V for Violet Read Online Free Page A

Mum’s damp girdles that are hanging over the bath to dry. I take off my glasses and splash my face with water. When did Jackie start going to dances? Since when has she been interested in fellas? And when did she stop sharing her secrets with me? I swallow hard.
    She’s bored with me, I think. I’m not exciting enough for her any more. I’m just the dull girl from the chippie, the girl with no future. I put my glasses back on and study my face in the mirror, but there’s nothing there worth describing. Pale skin and a splatter of freckles. Plain and ordinary; nothing too big and nothing too small. Nothing to notice. And all of it framed by frizzy brown hair and a pair of National Health specs. I remember walking home from the optician’s with Mum, on the day I got my first pair of glasses. I was only four. I remember Mum tugging on my hand and telling me to hurry up because I was dawdling. But I wasn’t dawdling, I was looking around in wonder. It was like someone had polished the whole world. Everything was so bright and clear and shocking. It was the first time I saw that trees had leaves, that the pavement had cracks and that Mum had wrinkles on her face. It was a miracle.
    But then Norma went and ruined it all in her usual fashion. ‘You do know, don’t you, Violet, that men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses?’
    She’s always been a cow.
    I pull my glasses off again and rub my face dry with a towel. I rub hard, wishing I could rub out my features and find a new set of prettier, more exciting ones underneath. It doesn’t happen, of course. I look just the same, except now my skin is a horrible shiny pink. I should have seen it coming with Jackie. I should have known I was never enough for her. I’m usually so good at knowing what people are thinking.
    ‘Violet!’ yells Mum from downstairs. ‘We’re waiting for you. Norma and Raymond have to go in a bit.’
    Good, I think. Let them wait. I lock the bathroom door. If anyone comes up, I’ll make retching noises and pretend I’m really ill. I sit on the toilet lid and watch the tap dripping. Mum doesn’t shout again and no one bothers to come up. I don’t know what’s worse; if I’d been forced to go back down, or being ignored like this?
    Plink, plink, plink. The leaking tap is getting on my nerves. I’ve never thought about it before, but looking at how the drips of water have stained the enamel a dirty yellow, I realise that the tap has been dripping all my life. I count how many plinks there are in a minute. Thirty. Then I try and work out how many drips there might have been since I was born. It’s a long, complicated sum and I have to keep starting again at the beginning. Before I can work out the answer, it suddenly strikes me that Joseph would have known this dripping tap too. He probably had his first shave in this sink. He would have washed his hands in here for the last time, before he went off to be killed in the war. For some reason that makes me really sad and I have to lift my glasses to wipe my eyes.
    A door bangs downstairs and I hear Norma thanking Mum for a lovely supper. ‘Bye, Violet!’ she shouts up the stairs. ‘Hope you feel better soon!’
    ‘Good riddance,’ I say under my breath. I dart from the bathroom and across the landing to the safety of my room. All I want is to be left alone with my misery.
    The Country Girls
is lying on the floor next to my bed. I read a few pages, but the more I read the more I realise that Kate and Baba’s friendship isn’t the perfect thing I thought it was. Baba is a bitch and a bully and Kate lets her get away with it. Baba is mean and spiteful and poor Kate begins to lose everything. Now her mother is dead; drowned in a river. I throw the book back on the floor. I want to climb into the pages and over all the words to find Kate and tell her that
I’ll
be her friend and she doesn’t have to put up with being pushed around any more. I wanted their friendship to conquer the