Bright Girls
Clare Chambers
To Christabel and Florence
Table of Contents
Four Big Sister, Little Sister
Eighteen A Promise is (usually) a Promise
Twenty-three Confessions of an Understudy
Twenty-five I could Have Danced All Night (But not in these shoes)
Twenty-nine Practically Famous
Thirty-five A Roof Over Her Head
Thirty-six Mr Elkington’s Revenge
There was no one to meet us at the station, which didn’t surprise me. My only distinct memory of Auntie Jackie, along with various hints dropped by Dad, had convinced me that she wasn’t a hundred per cent reliable.
Rachel and I stood on the forecourt with our luggage, in the evening sunshine, scanning the cars as they pulled in to collect or deposit passengers, our attention continually drawn away down the hill to the horizon and the blue wedge of sea. Living in Oxford, almost as far from a proper beach as you can get in Great Britain, we had only been to the coast on a handful of occasions, and the seaside still seemed something full of mystery and promise.
“Would you recognise her?” I asked, when the crowd of commuters had melted away and no one had come forward to claim us.
Rachel nodded. “Old people don’t change that much,” she said confidently (Auntie Jackie is thirty-nine.) After about five minutes, a man approached us. This often happens when I’m out with Rachel. “Are you all right, ladies? You’re looking a bit lost.” He was wearing an open-necked shirt, white trousers and flip-flops, revealing horribly craggy male toes. A pair of mirrored sunglasses, which replaced his eyes with blank discs of sky, made him look more unsavoury still.
“We’re fine thanks. We’re just waiting for a lift,” said Rachel, giving more information than I felt was strictly necessary.
“You look familiar,” he said to her, undeterred. “Are you off the telly?”
She laughed and shook her head. “‘Fraid not.”
“Oh well.” He sauntered off, with the swinging arms and sucked-in stomach of a man who thinks he’s being watched.
“Creep,” muttered Rachel.
“Did you see his feet?” We both shuddered.
A minute or so passed. “We could phone, I suppose,” said Rachel, who was generally reluctant to waste her credit on practical matters. “Only my battery’s a bit low.” She had been firing off texts almost constantly since we’d got on the train at Victoria, so this was hardly news.
From the chaos of her bag she produced a piece of paper on which Dad had written Auntie Jackie’s address and phone number, and passed it across to me.