Winter of Grace Read Free Page B

uni,’ said Stella. ‘That pink paper was tutorial notepaper. I wonder why he wasn’t at the rally, I bet all the other uni students were. Maybe he’s pro-war.’
    â€˜Oh, no way. No one could be,’ I said. ‘He did seem pretty grumpy though.’
    â€˜He had no right to be,’ said Stella. ‘Not when we saved Jay’s life.’
    â€˜You’d think he could have been a tiny bit grateful.’
    â€˜Who cares about the cranky brother?’ Stella twirled on the footpath. ‘I think I’m in love!’
    â€˜A good day’s work then,’ I said. ‘We’ve stopped a war, saved a life and found you a boyfriend. Come on, let’s get the train home.’
    But I was thinking, I bet we never hear from them again , which made me slightly sad, because I liked Jay too, though not as much as Stella did. If he looked like his brother, under all that bruising, then he was definitely good-looking. I figured Elliot had thrown that pink paper straight in the bin.
    But I was wrong.

I WAS WRONG ABOUT us stopping the war, too.
    I heard the news on the radio first thing on Monday morning. It was like a punch to the stomach. But it wasn’t a mistake; it was really happening. I sank down on the edge of my bed, feeling sick.
    â€˜Oh, God,’ I said aloud. ‘Oh, God.’
    I sat there paralysed for a few more minutes, till I realised how late it was. I had to run.
    Stella was already waiting out the front of her house, with Tim the dachshund twisting himself into a yappy knot round her ankles.
    â€˜Where’ve you been , I nearly left without you. Shut up , Tim!’
    â€˜Sorry.’ I took over Tim’s lead while Stella pulled on her gloves. ‘Did you hear the news?’
    â€˜Nuh, what’s happened?’
    â€˜The war – they’ve declared war. It’s going ahead.’
    Stella stopped in her tracks. ‘Oh, no. You’re kidding. But – how? People marched – all those people, all over the world . How can they just ignore that?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ I said.
    Stella scooped up Tim and pressed her face close to his smooth black coat; he wriggled round to give her nose a lick of comfort. ‘How can this happen ?’ she said in a muffled voice.
    â€˜Why does anything bad happen? Why does a nice boy like Jay get beaten up? Why are people tortured, why do people kill each other, why are human beings so cruel and horrible?’
    â€˜It’s God’s will,’ said Stella bitterly. ‘That’s what they’ll say at school, I bet.’ She sniffed fiercely. ‘Stop wriggling, Timmy, I’ll put you down when we get across the road.’
    It was our turn to take Tim for a walk down by the river. There was a family roster: one morning it was Mish and Stella’s little sister, Scarlet; the next it was Paul and her brother Tark; and every third morning it was Stella and me. We’d been doing it for three years, ever since Mish and Paul and Mum decided we were old enough to go out at dawn by ourselves. Of course, we had Tim to protect us, but since Tim’s idea of protection was to jump at someone’s knees and yap them to death, we didn’t rely too much on him.
    We sprinted across the highway with Stella carrying Tim; his little legs couldn’t keep up. Safely on the other side, she set him down and he trotted off, his back half wagging. He knew the circuit: through the park, across the bridge and round past the boathouse, along the riverbank and back over the other bridge, then cut through the back streets and home by half-past seven to get ready for school. Normally I loved being up so early, while the world was all fresh and still, but there was nothing beautiful about today.
    Since Stella had switched to St Marg’s, our walks were practically the only time we got to see each other, and we always had heaps to discuss. But this morning I was too miserable to