A Pocketful of Eyes Read Free Page A

him.
    ‘Never mind,’ said Angela. ‘I’ll order in. Don’t work too hard!’
    ‘Was that your boyfriend?’ asked Toby, as Bee slipped her mobile into her bag and turned her attention to the broken stitch.
    Surely if she ignored Toby he’d leave soon.
    He didn’t.

    Bee rubbed her eyes and glanced at the clock. It said 11:35 but it was still three minutes slow, so in fact it was 11:38. She glanced at Toby, who was bent over the head of the emu, carefully smoothing the stuffing around its neck. He must have felt her looking, because he spoke for the first time in two hours.
    ‘An emu’s hips are anatomically the closest thing in the animal kingdom to a human’s.’
    Bee blinked, not sure what to do with that piece of information. ‘Do elderly emus have to get hip replacements?’ she said at last.
    Toby leaned back in his chair and smiled. ‘Our heart is closest to that of a pig,’ he went on. ‘We have lungs like a goat, knees like a brown bear, and a brain similar to that of a six-month-old Jersey cow.’
    ‘Really?’ said Bee. ‘How come I’ve never seen a Jersey cow win Who Wants to Be a Millionaire ?’
    Toby shrugged. ‘Their pool of general knowledge is pretty much limited to grass, milk and more grass.’
    Bee laughed, in spite of the fact that she had vowed not to like Toby. ‘Anything else you’d like to share?’
    He grinned. ‘Just one more. Your vagina is like a sheep’s. Not yours specifically,’ he added. ‘Just the human vagina in general.’
    Bee blinked again. Vagina was not the kind of word scruffy-haired boys usually used. But it was becoming clear that Toby was not an ordinary scruffy-haired boy. ‘Does that line usually work for you?’
    ‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’ He reached into his bag and pulled out a little silver flask. ‘Drink?’
    ‘No thanks.’ Bee turned back to her possum.
    ‘So what did your boyfriend want?’ asked Toby after a few minutes.
    ‘It wasn’t my boyfriend.’
    ‘But you do have a boyfriend, right?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Bee, although she wasn’t entirely sure that was true. Fletch hadn’t made contact with her all summer. It was possible that he’d gone away with his family, but surely a dutiful boyfriend would send a postcard, or at the very least a text message to say Happy New Year. Of course Bee hadn’t contacted him either – she wasn’t going to be anyone’s pathetic nagging girlfriend. But the fact remained that she hadn’t heard from him in nearly four weeks, and that didn’t exactly bode well for the future (or even existence) of their relationship.
    ‘You sure about that?’
    ‘It’s none of your business.’
    ‘Hit a nerve, did I?’ Toby smiled an infuriatingly knowing smile. ‘Sorry. I’ll drop it.’
    He really was irritating. Of course he’d hit a nerve! But did he have to go and talk about it and ask rude questions instead of just shutting up like a normal, polite person would? She was at work; she didn’t want to talk about her feelings .
    A part of Bee quietly pointed out that she was more annoyed by a guy she’d only known for twelve hours than she was by her apparent rejection at the hands of actual real-life boyfriend. The thing was, Bee felt faintly relieved to have been dumped (if, in fact, she had been). Fletch was good-looking, and he never talked about uncomfortable stuff or made exasperatingly teasing eyes at her, but he wasn’t very bright and he had a habit of picking his teeth in public. And while Bee had enjoyed the status that having a boyfriend like Fletch had bestowed upon her, he was a bit . . . boring . There was only so long a girl could sit around a guy’s living room watching him play Mario Kart before the shine wore off. If she’d been the kind of person who was fascinated by the pounding of a Wii controller, she could have just stayed home and hung out with her mother. At least Angela played more interesting games.
    Despite all that, nobody liked to be dumped, and Bee’s pride was