I could …’
‘Oh, hang on, I’ve got a call on the other line. Hi? Yes, we both have. Hang on. Arthur, it’s Siobhan. I’ll phone you back.’
‘You’re call waiting me? What, you like Siobhan more than me?’
‘Goodbye Arthur.’
‘I can’t belie …’
‘She’s hijacking us!’ barked Siobhan. ‘If we all turn up, the next thing you know we’ll be on some terrible jumbo jet, then it’ll crash and they’ll have to identify us by our toes.’
‘I know. I know. We could go somewhere else, you know. We could all meet in the Mexican place next door and she could come and join us when she’s come to her senses.’
‘Tacos at eleven in the morning? That’s even grosser than leaving our jobs to spend a month looking for some sad out-of-work actor guy.’
‘I like Mexican food. It reminds me of baby food.’
‘Yeah, in that it’s already been filtered through somebody else.’
‘Oh God,’ said Julia. ‘She’ll get out of this, I’m sure. Something will come up to distract her.’
‘Can’t you wave something shiny in front of her?’
‘Maybe she should join S Club 7. They’re always up to shit like this. Did you mention it to Patrick?’
‘I left a note on the fridge. Same thing.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Is Arthur going?’
‘He wants to go camping.’
‘Whereabouts? The Grand Canyon?’
‘Um, not that kind of camping.’
‘Oh. Well, good luck to him. If it’s the Hedgehog he’s going with I’m sure he’ll get to meet lots of big beefy policemen. Are you going to sort out Sunday?’
‘I suppose,’ said Julia, sighing. Siobhan hung up.
‘I only stayed on the line so I could hang up as soon as you came back on,’ said Arthur. ‘Bye.’
Julia came off the phone feeling rather disgruntled with her friends. Not, however, as disgruntled as Ellie was at that precise moment.
‘I will go,’ Ellie had told herself, ‘and very coolly inform bathead Rooney that I have plans and he’ll be fine.’
She scratched at her legs. She’d been reduced to pop socks. This isn’t school. Why did everything feel like school?
And now, here she was. Not making a lot of headway with the leave, but en route to getting herself a detention.
‘But …’
‘I’m talking, Ms Eversholt. And of course there’s no question of you taking a month off; that’s our budget month.’
‘But I’ll take it as leave,’ Ellie said sullenly.
‘Yes, well the only way you could take it as leave is if you worked Christmas days for the rest of your life.’
‘I’ll do that. I hate Christmas anyway. Me and my dad just get pissed and grumble at the TV, and I have to make brussels sprouts even though neither of us will eat them.’
‘Well I’m sorry about your frankly dismal-sounding holiday period, but that doesn’t mean I can just let you disappear for a month.’ Mr Rooney stood up, to indicate the end of their meeting.
Ellie stood her ground in silence.
‘Was that everything?’
‘Well, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to take it as unpaid …’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. Which particular bit of “no, definitely not, no way, sorry and go away and leave me alone,” didn’t you understand?’
‘Hypothetically speaking,’ said Ellie, ‘what would happen if someone sorted out cover for all their work and left on unpaid leave for a month?’
‘Hypothetically speaking,’ said Mr Rooney, ‘they wouldn’t have a job to come back to.’
‘That’s hypothetically very interesting.’
‘No, that’s actually very interesting, and I’d recommend it be noted.’
On Sunday morning, Julia and Loxy strode down Battersea Rise towards Elms carrying their own bodyweight in newsprint.
‘This isn’t going to be fun,’ Julia mused. ‘I mean, I’m sorry she had a bad birthday and everything, but I don’t think this trip is going to work out and I don’t want to have a row.’
‘The two of us don’t really row, do we?’ asked Loxy thoughtfully.
Julia looked at him sideways. ‘So … ?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Fine, then.’ Julia spotted Arthur coming from the opposite direction and waved him over. Colin trotted on ahead into the bar. He was wearing a baseball jacket and a cap with stars and stripes on it.
‘You forgot to lock the gate behind you again, didn’t you?’
‘It’s not my fault the paper boy forgot to add in the Funday Times.’
‘I thought Colin was the paper boy.’
‘Ha ha.’
‘Aha, it’s the annoying little brother I never had,’ said Ellie as Colin entered. She was leafing through an enormous pile of travel brochures and eating pancakes with one hand.
Ellie didn’t mean to be so short with Colin. She realized that in fact, these days, almost anyone younger than her doing anything at all pissed her off. Surely anyone younger than her should still be doing English comprehension tests and appearing on Young Musician of the Year, and certainly shouldn’t be working for a living or having opinions or driving cars and things. If Ellie was elected as an MP (an unlikely occurrence), she wouldn’t even be the youngest MP in the House of Commons. She thought about this a lot.
‘Where’s Arthur?’
Colin shrugged and twisted.
‘He said he was going to see a man about a dog … I think he might be buying me a puppy for Christmas.’
‘Colin, you live with your parents and their house is really small. Where would the dog live?’
He shrugged. ‘In a drawer maybe. Puppies aren’t big.’
‘Okay, so if under any circumstances you can conceive of Arthur not wanting to buy you a dog, do you have any
