Tell Me Everything

Tell Me Everything by Sarah Salway Page B

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Authors: Sarah Salway
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I said. I picked out a red Smartie from the tube and started rubbing it round my lips, smacking them together in the mirror.
    “St. Tropez,” Miranda purred. “That could be us, Molly. Strolling hand in hand with dark Frenchmen before we take champagne on one of the yachts there. They'd buy us jewels. Loops of pearls that we'd wind round our necks, diamonds for our fingers. Tiaras even. They'd feed us with their fingers, the tastiest piece of lobster, an oyster straight from the shell.”
    “I get a bit seasick on water,” I warned. “My tiara would probably drop off as I was vomiting over the edge of the yacht.”
    “And then we'd go to a nightclub until morning, dancing and drinking cocktails.” Miranda ignored me. “We'd walk home in our glittery evening dresses, smiling at all the ordinary people we passed as they rush off to work. Just imagine.”
    “Don't think it's really me. You've thought about it a lot though, haven't you? Got it all worked out.”
    But when Miranda didn't answer and I looked at her reflection, I saw that it was her turn to shut her eyes and feel that tremor. She was even leaning against the chair with her whole weight, her head softly falling to one side. The only clue that she was still alive was the way her lips moved to mime along with the French words coming from the CD player. I picked the photograph up from the counter and turned it over and over in my hands, waiting for Miranda to come back down to earth and finish the hairdo.

Thirteen
    S o it was partly because of that heavy-eyed look of Miranda's and the fact that Tim hadn't been in the park for a few days that I went looking in the library for some of the books Miranda told me about. I wasn't expecting much.
    Certainly not to fall in love. Not in the library anyway. But there she was—my first proper crush on a French woman— nestling between Jonathan Coe and a misplaced George Eliot. It was the single name that attracted me first. That, and the old-fashioned orange spine of her book. I turned to the back, as I usually did, to have a look at the writer's photograph before I decided to bother with the story.
    Colette had a long, varied and active life.
    It was looking good.
    At the age of twenty she had plunged herself into a different world

    Twenty. So I'd got there before her. It was love at first read. By sheer luck, I'd picked someone who understood the advantages of reinvention. Maybe I could even learn something from her.
    “Feathery near-pornography,” read the quote on the back of the book. Perfect. It would do for Mr. Roberts too. I took it straight to the desk and joined the queue. The man in front of mewanted to know where he could obtain proper back copies of the
Daily Telegraph.
He looked like a caricature of a retired army officer and even twiddled his mustache as he shouted how he didn't want to have to read them on microfiche, the stories weren't the same on computer.
    “But they're exactly the same words. They've just been copied onto computer to save space,” said the librarian patiently, but the man hee-hawed in her face.
    “If God meant us to use computers, He'd have given us television aerials on the top of our heads. This is a library. For the
written
word. For which our God gave us
eyes,”
he said, looking for all the world as if he'd scored not just one point over her, but won the whole war.
    She stared at him so fiercely though, he backed away.
    “In my day, sentences were meant to be treasured,” he said in a weak parting shot. “Not computered out of all existence. And I would expect you of all people to understand that!”
    The librarian merely looked past him, smiling at me in an attempt to put us both on the same side against the man, but I was torn. Instinct and training meant I wanted to be the good girl for her because she was Authority, but I hated computers too. I compromised by trying to look as if I hadn't heard anything.
    “Ooh, Colette,” she purred as she stamped my book.

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