Nodding, Holly refilled the kettle and switched it on, then rinsed out their cups and put a new teabag in each. As she waited for the water to boil, a new message pinged onto her phone. It was just one word this time: Shithouse! Staring at it, she chewed on her lip. It was definitely Leanne, because she’d never heard Bex use that word, and she dreaded the thought of what would happen when she went back to school. But the girl couldn’t get to her while she was here, so she determinedly pushed it out of her mind and made the teas.
18
Down in the cellar, cut off from the rest of the world, Holly forgot her troubles for a few hours as she and Suzie went through the photos. As Suzie had promised, the edited ones really did look as if they had been shot at various exotic locations around the world, and Holly wished she could post some of them onto her Facebook page so Bex and Julie could see how gorgeous Suzie had made her look. But her mum checked her page and would want to know where and when they had been taken, so she couldn’t risk it.
The photos of Holly weren’t going on the website, so they concentrated on separating Holly’s shots of Suzie into sets of definites, maybes and hell nos! Uploading the ‘definites’ turned out to be a little trickier than they had anticipated, and they wasted a fair bit of time messing about with the dimensions before they got the hang of it.
All too soon, it was time for Holly to go home, and the dread she’d pushed to the back of her mind resurfaced as she left the artificial light of the cellar and emerged into the bright daylight of the kitchen.
‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,’ Suzie said, giving her a hug before she left.
‘Hope so,’ Holly replied, her stomach already churning at the thought of facing her mum.
Holly took a deep breath before inserting the key into the lock when she reached the flat, and she did a quick mental run-through of what Suzie had told her to say if her mum had found out that she’d wagged school. She was to say that she had gone, but that, because of the messages she’d received, she’d been too scared to go inside when she saw Leanne and a gang of girls waiting for her at the gate. Then, to keep Suzie out of it, she was to say that she had phoned the school and pretended to be her mum, and had spent the rest of the day hiding in the park. And if her mum got mad, she was to start crying and ask if her mum would have preferred for her to come home in an ambulance – because that was what would have happened if Leanne and the others had got their hands on her.
Praying that she wouldn’t slip up, she entered the hallway and hung her blazer on a peg. She could smell food, and she was surprised to find a pan of stew bubbling on the stove when she went into the kitchen. Her mum rarely cooked, and never from scratch, and she wondered what the occasion was.
‘I thought I heard the door,’ Josie said, walking into the room behind her. ‘How was school?’
‘OK,’ Holly said warily, wondering if it was a trick question; that her mum knew she’d wagged it and was giving her the chance to confess before the axe fell.
‘That’s good.’ Josie smiled and patted her arm. Then, apologetically, she said, ‘Sorry about yesterday, love. I wasn’t in the best of moods, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. How did you get on with that girl you were talking about? Did she give you any trouble?’
Holly shook her head.
‘Well, let me know if she does and I’ll go in and make sure the Head puts a stop to it,’ Josie said, picking up a spoon and stirring the stew.
Scared of her mum going to the school and finding out that she had supposedly rung them that morning, Holly said, ‘No! It’s fine now. I, um, sorted everything out with Bex and she told Leanne to back off.’
Josie put the spoon down and peered at her. ‘You’ve never told Bex anything you shouldn’t, have you? About us, I mean.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Holly. ‘We don’t really talk about our parents. It’s more about homework and what we’ve watched on telly, and that.’
‘I hope that’s the truth, ’cos all it’ll take is for someone to say the wrong thing and we could lose everything. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I know,’ Holly murmured, averting her gaze when she felt her cheeks heating up. ‘I, um, need to get changed,’ she said, edging towards the door.
Josie glanced up at the clock, and said, ‘Hurry up, then. I haven’t got long.’
In her bedroom, Holly leaned back against the door and breathed a sigh of relief. Her mum definitely didn’t know she’d skipped school, so she’d got away with it. But the tension of not knowing had made her feel sick, and she didn’t think she could go through it all again tomorrow. So, as scared as she was of Leanne, she was going to have to go to school and try to avoid the girl. There were numerous ways to get onto the school grounds, and Leanne and her mates couldn’t guard them all, so all she had to do was slip in and out without them catching her, and then make sure she was always in view of a teacher during
