Best Friends Read online

  'You're all sticky' said Alice, but she squeezed my hand back. 'OK, if you get the job I'll do the shopping and cooking and look after the house. I can cook. Well, I can do toast and boiled eggs and I know how to do stuff out of tins like baked beans.'

  'I love baked beans,' I said, but I was thinking about the looking after the house bit. What house?

  Alice was thinking about it too. 'Where will we live, Gem?' she said in a very small voice. She looked like she might start crying any minute.

  'That's simple,' I said firmly. I can never bear it when Alice cries, even though she makes such a habit of it. 'There must be heaps and heaps of empty houses in the whole of London. We'll find one and we'll creep inside. I'll climb through a window – you know I'm good at climbing. We'll clean our house and make it all cosy, our own place, like when we were little and we used to make those cardboard box houses in the garden, remember?'

  'Right,' said Alice, though tears were starting to trickle down her face.

  We both knew it wasn't right at all. We weren't little five-year-olds playing with plastic tea sets and teddies and Barbies. We were two girls really running away. We didn't have a clue where to go in 64

  London. Biscuits' creepy psycho was starting to stalk me in my head.

  'OK, London, here we come,' I said, as we saw the station way down at the very end of the road.

  We walked smartly, hand in hand, giving each other brave, encouraging smiles. Alice still had tears dripping down her cheeks but we both pretended not to notice. We went into the station entrance and up to the ticket window.

  'We'd like two children's fares to London, please,'

  I said, dead nonchalantly. I'd been rehearsing what I was going to say in my head for the last five minutes.

  'Who are you two kids with, then?' said the ticket man.

  I was ready for this too. 'We're with our dad,' I said. 'He's gone to get a newspaper from the kiosk.'

  The ticket man eyed me beadily. 'What about his ticket, then?'

  'He doesn't need one. He's got a season ticket,'

  I lied.

  Alice looked at me in open admiration. The ticket man certainly seemed convinced.

  'Single or return?' he said.

  'Single,' said Alice. 'We're not going to return.'

  'Fifteen pounds then, dear,' he said.

  I felt as if I'd had fifteen punches in the stomach.

  'Fifteen pounds?'

  65

  'That's for the two of you,' said the ticket man.

  I couldn't believe it was so expensive. Alice scrab-bled in her pocket for her money. She found one tightly folded five-pound note. She dug out five gold pound coins. Then another. And another. Two fifty pences. She picked her way through the rest of her change while the ticket man sucked his teeth.

  The chocolate and crisps and marshmallows stirred round and round in my tummy like a sourly sweet stew. If I hadn't been so greedy we'd have had more than enough. I felt so ashamed.

  'Twenty pence, five pence, one, two, three, four, five, six – and two lots of two pees. Yeah!' said Alice.

  'We've got it. Fifteen pounds.'

  She piled the change onto the little turntable tray.

  The ticket man took a long time counting it, check-ing it twice, but then he printed out our tickets on his machine.

  We grabbed them quickly before he could change his mind and darted down the tunnel to the platform. It was a long echoey tunnel so I let out a whoop. It went whoooop all around us, as if fifty Gemmas were whooping in a wild chorus.

  'Ssh!' Alice hissed. Fifty weeny little shushes reprimanded us.

  We both burst out laughing and our giggles echoed above us as we ran the length of the tunnel.

  'We've done it!' I said, giving Alice a big hug 66

  when we were up on the platform. The London train was up on the indicator board, due in two minutes.

  'We've really done it. London, here we come!'

  We hadn't done it at all.

  We didn't get to London.

  We heard shouting

  coming from the car

  park behind the

  platform. We saw a

  taxi and my mum

  and dad and

  Alice's mum and

  dad were jumping

  out of it. They waved their arms, calling our names.

  'Oh help,' I said, clutching Alice. 'Quick! Let's run.'

  We had nowhere to run. We were trapped on the platform.

  I saw the London train approaching in the far distance.

  'Oh come on, train, please!' I willed it to fast-forward so we could leap on board and rush off to our new life in London. But it was still toy-train size and the parents were starting to run up the platform.

  Alice's dad caught her up in his arms. Her mum burst into tears. My mum got hold of me by the shoulders and shook me until there was a roaring in my ears even louder than the approaching train.

  Six

  They all thought it was my idea to run away. I decided I didn't care. After all, I didn't want to get Alice into trouble.

  I was in BIG BIG BIG trouble. Mum was so mad at me. She managed not to say too much in front of Alice's family but when we got home she shook me again and she shouted, her face so close to mine her spit sprayed in my face. She wanted me to cry and tell her I was sorry. I gritted my teeth and stared straight back at her. I wasn't going to cry one weeny tear. Not in front of her. I wasn't sorry.

  I wished I'd run away for ever and ever and ever.

  Mum sent me to my

  bedroom. I lay on my bed with

  my face in the pillow. Dad

  came up after a while and

  sat down on the bed beside

  me, patting me awkwardly

  on the back.

  68

  'There now, Gem, don't cry,' he said.

  'I'm not crying,' I said thickly, my head still in the pillow.

  'I know your mum went a bit over the top, pet.

  But you gave us such a terrible fright. We were so shocked when we got that phone call from Mrs McVitie saying you two were wandering round the town all by yourselves, making your way to the station . . .'

  That traitor Biscuits! He'd told on us. Alice was right about him. I wanted to stuff his great gobby mouth with so many of his favourite bogging biscuits

  – wafers and shortbread and custard creams and jaffa cakes and jammy dodgers and bourbons and digestives and chocolate chip cookies – that he choked to death.

  'Didn't you have any idea how dangerous it was to go off like that? Two little girls out on their own . . .' Dad shuddered so that he shook the bed.

  'Anything could have happened to you. You must promise never ever ever to try to run away again, do you hear me?'

  I didn't want to hear him. I put my hands over my ears. After a while he crept away.

  I stayed lying there, head still in the pillow. But then, even with blocked ears, I heard the sound of Dad's taxi starting up. I ran to the window. Mum was sitting in the back looking very boot-faced.

  69

  I hammered on the window. 'Are you going back to Alice's house? Let me come too! Please! I haven't said goodbye to her.'

  Mum and Dad didn't look up at me. The taxi drew off. I went hurtling out of my bedroom, but Callum caught me on the landing.

  'Let me go! I've got to go to

  Alice's,' I shouted.

  'You can't go, Gem. You're in

  disgrace in both houses, you

  know that. Stop struggling,

  kiddo. Ouch! Don't kick me,

  I'm on your side!'

  'Then take me to see her! Take

  Then take me to see her! Take

  me on your bike, Callum, please, please!'

  'Look, they won't let you see Alice even if I did take you. Her parents went completely bonkers when they knew you were both missing. You should have heard them.'

  'I don't see why. They don't give a stuff about us or they wouldn't separate us,' I