or a more truly conceited one, she might have coped far worse. As it was, she was soon reconciled to her modest position. It was even a relief not to be continually looked to for her opinion. There was always good old Hal, she told herself, if she needed to practise her leadership skills. Next to Alan’s illness, what did any of it matter?

      The plane tree road was longer than ever today. By the time Hal and Mardy reached its end a sharp hissing rain was falling.

      Hal consulted his watch. “It’s 8.58 already, Mardy.” He was always precise about time, and kept and spent it carefully. “Better give Hobson’s a miss.”

      Mardy paused, but only for a moment. She thought about her perfect weight briefly, but habit got the better of her. “I’ll only get the plain bar this time, not the double chocolate.”

      She was already halfway through the newsagent’s doorway.

      When Mrs Hobson saw her she reached automatically for the double chocolate Nut Krunch Bars, while Mardy found the right money. “Just the plain today,” Mardy told her virtuously.

      “On a diet, Mardy?” Mrs Hobson smiled knowingly.

      “Certainly not!”

      But Mrs Hobson’s knowingness was proof against indignation. “I’ll be sure to lay in a stock of low-calorie bars,” she confided in a very audible half-whisper. The only other person in the shop – a twiglet in a mini-skirt – turned and looked Mardy over. Mrs Hobson continued: “I know just how hard it can be, believe me. Fighting Temptation.”

      Hal was waiting by the school gate. “Got your chocolate fix? Then let’s go, before you rack up a detention.”

      Two lates in one week equalled one lunchtime detention and Mardy was riding her luck. They skidded up the empty corridors of C Block to the corner classroom, where Mrs Yarrow was already halfway through the register. Luckily both their surnames came late in the alphabet. A number of children smirked as they came in together. One group in particular – that snooty lot from Bluecoat Primary – exchanged looks as if they were in on a scandalous secret involving Mardy and Hal. It didn’t matter that the secret wasn’t true. What mattered was being in on it.

      Mardy sat in her place and answered Mrs Yarrow in her turn just as if she had been there all the time. She knew how seriously to take the Bluecoat lot. They knew nothing of her and cared even less. It was Rachel Fludd she was interested in.

      Rachel was the only other girl who had arrived in the class without a ready-made set of friends. Her family had only just moved to the town, it was said. Rachel herself had a slight accent, pearled with rolling ‘r’s and lazy, hissing ‘s’s – but it was hard to pin her down. Sometimes, she would make a remark that suggested English was not her first language. She had odd little areas of ignorance, had never heard of Christmas cards, seemed not to know what milkmen were. But Mardy could never be sure, for Rachel was not communicative, on that or any other subject. She sat by the window as often as she could, and sulked.

      Mardy was not quite sure how she had come to dislike Rachel so much. Both were strangers, both a little lonely: they could so easily have become friends. Yet even their likenesses drove them apart. Skinny, and taller than Mardy by two inches, Rachel might otherwise have been her sister. If Mardy had stood in front of a fairground mirror to see her reflection stretched out long and squeezed in thin, that reflection would have looked a lot like Rachel. But that just made Mardy remember how far she was from her perfect weight and she resented Rachel all the more.

      Outwardly, Rachel took no more notice of Mardy than of the other children. But Mardy was sure that Rachel both recognised her own dislike and heartily returned it. It was a secret between them – the kind of personal, wordless secret usually shared only by close friends.

      Rachel, naturally, had not even glanced up when Mardy and Hal had made their entrance. What she could see in the playground outside was bound to be more interesting, even if it was only a pyramid of swept leaves being rained on. Her hair was black like Mardy’s, but not well-brushed, and with a dusty look as if she had had to push through cobwebs to leave the house. Her clothes were dusty too, especially the hand-knitted cardigan she always wore, so small it barely covered her shoulders. But that face! Those dark eyes! Mardy was frightened by Rachel’s eyes sometimes – by the things they were looking at, that Mardy could not see. Her face was long and solemn when she was left to herself and that was most of the time. Spoken to, she started like a hare.

      Mardy fumed. It was an act, it had to be. Probably Rachel was thinking of her at that very moment.

      And – at that very moment – Rachel turned in her seat and looked directly at Mardy. She put her finger to her lips, and shushed.

      “Did you see?” Mardy asked Hal in French, half an hour later. “As-tu vu?”

      “Je ne comprends pas,” shrugged Hal.

      “Blockhead!”

      “Quiet, Mardy!” Mrs Mumm was listening in on her headphones.

      “Did you see?” Mardy mouthed at Hal. “She must have heard me thinking about her. I always thought she could.”

      Hal, quite reasonably, was unconvinced. “Mind games. Don’t let her get to you.”

      Mardy looked despairing. “You don’t understand about Rachel at all.”

      “What’s to understand? She keeps herself to herself, that’s all. Or would if people let her.”

      This way Hal had of being ploddingly sensible

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