The Truth About Julia: A Chillingly Timely Psychological Novel by Schaffner Anna Page A

political positions, but she didn’t. I asked whether I could sleep in her bed that night, but she said she was tired and needed to rest. The next day – it was a bright autumn afternoon that contrasted starkly with my darkening mood – we all went to the zoo together. Julia and Jeremy were outraged by the perversity of taking animals out of their natural habitat and imprisoning them in cages so that they could satisfy the voyeuristic desires of bored bourgeois families. They hatched plans to liberate a black panther that had attracted their sympathy because of his sad eyes and psychotic pacing in his little cage. They made all kinds of other ridiculous plans like that. Again, they didn’t pay any attention to me at all. I fell behind at some point, and from a distance I saw that Jeremy took Julia’s hand and that she didn’t pull it away. It really turned my stomach, that moment.
    After the zoo, Jeremy took us to a vegetarian restaurant for supper. They talked non-stop, really intensely, again until closing time. I hadn’t eaten my meal because I had kind of lost my appetite, but nobody noticed and nobody asked whether I wanted anything else. When Julia and Jeremy shared a dessert they didn’t offer me any of it. It really was as though I had ceased to exist, all of a sudden. At some point later in the evening I went to the loo because I just couldn’t repress any longer the sobs that were threatening to break out. I didn’t want to cry in front of Jeremy – I’d started to massively dislike the guy. I stayed there for at least twenty minutes, and expected Julia to come and look for me, but she never did. When I finally returned to the table, I saw that Jeremy’s hand was on her arm. I stood behind them for a while, just looking, and trying to control my agitation. They hadn’t noticed that I’d come back.
    ‘Can I see you again tomorrow?’ Jeremy asked.
    ‘Sure,’ Julia said. ‘We could go and see a film together – actually, Amy and I really wanted to see Psycho again. I think it’s showing tomorrow afternoon at the Curzon.’
    ‘Look, Julia, what I meant was can I see you , not you and your sister. I find it a little creepy, the way she follows you around. No offence, but it just doesn’t seem quite right at her age – doesn’t she have any friends of her own? And what about you – don’t you ever get tired of having to drag her along?’
    And then he looked at her, from below, in that slimy, puppy-dog kind of way, you know? My heart started pounding like mad when I heard that. Surely Julia would throw her drink into Jeremy’s face, get up and never see him again. Surely she wouldn’t let that go unpunished. She’d smashed someone on the head with a bottle once for having kissed me, after all. What would she do to Jeremy? Spit in his face? Stick her fork into his arm? I held my breath. But Julia did nothing of the kind. Instead, she laughed. Then she pressed his hand and said:
    ‘OK, I suppose Amy can go and watch Psycho on her own tomorrow.’
    I slipped away and then returned to the table a few minutes later, white and shaking. Not that anyone noticed. The next day, Julia went off after school to meet Jeremy without me. For the first time ever, I had to take the bus home on my own. The house felt cold and empty – our parents always used to come home late. I did my homework in the kitchen. When I had finished I just didn’t know what to do with myself. I went up to my room and sat on the bed all evening, waiting for Julia to return. I refused to come down to eat with my parents. I was kind of hoping that Julia’s date was going horribly wrong, that she’d burst into my room outraged and tell me what an atrocious kisser Jeremy was, that he had mackerel breath, and that he was a clownish toff. That she was sorry for having neglected me so horribly the other day. Then we would both cry and embrace and she’d let me sleep in her bed that night and confess everything that had happened