The Day Of Second Chances Read Free Page B

pushchair out onto the pavement, took Oscar’s hand, and stepped off the bus, balancing Iris on her hip. The bus hissed at her and moved off almost before they’d fully disembarked.
    The pushchair fell over backwards.
    â€˜Next time we are taking the car,’ said Jo, heaving it upright yet again and settling Iris more securely on her hip. ‘There are adventures, and then there are
adventures
. Shall we run?’
    Oscar squealed and scampered off down the broad pavement, lined by neat gardens, towards the park. Jo ran after him, steering the pushchair with one hand. Lyddie would be home already, or in a minute, or maybe she’d see her in the park, and Jo could settle the children and take something out of the freezer, iron Lyddie’s uniform for tomorrow quickly, put away the shopping, brush her hair and teeth and jump into the car. With any luck she could be on a train to London before five o’clock. It would be rush hour on the Tube – would it be better to drive? What would the North Circular be like?
    Her mind went to Honor as they ran. A fall. She couldn’t picture Honor ever falling. She could only picture Honor standing straight.

Chapter Three
Lydia
    IT STARTED WITH yoghurt.
    Does that sound dramatic, or dumb? The How To Write book I’m reading says that you should open your stories with a dramatic line, something to pull the reader in. The problem is, of course, what sort of dramatic line do you choose, when nothing really dramatic happens to you ever? Just a series of little events that cause way more worry than you would think, if you observed them from the outside?
    Well, there was the one dramatic thing that happened to Dad. But I wasn’t there.
    Anyway, it did start with yoghurt, so that’s how I’ll begin my story. I was in the lunch queue trying to decide between a strawberry and an apricot yoghurt. Apricot is vile, but it was low-fat, and the strawberry was full-fat. Personally, I do not give a flying monkey about whether a yoghurt is low-fat or not, but Avril is doing this thing where you check the package of everything you eat for how many grams of fat and sugar and carbs it has, and then you enter it into some app on your phone. Erin and Sophie and Olivia are doing it because they are the eating disorder girls, and for some reason Avril has taken it up too because of some imaginary cellulite on her thighs. It won’t last. She can’t resist Maltesers.
    But right now they’re obsessed, and I knew that if I came back to the table with a full-fat yoghurt after eating my entire packed lunch, they would all watch every mouthful I took, imagining it appearing directly on my hips. Not that I care about what the Bulimia Buddies think. I eat when I’m hungry like a normal person.
    But Avril. So I reached for the apricot.
    â€˜Hey lezza, move your fat arse.’
    It was Darren Raymond, standing ahead of me in the queue – I recognized the spots on the back of his neck, which are my pleasant view every Maths lesson. He was talking to someone standing in front of the service area. Tall, lumpy, holding her empty tray in front of her. That new girl, the one with the funny name.
    â€˜Yeah, get moving, you’re holding up the whole queue,’ said another boy.
    â€˜Some of us are hungry for something other than pussy.’
    The queue erupted into laughter. The new girl’s face was bright red. Her eyes were searching for a grown-up, someone to say something, to tell the boys off for swearing, but the dinner ladies had disappeared.
    â€˜I’m – I’m waiting for my lunch,’ she stammered. ‘I’m – it’s a special lunch, gluten free.’
    â€˜It’s a special lunch, gluten free,’ mocked one of the boys, I couldn’t see which one. But I could see the girl’s hands on her tray: white-knuckled, and shaking. I didn’t know her name, but anyone could see how she felt.
    â€˜And