Read To Be Someone for Free Online Page A

smaller, and thin. She had her fingers in her mouth and was lagging behind the boy, looking anxious. She was jiggling her legs, perhaps from nerves, although it looked to me more like the sort of fidgeting brought on by having wet one’s knickers. Her red woollen tights sagged in wrinkles around her skinny ankles, and I could see their low crotch showing underneath the hem of her short purple-and-red-checked pinafore dress. Then I looked back at the boy and realized what had startled me on the swing.
    “Did you just kick that into the door?” I asked, pointing indignantly at the football.
    As if to demonstrate, the boy drop-kicked the ball again, sending it crashing into the pale green metallic up-and-over garage door. I was outraged. “I’m telling my dad on you. Buzz off! You nearly made me fall off of my swing!”
    The boy swaggered toward me threateningly. I felt a little nervous.
    He moved closer and retrieved his ball. “Give us a go on your stupid swing, then.”
    “No! Buzz off!” I had heard some bigger boys say this in the playground the week before, and had been saving it up for a suitable occasion. This most definitely was a situation calling for strong language. The girl still lurked behind the boy, not meeting my eyes. I was glaring at both of them, hating the intrusion, when a woman’s voice yelled from the end of the street: “Dylan! Sa-am! Where are you? Tea’s ready! I’m not telling you again!”
    To my relief, the boy started to turn away. “You’d better let me play on it next time, fatso,” he said menacingly, and ran out of the yard. The girl stayed in her spot, fidgeting even more. We stared at each other. Eventually she took her fingers out of her mouth and said, “That’s my brother, Dylan. He’s often a bully. Can I come and call for you later? ”
    I was taken aback, but disarmed. In retrospect I don’t know what endeared me to her—I must have been a fairly intimidating sight, standing there guarding my territory with an aggressive scowl on my face and hands firmly planted on hefty little hips. Possibly it was the lure of the forbidden swing. Anyhow, I graciously conceded that she could, if only to spite her awful brother.
    It transpired that the Grants had just moved to Salisbury to run the pub on the corner, the Prince of Wales. By happy coincidence, Sam also ended up in my form at school (although there was almost a year between us—I was the oldest in the class, and she the youngest).
    This put the final seal on our friendship. For the duration of our primary-school years we pretty much lived in each other’s pockets: We played at the pub, in my bedroom, or raced unsteadily through the terraced streets around our houses on our baby bicycles, first with training wheels, and later without.
    Mostly we tried to avoid Dylan, who by the age of nine had acquired a worrying head for business. He used to round up a few of his friends on a regular basis and charge them 5p each to see Sam and I reluctantly show them our underwear. This weekly ritual was known locally as “Bum Time,” and I believe that for double the admission fee we’d actually pull down our knickers for a quick flash to the more affluent of the group. I don’t recall what Sam and I got out of this arrangement—none of the takings, that was for sure. A deep and permanent feeling of mortification lasting into adulthood was more like it. Dylan threatened to give us Chinese burns if we refused to oblige.
    The fact that Sam’s parents ran a pub made her something of an icon at school—everyone thought it was the coolest thing that parents could possibly do. In the early seventies, the Prince of Wales was a standard locals’ pub, open at lunchtimes and in the evenings only, in accordance with the restricted licensing laws of the time. Sam and I were allowed to sit downstairs in the bar after school, before the evening session began. It was the biggest thrill—sliding around on the leatherette benches, learning