Read Online Second Fiddle by Siobhan Parkinson - Free Book Online Page A

my!”
    â€œYeah. You see what we’re up against. Not that Tim is a proper forester anyway, he’s only doing it for the summer to see if he likes it. I don’t think I can bring myself to e-mail him, the miserable swine.”
    â€œIf you want the money, you’ll have to.”
    â€œDon’t want to,” said Gillian, chewing her fingernails. You’d think a person who bothers with nail polish wouldn’t do that.
    I sighed.
    â€œI know what,” I said after a while.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œ I’ll do it. It’s my computer after all. I’ll e-mail him. ‘Dear Mr. Regan, You don’t know me, but I am a friend of your daughter’s. She desperately needs a hundred euro. If you phone her, she will explain. Her life depends on it.’ No, that’s too scary. ‘Her future depends on it. Please get in touch. A well-wisher.’”
    Gillian laughed. Her too-small face broadened and looked as if it were going to crack right across. She looked like an amused frog. She definitely didn’t look like someone who’d changed her mind about looking for her father.
    â€œI always wanted to sign something ‘A well-wisher,’” I said happily. “It’s so menacing.”
    In the end, this was the e-mail we sent:
    Dear Mr. Regan,
    I am a friend of Gillian’s. Gillian urgently needs a cash advance for an honorable purpose. If you phone her, she will explain. I think you should get in touch. You should be very proud of your talented daughter.
    Yours faithfully,
    Margaret Rose Clarke (A well-wisher)
    P.S.: Gillian is a vegetarian and would like you to stop making her eat steak, as it is against her principles. She is too shy to tell you this herself. I am not shy, however, which is lucky for her. She also needs some proper clothes and a larger face.
    I added the P.S. later, after Gillian had gone home, though it’s not true about her being shy, or not that I’m aware of. (Have you noticed that nearly everyone in the world claims to be shy, “really”? You could try it out: ask a random group of people if they are shy “really” or “deep down inside,” and you’ll see what I mean. It’s the same with having a sense of humor. Ask a random group of people if they have a sense of humor, and every single one of them will say that they have a great sense of humor. It’s astonishing that there aren’t more shy comedians in the world, to my mind.)
    I took out the larger face bit before I sent the e-mail. That was only a joke between me and myself. But I left in about needing new clothes, because I thought it was true. She couldn’t do something as serious as an audition in those frippy things she normally wears. The day I called at her house, she was wearing a coloredy top with a drawstring around the neck, like a laundry bag. You can’t do an audition in a laundry bag.
    My mother wanted to know what was going on. What were we doing, spending hours on the computer when we could be out in the sunshine?
    â€œOh, we go in adult chat rooms and pretend to be over eighteen,” I said airily. “We thought we might find boyfriends that way. American ones.”
    â€œMags!”
    â€œOf course we don’t,” I said. “You’re such a wet, Mum. Do you think we have no sense?”
    â€œNo,” said my mother. “That is to say, yes.”
    â€œYou are absolutely convinced I am going to be kidnapped and murdered and chopped up into little pieces and made into soup, aren’t you?”
    â€œMags, don’t talk like that.”
    â€œBut you’re wrong. I don’t talk to strangers. I don’t take stupid risks. I say no to drugs, though I have to admit I tried beer once at a wedding, but fortunately I didn’t like it. I don’t go into chat rooms. I’m all right, Mum, I’m all right! ”
    â€œWhat wedding?” said my mother. “Who gave