are you up to tonight, then?”
I said in an offhand way, “I’m staying at yours actually, because Dibdobs has gone off making acorn pies with the Brownies.”
He laughed.
And then I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
He said, “What have you been up to at college?”
I said, “Well we did an improvised thingy about the Brontës. You know, howling winds…woooooooo. And then we did leaping and there’s going to be a performance lunchtime about, um…well I thought I might do the owl eggs.”
He looked puzzled.
“Eggs?”
Oh noooo. Now I had started an egg thing. Again. Because I had been thinking about the last time I saw him in the barn. I couldn’t back out of it, so I said, “Yeah, you know, the, well, I was thinking about the owl eggs and I thought I might do a performance about them.”
He still looked at me and didn’t say anything.
So I went on. “Yeah, because Ruby told me that when they are born, the owl twins will have double eyelids, which is, um…interesting.”
And I started doing an impression of double eyelids for him.
Not that he had asked me.
But as I had started I couldn’t stop. I raised my bottom eyelids really slowly upwards without moving my upper eyelids. Which is hard, actually.
Alex folded his arms and leant back and said, “How old are you?”
And I said, “Hahahahaha, old enough.”
Why? Old enough for what? To be friends with eggs?
Just then a car drew up with a boy driving and honked its horn. Alex slid off the wall and waved at the bloke. Then he said to me, “Have fun. Don’t lead my sister into bad ways.”
And he went off and got in the car.
Ruby came out with Matilda, her bulldog, and waved Matilda’s paw at him. And the car drove off.
I said, as casually as I could, “So where is, um…Alex off to?”
She looked at me and said, “Don’t even think about it.”
I daren’t ask Ruby anything about Alex. I felt a bit sad. And stupid at the same time.
But it was good fun with Vaisey and Ruby. We had our tea in the pub kitchen served by Mr Barraclough, Ruby’s dad. I’d never seen Ruby’s mum and I didn’t like to ask where she was. Especially as it might then lead to questions about my mum and dad who I haven’t even heard from.
Mr Barraclough said, “What will you artists be up to tonight, then? Will you be pretending to be stuck in an imaginary cupboard?”
Ruby said, “Dad, can we have crisps?”
He said, “Yes, just as long as you don’t let these two make them into anything unusual.”
And he went laughing off into the bar.
He’s big. He ate fifteen pies at the pie-eating contest.
So we just messed about upstairs in the pub. Vaisey and me worked out what we were going to wear to go to Skipley and tried out different make-up. Vaisey is quite good with make-up. She drew a dark brown pencil line around my eyes and I thought it made me look a bit more grown up. Sort of more moody and less startled.
Vaisey said, “You should wear a darker pink lipstick.”
I said, “How do you know that sort of thing?”
And she showed me some mags that she had, that told you all sorts of stuff. In the make-up and hair guide it said you should wear make-up to balance your shape. And then there were pictures of girls with a square face, and a round face, and a long face; one with big lips and one with thin lips; narrow forehead, chubby cheeks, no cheeks. It was a nightmare trying to choose what I had. In the end we sort of agreed I was a longy roundy biggy-faced person.
Which is a help.
I said to Vaisey, “It’s alright for you, you’re that one in the middle.”
Vaisey said, “The turned-up nose, sticky-out hair, small-cheeked, round-faced person?”
I said, “Exactly.”
Then I said, “You’re cute as a button, though.”
She smiled at me.
She is cute as a button.
We let Ruby use our lipsticks and eye shadows and I said I will get her something tomorrow from town. Her dad shouted up the stairs, “Oy, Ruby, beddy-byes for thee.”
She went off to her bedroom.
Vaisey and I were sleeping in the same bed. It was cosy because we could hear the sounds from the pub downstairs. A lot of laughing and singing.
The bedroom door creaked open and Ruby came in in her nightie with Matilda. She and Matilda looked at us. Matilda is not what you