Charm School Read Free Page A

Bonny know exactly what she wanted in the lighting line, she spoke as if Bonny were some little garden gnome brought to life, just for the day, to be useful. ‘Now look here, quick!’ Grabbing Bonny’s arm, she spun her round to face the mirror that ran the whole length of the wall. ‘See all those horrible lumps? Well, what I want you to do is fix up the lighting so—’
    ‘What horrible lumps?’ asked Bonny, mystified.
    ‘Those!’ Miss Cute Candy said, pointing.
    So Bonny looked again. All she could see in the mirror was herself, the flat grey wall behind, and Miss Cute Candy in her silky yellow dress and diamanté slippers, like an exotic spring flower rising, willowy and graceful, from a spangled pool.
    ‘I can’t see any lumps.’
    Miss Cute Candy patted at the folds of her skirt.
    ‘These,’ she said. ‘The lumps on these great ugly tree stumps.’
    ‘Are you talking about your legs?’
    ‘Legs!’ scoffed Miss Cute Candy. ‘They’re so huge, they’re more like pillars in a multi-storey car park!’
    Was she serious? One minute, she’d been lording it over Bonny as if she were Miss World and Bonny were some little goblin. And the next minute, she was panicking about the size of her legs.
    And really panicking. This was no joke. There was a tremble in her voice, Bonny could tell. And she was close to tears.
    Bonny suddenly felt sorry for her, just the same way she’d felt sorry for Angelica for worrying about winning.
    ‘Don’t be so silly,’ she tried to comfort her. ‘You look—’
    But Miss Cute Candy was too upset even to listen. ‘I look horrible. Horrible! I’m fat and hideous. My nails are a sight. My hands would look more delicate stuffed inside oven gloves. I’ve got the worst legs in the world. My stomach sticks out like a pig’s belly. My hair’s turned to straw. I’m ugly, ugly, ugly.’ She made a face at herself in the mirror. ‘Ugly!’ she jeered again. ‘I’m a horrible little gnome and my clothes look like jumble.’
    ‘Jumble?’ This was beyond ridiculous. ‘How can you say that your clothes look like jumble? That dress looks to me as if it comes from one of the smartest shops in town. And those sparkly slippers must have cost a
fortune
!’
    But Miss Cute Candy was still staring despairingly into the huge wide mirror.
    ‘It’s not the clothes. They’re all right, I suppose. It’s what they look like on me. They do look like jumble. I bulge out all over, I’m so fat.’ She started beating at her thighs with bunched-up fists. ‘Fat, fat, fat! That’s what I am. Fat!’
    Bonny was mystified. Was this one of the little tantrums the tea boy had mentioned when he called Miss Cute Candy a tiger? But she didn’t seem at all tigerish to Bonny. She seemed
desperate
. So maybe Bonny should rush down to Bookkeeping (Advanced) and fetch her mother, who could come up and say what she always said to Bonny when she was being silly about her hair, or her face, or the shape of her body.
    Or Bonny could just try saying it herself.
    ‘Don’t be so soft. You know you’re beautiful.’
    ‘I am not! I am
not
!’
    But how could Bonny go on and say the next bit? How could you say to someone whom you hardly knew, ‘Well, you are to
me!
And even if you weren’t, I wouldn’t care. Even if you were the worst-looking person in the world, with a face like a squashed tomato and a body like a car wreck, I’d still love you so much I could burst, and so will everyone who ever gets to know you.’?
    You can’t make a speech like that to someone you’ve only just met, even if you know it backwards. And Bonny did. She’d heard her mother saying it a thousand times. She’d heard it when she came home from nursery school crying because Robert said she had a face like his toy bath duck. She’d heard it after she won the painting prize, and Estelle was jealous and whispered to everyone that Bonny looked like a maggot. She heard it from her mother over and over the year she was in