A Village Feud Read Free Page B

it was best to leave her to it. Your mother said I could.’
    ‘I see.’ By now Fran was starting on a chocolate biscuit, her favourite, Blue Riband, and by the look of Grandmama’s face she disapproved.
    ‘I always have one when I get back. In fact, sometimes I have two if I’m really hungry.’
    ‘You know what they say, chocolate before five, spots before nine.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Gran, but you’ve just made that up.’
    Grandmama hesitated. This was the trouble with Fran; she could see through her ruses almost before they left her lips. ‘Well, maybe I have, but girls have to be careful. Now you’re almost in your teens you won’t want to be spotty, will you? You’ll want a nice clear skin, like I’ve had all my life.’ Grandmama smoothed her cheek with her fingers. ‘See? You can’t complain at my skin, can you?’
    ‘No.’ The chocolate biscuit eaten, just to annoy, Fran got a second one out of the fridge and took great delight in biting into it and chewing it slowly. ‘I’m sorry, Gran, would you like one, too?’
    Grandmama had to admit she fancied one. Harriet’s lunches were delicious but light and there were gnawing feelings in her insides and two hours to go to the evening meal. ‘Very well, dear. Let it be our secret.’
    ‘Milk, too?’
    ‘No, I’ll have juice, please. I’ve got to think of my figure.’
    Fran deliberately eyed Grandmama from top to toe and said, ‘Of course.’
    The friction between them was already evident and they’d only been in each other’s company for ten minutes. Grandmama remembered Jimbo’s ground rules and groaned silently. Still, she was the adult and Fran the child, she must remember that. ‘Homework?’
    ‘Yes. I’ll do it straight after this.’
    ‘Is it something I could help you with?’
    Fran declared it wasn’t. ‘I’ll have to look on the internet to do some research.’
    ‘In that case I’ll leave you to it, and while you do your work I’ve some reading to catch up on.’
    Fran shrugged and, picking up her school bag, went into Jimbo’s study.
    ‘Don’t you have your own room? To work in, I mean?’
    Fran’s head appeared round the study door. ‘ He wants me to work in here. I have my own desk. He enjoys me being with him.’
    The emphasis on the word ‘He’ didn’t go unnoticed by Grandmama. The thought occurred to her that maybe the Reverend Anna wasn’t all that bad, but then she shuddered and remembered the times she’d lain awake from six o’clock in the morning listening to Anna’s prayers and wondered which was worse, that or Fran’s sharp tongue. But just maybe the sharp tongue was caused by her grandmother always picking on her. She knew she did, but the child always seemed to catch her on the wrong foot.
    Grandmama Charter-Plackett knew she would have to tread very carefully to keep Jimbo on side. Dear Jimbo, her beloved only child. She recollected how furious she’d been when he’d said he was leaving the merchant bank and going to run a village store. ‘ A village store ?’ she’d repeated in her most disapproving voice.
    But he’d been so successful, what with the Store and the outside catering and his high-class food mail order company, each enterprise so cleverly supporting the others, so dovetailed. He must be making a fortune. He needed it, though. With both the boys and Flick at Cambridge after years at public school; it must have cost him and Harriet thousands. Such a pity Fran didn’t get to Lady Wortley’s like Flick and had to make do with a comprehensive. No hope for her of Oxford or Cambridge. Such a pity.
    Fran, almost as though she could read her grandmother’s mind, angrily kicked off her shoes and swore that one day, one day, she’d show Grandmama what she was capable of. She longed to go to university like the others and prove her wrong. And she would. She opened her Geography exercise book, determined to prove to Grandmama just how successful she could be.
    Harriet came home to a