Where Everything Seems Double by Penny Freedman (good books to read for 12 year olds .TXT) 📗

a mug of tea. She looked up and smiled at her, although Freda suspected that the last thing she wanted to do was to settle down to a session of portrait sketching.

‘Did you sell a lot?’ she asked her.

‘I did.’ She put down her tea. ‘I shall have to get potting again this week. And you have come to sit for me, haven’t you?’

Freda felt awkward. ‘Only if it’s OK,’ she said. ‘It can wait, if you’ve had a busy day.’

‘What a nice girl you are. Like your mum.’

Freda blushed, pleased at the compliment, but noticing too that Eve hadn’t said ‘like your granny’.

Eve said, ‘I tell you what, I am tired but I would like to draw you, so if you can fetch my sketchpad from inside, I’ll just sit here with you and do a little sketch. How does that sound?’

‘Great. Where will I find your pad?’

‘In the back. On the desk.’

Freda found the sketchpad easily but couldn’t resist lingering, looking at the sketches tacked to the walls, at the tools and brushes and the massive wheel. When she got back, Eve was not alone. Milo was there, and Eve had stood up and was having a quiet, serious conversation with him. When they saw Freda they stepped apart. Milo said, ‘Had a good day, Freda?’ but before she could answer he said, ‘Sorry, Gran. Must run. See you later.’ And he was gone.

Eve and Freda watched him go off at a run towards the ferry – or the hotel – or Venetia’s house. Then Eve said, ‘Boys. What would you do with them?’

It wasn’t meant as a real question, she knew, but she found herself saying, ‘I don’t know. I think I don’t know anything really.’

Eve put an arm round her. ‘Oh yes you do. You know plenty. But you’ve been landed in a very tricky situation here and nobody is behaving very well. Because we’re all worried and scared. Frankly, if Gina had any sense she would put you on the first plane to Italy and send you back to your family.’

‘I’m going next week,’ Freda said. ‘I’ve got my ticket.’

‘A lot can happen in a week. But come on, sit down, and let’s see what you look like.’

At first Freda didn’t know what to do with her face, but Eve started to talk about how she learnt to do portraits – about the life drawing classes at art school and the terrifying man who taught them, and would rip their drawings up and yell ‘cartoon’ or ‘sentimental trash’ or ‘not fit for Enid Blyton’, and it was so funny and interesting that she forgot to worry about her face. After a while Eve stopped talking and was concentrating hard on what she was doing, and Freda’s mind wandered to what Eve had said earlier, about everyone being worried and scared and nobody behaving well. It didn’t excuse Granny, who had nothing to be scared of – except, she supposed, that she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to help Eve and her husband, and that the police would arrest him. But now, actually, Milo was more under suspicion, wasn’t he? And maybe that’s what she meant – why he wasn’t being nice to her any more. He was scared, though he wouldn’t admit it because a boy could never admit to that, and it made him scared of her, because David had come, and he was the police, and he was afraid of what Freda might say about him. Maybe it wasn’t Venetia’s fault that Milo didn’t want to see her. Maybe Venetia thought she was looking out for Milo.

It was all such a tangle and she really wanted to be out of it. She had had fun for a couple of days but now she wished she was going to Italy tomorrow. She wasn’t looking forward to what was coming.

When Eve said, ‘Do you want to have a look?’ she was startled out of her thoughts, and must have looked alarmed, because Eve laughed and said, ‘It’s not as bad as all that. Remember, though, it won’t be like the picture you see in the mirror – not only because it’s just a sketch but because in the mirror your image is reversed, and we are none of us completely symmetrical.’

‘OK,’ Freda said, and took a deep breath as Eve slid the pad across to her.

It was all right, actually. She would have known it was her, and Eve had made her look quite grown-up. In fact, it was quite flattering – her eyebrows were darker, for one thing, instead of being nearly invisible like they really were, and her ears weren’t as big as she thought they were.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely. I shall give it to my mum.’

‘Oh, really? I think your granny wanted it.’

‘Well she doesn’t deserve it,’ Freda said. She looked at the sketch again. ‘Do I really look as sad as that?’ she asked.

‘This afternoon you do, but I don’t expect you do usually.’

‘No.’

Getting up, she went round to give Eve a hug. It was awkward as Eve was sitting down, but she turned round and held her hand in both of hers.

‘You’re a lovely girl,’ she said. ‘Things will sort themselves out. And remember nothing is your fault.’

As she walked back to the hotel, she realised how dark the sky had become, the storm clouds that had been forecast rolling in off the hills, and by the time she got to the jetty heavy drops of rain started to fall. She pushed her sketch up under her t-shirt and held it there with her arms crossed as she ran as fast as she could across the road and up the drive. Back in her room, she flattened the paper out. It was a bit battered but that didn’t altogether matter. It looked like she felt, she thought, as she sat at her window and watched the rain beating against it.

My granny’s boyfriend