Cross Your Heart, Connie Pickles by Sabine Durrant Page B

with enough sense to have realized that? – fell asleep in her Singapore noodles. And I do think Uncle Bert could have made it clearer to Cyril that the Kung-Po Special was squid-related, but maybe he thought we went for a Chinese all the time. Jack and he got a bit funny over the wine list too. There was a sort of tussle. Jack began to say something about the house red, but Bert overrode him. He grabbed the menu and said, ‘Oh no, not Côtes du Rhône. I only drink New World. French wine is so overrated.’
    I just think it was a bit tactless, that’s all. It was as if he forgot himself for a moment there, as if he’d just been pretending before.

Sunday 23 February
    Delilah’s very grown-up bedroom, 2 p.m.
    I bumped into Delilah on the way back from church and she made me come to her house for lunch. She was so bored she wanted to kill herself, she said. Not the most enticing invitation in the world. But I came anyway. I needed cheering up. The thing is, I rang Julie earlier to tell her about the Chinese.
    She said, ‘You went to a Chinese? The one by the river? He took you to his favourite Chinese?’ Like she didn’t quite believe me. ‘All of you?’
    There was something in her voice that made me think she wasn’t happy about it. I tried to make her laugh by telling her about the Kung-Po Special, but she said she had to go before I’d finished. ‘What a big happy family,’ she said before she hung up. But not nicely .
    I hope she’s all right. I hope I haven’t done something to upset her.
    You can never upset Delilah. Not even if you try. She’s so thick-skinned it’s hilarious. We’re wearing orange-and-oatmeal face packs at the moment, so we can’t talk because of cracks. That’s why I’m writing in here. She is filling in her Snog Log. She’s got quite a lot of filling in to do. William, who was at Mass this morning, looking lanky in his smart trousers, told me he’d seen her at a club in Richmond last night, ‘high as a kite’. I mentioned this as soon as I got here, thinking she’d be sheepish. Fat chance. ‘I was just, like, wasted,’ she said. Apparently she got off with a boy. ‘I think it was a boy,’ she added. ‘It might have been two.’
    She’s been on at me all morning. She can’t believe I don’t wear a proper bra. She says I’ve got good legs even if my hips are wide and that my elegant eyes show that I’m trustworthy and good at keeping secrets. She read all that from one of her magazines. There was more to say about the rest of me, but I crossed my arms and told her to get off my back – not to mention my earlobes and my cheekbones. I hate thinking about my body, let alone discussing it.
    ‘Best friend or lover?’ she started on after that. ‘Have you entered the Boy Danger Zone?’
    ‘The what?’ I said.
    It was some quiz in the magazine. It claimed you couldn’t be friends with a boy without sexual tension. Delilah said I had to fancy William because everybody else does. I had to explain what it’s like in the real world – i.e. among normal people who don’t wear blazers and gingham dresses on a daily basis. In the real world no one fancies William. ‘You lot,’ I said, ‘are just desperate.’ That shut her up.
    Oh, her mum’s called us down for lunch. Time to take off our face packs. I do hope I haven’t got a rash.
    My very ungrown-up bedroom, 3 p.m.
    I’ve got a rash. But at least I’m home. Lunch at Delilah’s can be a bit much. It’s not just the smartness and the neatness round there – their house is extended in every possible direction and modern and all painted white –it’s the tension zigzagging in the air. Mother might be hopeless, but at least she doesn’t try to ‘understand adolescence’ like Marcus and Tanya.
    Marcus, who works in the City, flashed his napkin on to his lap and said, ‘So, Connie, it’s a hard year at school this one, isn’t it? All those hormones and a heavy workload. Though your mother tells me you’re