Read The Best in Blountmere Street (The Blountmere Street Series Book 2) for Free Online Page B

weren’t sitting right, although I couldn’t see anything wrong with them.  My ballet pumps are wrapped in their tissue paper.  Mum’s ironed their pink ribbons so that they don’t have a single crease in them.
    Every spare moment I have I use to practise.  “Three steps to the right, pivot, jump, second position, step forward arms raised,” I repeat, in between humming the piece of music Miss Kilip has chosen.
    As the concert gets close I get more and more nervous.  I have to dance really well, the best I’ve ever danced, better than any of the others so that when we tell Dad, he’ll smile and offer to come to my next concert.  It’s all very well Mum saying he isn’t keen on that sort of thing.  What sort of thing is he keen on?
    All at once I want to punish him and make him pay.  I seize last night’s Star and tear it into shreds.  Then I trample on it and shout every swear word I’ve ever heard Dad utter.  I pummel the cushions on his armchair and curse him.  I take his teacup from its usual place on the sideboard, spit into it and smear my saliva over it.
    Hatherington Street Hall seems different from the dingy place The Kilip School of Dancing practises in every week.  Someone has painted a forest scene onto a piece of plywood at the back of the stage.  The trees look quite real, even though they’re all the same shade of green.  The piano has been tuned and Mrs Lieston the pianist is banging out a tune I haven’t heard before.  It sounds old fashioned like something from before The War.
    Backstage I peep through the curtain and look out at the audience.  Through a haze of smoke I can pick out Mum’s face in the front row. 
    We take up our positions for the first act.  I swallow down my nervousness and the curtain opens.  The routine goes much better than it did in any of our rehearsals.  From the back someone whistles.  Although I can’t see who it is, I know it’s Bill and somehow my fear disappears and I want to dance just for him.  He’s turned up while Dad’s sitting at home reading The Star
    My squirrel dance is a big success and at the end, Bill claps so loudly I’m sure Mum will know it’s him. 
    Afterwards, I run straight to the back of the hall but Bill has slipped away and out of our lives. 

Chapter Five
    ‘I think you’re really lucky to be having a proper holiday, not just hop picking in Kent like half the kids at school.’  Tony traces a criss-cross pattern with his finger on our back step.  ‘I’ve never seen the sea.  Fred and Lori say they might take me and Angela to Bognor a bit later in the summer on one of those cheap day excursions.’
    ‘Bognor would be all right, but Devon’s a long way to go on a motorbike, and it’s only for a week,’ I reply, thinking of the journey.
    ‘You’re lucky to be going camping and everything.  I might go with the Cubs next year.’ Tony spits on his finger and draws squiggly lines like waves on the concrete.  ‘What’s the name of that place you’re going to?’
    ‘Newton Abbot.’
    ‘How d’you hear about a place like that?  It sounds like you’re going to Timbuktu.’
    ‘Dad knew about it.  He’s written to a farmer to ask if we can stay on his farm.’ 
    It had taken Dad all evening to write the letter.  He’d used the fountain pen Mum had found on the top of a thirty seven bus.  His writing was fancy with lots of loops but he needed my dictionary for practically every other word.
    ‘How’re you going to get your tent and things on the motorbike?’
    ‘We’ve already sent it on with all the big stuff by Carter Paterson.  It’ll be there when we arrive.  Dad’s made a folding table and chairs, even a folding larder.’ 
    I recall him making them.  He’d been almost as bad-tempered and boastful as when he’d built the sidecar for his motor bike.  “Not so stupid, your old man is he, eh?  Show me anyone round ‘ere who could’ve done it.  Not one of ‘em’s got the brains of