Second Fiddle Read Free

wasn’t nonsense in my view. I hate to have to admit it, but I am a disappointment to my mother. My mother would have preferred a daughter like the girl with the violin, one who’d wear a shirt like a surgical corset, a confident girl with talent and probably friends, who could stand up in front of an audience and who definitely doesn’t spend her time mooching about the woods getting herself muddy. I don’t get myself muddy on purpose to annoy my mother, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just that if you muck about in the woods, mud happens. My mother doesn’t seem to understand that.
    â€œShe’d love me more if I was a Miranda,” I said, polishing an apple I’d filched from the kitchen on the ribbing of my jumper.
    â€œA Miranda?” said my grandfather. “Who’s Miranda when she’s at home?”
    â€œOh, nobody. Just a girl.”
    â€œMiranda, she’s called?”
    â€œNaw, that bit’s not true,” I said, biting into my apple with a satisfyingly loud crunch. “The name I made up.”
    â€œBut not the person?”
    I swallowed my bite of apple too quickly and it made cornery progress down my gullet. “Only the name,” I said, swallowing extra saliva to wash the lump of apple down. “I had to make the name up because I don’t know what she’s called. I haven’t met her. I only saw her back.”
    â€œYou only saw her back. But you know enough about her to think your mother would prefer her to you. Oh, Mags!”
    He’s always saying “Oh, Mags!” Come to think of it, a lot of people are always saying “Oh, Mags!” as if I were some sort of troublesome puppy. I’m not troublesome in the slightest. I don’t see why people think they have to throw their eyes up about me all the time.
    â€œYemp. That’s about the size of it, Gramps.”
    I took a swig from my grandfather’s glass, to chase the cornery bit of apple down. He rolled his eyes.
    â€œDon’t call me Gramps,” he grumbled. “I’m not some old American codger. And don’t drink my gin.”
    â€œY’are so an old codger.” I bit into the apple again, hard. “Anyways, it’s not gin. You can’t fool me.”
    â€œOf course it’s gin,” he said with mock grumpiness. Sometimes he does mock grumpiness so well I wonder if it’s not real grumpiness. “And I’m Irish.”
    â€œWell then,” I said, crunching carelessly.
    â€œYou are a difficult child, do you know that, Mags Clarke?”
    â€œHmph. Yemp.”
    â€œAnd you shouldn’t eat with your mouth full.”
    I laughed, revealing a mouthful of half-chewed apple. He doesn’t mind that sort of thing, because he is an old codger. It drives my mother wild.

Gillian
    There is definitely someone hanging about the woods. She looks a bit like something the cat brought in, with her scruffy clothes and her hair all rats’ tails around her shoulders, like a Neanderthal. There’s a new family over the other side, someone said. She must be part of it. New people are usually better, because they haven’t known you all their life; they don’t think you couldn’t possibly amount to anything because they always knew your grandfather was a terrible farmer and as for that hopeless creature your father married, poor man.… Well, of course, she is hopeless, but that isn’t the point.
    Goodness knows, I didn’t choose for this to be the one thing I’m any good at. If I had a special gift for making apple tarts or hairdressing, I’d make apple tarts or cut hair till the cows came home. I wish I could. I’d like to work in a bank when I grow up, or open a coffee shop or set up a Montessori school, and then people would say, “Hasn’t she done well? Considering everything. You have to admire her spirit.” They like you to have spirit, but in