The Testament of Jessie Lamb Read Free Page B

monster–they’re evil, they should have holes drilled in their brain and needles stuck all over them and boiling wax poured in!’ Sal wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. ‘I don’t know why you care about who did it.’
    â€˜I’m sorry. Shall I make some cocoa?’ Sal likes cocoa, we always used to have it at her house. When we went down to the kitchen Sammy got excited and started barking, and we ended up throwing the ball for him in the garden.
    That was one of the first times I argued with Sal. I didn’t really know what I wanted to say but I didn’t just want to talk about how bad the terrorists were and how they should be punished. Yes, of course they were wicked, but it was more I wanted to know why this had been allowed to happen. Or, what it was about now, about us, that made it able to happen? I felt outside all that blah about isn’t it terrible and shocking, as if there was something I knew that no one else did.

Chapter 3
    Then came the public information announcement. They trailed it all week on TV and in the papers; it was when they officially stated that MDS was worldwide and everybody had it. They compared it to being HIV positive and said most of us would live out our lives without ever getting ill; the trigger for it to become deadly was pregnancy. They wanted to reassure us that governments across the world were cooperating in research blah blah blah.
    I remember watching it with Mum and Dad and staring at them afterwards. They had the disease. I had it. We all had MDS. It was like knowing you’ve swallowed slow-acting poison. I didn’t want to sit with them so I went up to my room and texted Baz. (How ridiculous. Just writing his name makes me happy. Baz, Baz, Baz. And now there are stupid tears running down my cheeks.)
    Back then he was just a friend. We were at primary school together. I went to Sunday School for years because of him–his dad was a vicar and Baz always went, so I tagged along too. Sometimes when you’re talking to him it’s as if he’s still practising piano in his head, you wonder if he’s even heard. Then when he speaks you realise he’s been thoughtfully considering, instead of leaping in and babbling. When we started secondary we both made other friends and avoided each other in school, as if we were embarrassed. But we still used to go round to each other’s houses.
    That night he rang me back and said his parents were out, get Sal and some of the others and come round. I didn’t want to get Sal. I felt like talking to him on my own. I had thought he was the only boy I knew who didn’t fancy Sal, but clearly I was wrong. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought how much better my life would be if my legs were longer and my tits were bigger and closer together. I wondered if I should dye my hair blonde, like everyone does, but then I thought how my Dad at least really liked it brown. He called me his nut brown maid, hazel eyes and chestnut hair. And hairy brown caterpillar eyebrows, he forgot to mention that. There was no point in straightening my hair, I looked revolting and who cared?
    So Sal and I went round and everyone was in a weird mood. Rosa Davis was there, who Baz’d sort-of gone out with the year before. It hardly counted, he’d dumped her after two weeks. She was pretending to be really drunk. Baz was wearing a black t-shirt with a blue whale on it the exact colour of his eyes. After we’d been there half an hour Sal rang Damien and got him to come round. The two of them smooched together for a while then went off upstairs. I asked Baz where his parents were. His dad was working with the bereaved, there was a residential weekend of counselling and faith, and his mum’d gone too, to help. We laughed about how MDS is great for business–for vicars and undertakers. I asked him if he’d watched the TV announcement and he said ye-es, slowly, as if there