Read Online Families and Friendships by Margaret Thornton - Free Book Online

bid for freedom?
    Debbie had been happy at Kelder Bank for the first four years, at least as happy as you could ever be at school. It was common practice to pretend that you disliked school, even though you might consider it to be really not too bad. She was able to cope quite easily with the work in most subjects. She did not find it hard to study or to do her homework. She did well in the end of term exams, although she was not ‘top dog’ as she had been at the junior school.
    It was during her time in the fifth form, when they were studying like mad for their O levels that Debbie began to feel restless. She had started working at the weekends at Sunnyhill the two days in the week to which she looked forward immensely. Her school work had started to take second place, which worried her parents very much, especially her mother. Mum seemed to be continually on her back these days.
    â€˜Have you finished your homework, Debbie? You have? Well, you’ve been very quick about it, I must say!’
    Or, ‘When are you going to tidy your bedroom, Debbie? It’s a disgrace! And you used to be so tidy. I could write my name in the dust on your mirror. And please remember to put your dirty clothes in the linen basket. Don’t leave them all over the floor …’
    Or, ‘Half past ten, and not a minute later. You’ve got school tomorrow, and you know what you’re like at getting up in a morning …’
    That was after she had started going out with Kevin Hill. Seeing Kevin at weekends was, of course, one of the main reasons that she looked forward so much to Saturdays and Sundays. She had liked Kevin as soon as she met him, and dared to believe that he liked her as well. When he had first asked her to go to the pictures with him she had been over the moon with excitement. Nor had it been just an isolated occasion.
    After their first visit to the cinema to see
Georgie Girl
they went on to see rather more daring films such as
Alfie
and
The Graduate
. Films that Debbie was not sure her mother would approve of; Mum was getting very stuffy and critical these days.
    At least her parents seemed to like Kevin. The fact that he was the son of the boss was a point in his favour. Kevin called for her and took her home again when they had been out for the evening, kissing her goodnight at the gate. Discreetly at first, but then, as they grew friendlier, they lingered a little while longer in a secluded shop doorway or alleyway.
    Whitesands Bay was not exactly a swinging sort of town, compared with many in what was being called the ‘Swinging Sixties’. Liverpool seemed to be the place to be now. How Debbie would have loved to visit the Cavern where the famous Beatles had played. But it was out of the question up there in the wilds of Northumberland. There were not only the Beatles, but Cilla Black, the Searchers, and Gerry and the Pacemakers. Elsewhere there were the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks, and the very amusing Herman’s Hermits.
    Debbie and her friends had to be content with listening to their records. She had a Dansette record player and saved up for the records of her favourite bands, the Beatles being the one she liked best of all.
    No, Whitesands Bay could not compare with Liverpool or London, but a few discos had sprung up in the town, where records were played by disc jockeys, as opposed to the music of live bands. Debbie would have loved to dance the night away, like many of the local teenagers were able to do, those who did not have to get up for school the next morning. For work, maybe, where they would, no doubt, turn up bleary-eyed, which would be frowned on at school.
    Kevin was a sensible lad, conscious that Debbie was two years younger than he was; and so he steered her away from pubs, or from the pills that could be bought – within the law – for not very much money at some discos and clubs.
    Sometimes, during the summer, they just walked on the promenade