All the Little Things by Sarah Lawton (the best books to read txt) 📕

what really happened without looking bad myself for lying in the first place; I’m caught in the spiderweb of her untruth. Hopefully it will all just blow over. I don’t like change. I want things the way they are.

‘What on earth have you done to your face, Viv? It looks like a cat has scratched you.’ She raises a hand and gently touches my cheek. I manage to not lean away.

‘I caught it on a bramble in the garden. Mum has been letting the blackberries run wild. Can I borrow some concealer for it at break?’

She drops her hand and frowns, briefly, then changes the subject.

‘Sorry I had to go early on Saturday, I didn’t want to wake you up. You were snoring like a hippo.’

‘I do not snore!’

We laugh and I feel a bubbly relief that maybe it’s going to be okay and that nothing is going to change. I decide not to ask her what she was talking about with Alex; I try to tell myself it probably wasn’t anything interesting and I don’t want her to think I was sneaking around following her and I don’t care what he says, anyway. It doesn’t stop suspicion from joining those jagged thoughts in my brain, though, the new niggling lack of trust I have in who she is, and what she might do. Were they talking about me?

‘I’ll put some make-up on it later for you; let it dry a bit first. Let’s go.’

The rest of the day seems pretty normal. We all sit together on our table at lunch – it’s the best table, where you can see everything that’s going on, no one else would dare sit here – and we all laugh and chat like usual. The girls are concerned about my ‘poor face’ but Molly has done a pretty good job of covering it up.

‘OMG, guys, I’ve got the best gossip,’ says Tilly, in between shovelling bites of limp orange pasta into her big mouth.

‘What?’

She just chews, trying her best to look mysterious.

‘Tilly! Spill!’

She looks around quickly and then leans in, as do we, three blonde heads and my mousey one.

‘I heard Chloe crying in the bathroom to Becky that her period was late.’

There’s a collective intake of breath, with a delighted undertone.

‘No! I thought condoms were vegan-friendly?’ I say, and to my great satisfaction the other three start honking with laughter. I don’t always get it right humour-wise, but that was a good one.

‘She’s a fucking idiot if she is pregnant,’ says Molly, picking the salad out of her sandwich. ‘We all had to do that horror show of a sex-ed lesson trying to put those rank minty condoms on bananas. My hands stank for ages. So, it’s not like she doesn’t know.’

Tilly and Serena look at each other, just for a second, but it’s a loaded look. Molly obviously knows what to do, doesn’t she?

‘Didn’t Daniel break his?’ I try and distract them. ‘I remember one of the boys definitely broke theirs being stupid.’

‘Yeah, it was him,’ said Tilly, turning her attention back to us. ‘I bet it was him – I bet he broke one putting it on and just didn’t tell her and now she’s going to have his vegan baby.’

‘But babies drink milk, so how can a baby be vegan?’ says Serena, looking a bit confused, which isn’t unusual.

‘I think you can drink human milk okay, just not milk from other animals,’ I tell her.

‘Urgh!’

We all look a bit revolted at the idea. I don’t like the thought of pendulous breasts full of milk, leaking everywhere. Imagine the mess and the nasty sour smell. Disgusting. I can’t imagine anything worse than having a screaming baby stuck on you all the time, sucking the life out of you.

‘Well, who cares if she is or she isn’t. Chloe is a stuck-up cow who doesn’t even live in the village,’ finishes Serena, which is a bit rich as she’s only just counted as village as her house is way out, but none of us mention that. She’s right about Chloe, though, she is stuck up.

We have PE at the end of the day – as if Mondays couldn’t suck any harder – and have to play rounders. Serena is pitching the ball and it’s my turn to bat. Instead of throwing the ball underarm like she’s supposed to, she looks at me for a second and then lunges, lobbing it hard, straight at me. I try and jump out of the way, but I jump into it instead, and it cracks right on the bony part of my hip, and I scream.

‘Sorry, Viv!’ she shouts, with a laugh in her voice. ‘Was that a bit hard?’

I have tears in my eyes, because it really bloody hurt. I look around to Molly, who is watching from the side lines. She isn’t doing PE because her mum always writes her a note to get her out of it because she hates getting all sweaty. All sweaty doing PE, anyway – she didn’t seem to mind the sweaty exercise she was doing with Matt the other night. She doesn’t say anything, but her mouth is a thin line. The ball gets thrown back to Serena, who throws it properly underarm this time, so that I can hit the ball and run.

Maybe everything isn’t going to go back to normal after all. Maybe I’ll need to fix it.

London

Was there anything more boring than watching your kid play on the park? Rachel was itching to get out her BlackBerry and check her emails, but it wasn’t in her bag. She’d left it on charge in the kitchen and forgotten to bring it. She looked around instead at the other families in the park, faces in the crowd. Sometimes, even now, she’d see one like his, and feel her stomach drop, or imagine eyes on her back, like the unwelcome weight of a palm between the shoulder blades.

‘Mummy!’ commanded an imperious little voice from the top of the