Read Online The Past and Other Lies by Maggie Joel - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Maggie Joel
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here she was doing a question on trigonometry. A man walking five miles on a bearing of 092 degrees.
At which point she’d realised if she stayed in the gym one more minute she was going to be sick. Or worse, cry. She hadn’t made a decision to leave, just found herself pushing back her chair so that it had fallen with a thud onto the floor and she had fled the hall, leaving her exam paper and her answer booklet and her pencil case with her calculator and ruler and protractor on the desk and vividly, agonisingly , aware that every head had turned to stare at her, that three invigilators had started up after her, which was exactly, it was exactly what she hadn’t wanted. Everyone staring.
A girl running at five miles per hour on a bearing of 092 degrees.
She escaped across the quadrangle and through the teachers’ car park to the side gate and away. There was a bus pulling up at the bus stop that would have deposited her right outside her house but instead she turned in the opposite direction, running, needing to put distance between herself and the school. When, much later, she arrived home, she fumbled with the front door key, ran straight upstairs and shut herself in the bedroom she still shared with Jennifer.
If Mum had been home she might have wondered why Charlotte was home at three forty-five when the maths O-level wasn’t scheduled to finish till four o’clock. But Mum wasn’t at home, she was sitting in the waiting room of Dr Caddington’s surgery with Grandma Lake, who needed a new prescription for some unnamed complaint. So when Charlotte arrived home with her school jumper tied around her waist and her face pale and carrying only a pencil there was no one to notice.
When it became apparent the house was empty she came to a dead stop in the middle of the bedroom, there being nowhere else to run.
Her school bag was hanging on the back of the door where she’d left it that morning because you were only allowed to take pens and pencils and calculators and protractors and rulers into the exam. Next to the bag was the pink jumper she’d bought Jennifer for her seventeenth birthday last September. Her own seventeenth was less than a month away and she stared at the jumper and her own fast-approaching birthday with equal dismay.
She snatched up the jumper and clutched it tightly in both fists so that the wool stretched taut. Then she remembered that one of the faces that had stared at her as she’d fled the exam hall had been Zoe’s, and she groaned and sat down on the floor because she would never again visit Zoe’s house in Beechtree Crescent.
Hours passed. Mum came home. Grandma Lake settled in front of the telly. Tea was served and Jennifer still hadn’t come home from school.
‘She’s out with her friends,’ Mum said and no one asked why Charlotte wasn’t out too, when it was the last day of exams. Dad said, How did you do in the exam, then? and Mum said, Aren’t you going to eat that, dear? and then Charlotte went back upstairs.
Perhaps they assumed Jennifer was out with Darren. But Darren came round at seven looking for her. Charlotte had already finished her tea and was standing at the top of the stairs when the doorbell rang, so it was she who saw Darren’s familiar green parka through the frosted glass of the front door and she who, on the second ring, went woodenly downstairs and opened the door.
Darren. She stared at him. Jennifer wasn’t with him. She almost closed the door on him because the last thing she wanted, the very last thing, was her sister’s boyfriend standing there in the doorway staring at her.
‘Is Jen in?’ Darren said with his northern accent and it was such a normal, Darren thing to say that at first she just stood there.
‘No,’ she replied at last. Where was Jen? Probably out with her friends drinking milkshakes at Wimpey in the high street or down by the canal talking to boys from the grammar school. Having a good time, at any rate, while her boyfriend
At which point she’d realised if she stayed in the gym one more minute she was going to be sick. Or worse, cry. She hadn’t made a decision to leave, just found herself pushing back her chair so that it had fallen with a thud onto the floor and she had fled the hall, leaving her exam paper and her answer booklet and her pencil case with her calculator and ruler and protractor on the desk and vividly, agonisingly , aware that every head had turned to stare at her, that three invigilators had started up after her, which was exactly, it was exactly what she hadn’t wanted. Everyone staring.
A girl running at five miles per hour on a bearing of 092 degrees.
She escaped across the quadrangle and through the teachers’ car park to the side gate and away. There was a bus pulling up at the bus stop that would have deposited her right outside her house but instead she turned in the opposite direction, running, needing to put distance between herself and the school. When, much later, she arrived home, she fumbled with the front door key, ran straight upstairs and shut herself in the bedroom she still shared with Jennifer.
If Mum had been home she might have wondered why Charlotte was home at three forty-five when the maths O-level wasn’t scheduled to finish till four o’clock. But Mum wasn’t at home, she was sitting in the waiting room of Dr Caddington’s surgery with Grandma Lake, who needed a new prescription for some unnamed complaint. So when Charlotte arrived home with her school jumper tied around her waist and her face pale and carrying only a pencil there was no one to notice.
When it became apparent the house was empty she came to a dead stop in the middle of the bedroom, there being nowhere else to run.
Her school bag was hanging on the back of the door where she’d left it that morning because you were only allowed to take pens and pencils and calculators and protractors and rulers into the exam. Next to the bag was the pink jumper she’d bought Jennifer for her seventeenth birthday last September. Her own seventeenth was less than a month away and she stared at the jumper and her own fast-approaching birthday with equal dismay.
She snatched up the jumper and clutched it tightly in both fists so that the wool stretched taut. Then she remembered that one of the faces that had stared at her as she’d fled the exam hall had been Zoe’s, and she groaned and sat down on the floor because she would never again visit Zoe’s house in Beechtree Crescent.
Hours passed. Mum came home. Grandma Lake settled in front of the telly. Tea was served and Jennifer still hadn’t come home from school.
‘She’s out with her friends,’ Mum said and no one asked why Charlotte wasn’t out too, when it was the last day of exams. Dad said, How did you do in the exam, then? and Mum said, Aren’t you going to eat that, dear? and then Charlotte went back upstairs.
Perhaps they assumed Jennifer was out with Darren. But Darren came round at seven looking for her. Charlotte had already finished her tea and was standing at the top of the stairs when the doorbell rang, so it was she who saw Darren’s familiar green parka through the frosted glass of the front door and she who, on the second ring, went woodenly downstairs and opened the door.
Darren. She stared at him. Jennifer wasn’t with him. She almost closed the door on him because the last thing she wanted, the very last thing, was her sister’s boyfriend standing there in the doorway staring at her.
‘Is Jen in?’ Darren said with his northern accent and it was such a normal, Darren thing to say that at first she just stood there.
‘No,’ she replied at last. Where was Jen? Probably out with her friends drinking milkshakes at Wimpey in the high street or down by the canal talking to boys from the grammar school. Having a good time, at any rate, while her boyfriend
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