Read Monica Bloom for Free Online

that read well without necessarily being true. That’s what I decided, and I made some toast and a cup of tea and tried to read the sports pages instead.
    Erica knocked at the back door at around ten to invite me to play tennis. Monica was there and they needed a fourth.
    I found my racquet in my room and took it out of its press. Through the windows I could hear Monica and Katharine hitting up — the ball hitting the racquet strings or the fence, Katharine calling out, ‘Bad luck.’
    â€˜It’s been weird seeing your dad on the news this week,’ Erica said once we were through the gate and on her side of the fence.
    â€˜Weirder at our place,’ I told her. ‘Trust me.’
    â€˜Did you know the guy?’ she said. ‘The one who took the money?’
    â€˜I’ve met him a few times. He’s come round for dinner once or twice.’ I thought about that, Alex the thief in our house. He seemed like any other guest, no more or less likely to steal on a grand scale. Maybe that had made it easier to do.
    The huge umbrella tree outside one end of the court grew through the fence, but I could see Katharine behind it on the baseline hitting one casual forehand and then another. Monica Bloom’s hair was in plaits again, and she was wearing a sleeveless top and shorts and, like the rest of us, no shoes. That was how it worked for us on the Hartnetts’ court. Bill Hartnett ran a tournament for his staff in the lead-up to Christmas, and the court was rolled and marked for that and shoes were worn. We used their balls for months afterwards, and once we had finishedwith them they were given to the dogs. The line markings were never quite straight and one corner of the court had a slope where the ground had subsided a little, but you needed to know the court to see it.
    Erica told me to stay with Katharine and she went around to Monica’s side of the net. Monica flipped a ball up from the ground with her racquet and her foot and she waved and said, ‘Hi, Matt.’
    The first time one twin served to the other, we faced each other over the net. She spun the racquet in her hand and smiled and said, ‘I’m a bit out of practice,’ before sending her first volley into my thigh, hard as a punch.
    â€˜Sorry,’ she said, and she laughed. ‘I meant to hit it behind you.’
    â€˜And I meant to hit it back,’ I told her. ‘Or I would have, if I’d seen it.’
    We played one set, and Katharine and I lost six–four. I tried too hard to ace Monica, and I double-faulted to her at least twice. All of that’s embarrassing.
    She admitted to tennis lessons when we sat by the pool afterwards. ‘My mother,’ she said. ‘Tennis, piano and bridge. She wanted to get me ready for polite society.’
    It reminded me of a poem I’d studied at school, by John Betjeman. It was set in the twenties or thirties, and featured a rather underwhelming man who was beaten at tennis by the lively Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, the object of his affections. Monica’s mother seemed to have an idea of polite society that was fixed in that era. I didn’t know anyother fifteen-year-old who could play bridge. I didn’t know anyone who could play bridge. I now had some sense of how the narrator of the Betjeman poem felt though.
    Mrs Hartnett brought out a plate of watermelon cut into wedges with all the visible seeds removed. That wouldn’t have happened on our side of the fence. Andy and I had always had seed-spitting competitions, or spat the seeds at each other, and rogue watermelon plants regularly sprouted in our lawn.
    Monica’s cheeks stayed red in the heat. She was wearing the bluebird earrings again. She sat on the plastic poolside chair with her legs crossed at the ankles, and she looked down into the water as the breeze rippled across it. Katharine went inside to fetch us some drinks. Erica said, ‘Bugger it,’ and