I guess by now you think I’m deeply strange. What’s the big deal about having a friend back to your house, right? I mean, ten-year-olds do that all the time, don’t they? It’s not as if my dad’s an axe murderer or anything, and it’s not as if Eve’s one, either. I know all that. It’s just the two of them together … this was not good. Not good at all. Unless I could stall Eve somehow, or at least steer the conversation away from fishing and football… I swallowed. The thought of me steering a conversation anywhere was a joke.
And what seemed like five seconds after the phone call, Dad pulled up in the SUV and honked his horn.
“Is that him?” Eve squealed, standing on tiptoes, so she could get a better view through the window. “Woah!” she cried when I nodded. “Monster trucks!”
Dad turned round as I got in the car. Our eyes locked for a second. “All right?” he asked.
“Not really,” I replied.
He tried to give me a reassuring smile as if to say “it’ll be fine”.
One thing I knew for sure: this would not be fine.
Dad turned to Eve then. She’d just climbed in, after barely waving to Hannah and Katie. He beamed at her. “Hey! I’m guessing you’re Eve? How’re you doing?”
I tensed, waiting for Eve to start her barrage of questions, but amazingly she only managed a brief “I’m good, thank you,” that even I had to strain to hear. In fact, that’s the most she managed for much of the journey. I’d never known her so quiet. It unnerved me more than her constant chattering. When Dad stopped talking to concentrate on the road, I tried to fill in the silence with my own pathetic questions such as “It’s annoying about the snow, isn’t it?” (yes) and “What’s your favourite colour?” (orange). Really lame stuff.
It wasn’t until we reached Toft’s Hill that my team-mate found her voice. “They call this Toff’s Hill near us,” she announced when she read the street sign.
“Yes, I know,” I replied. I’d been teased about it at school enough, even by girls with bigger houses than ours.
“Is it true that everyone who lives up here is a millionaire?” she asked me, her eyes flicking to the back of my dad’s head.
“No.” I sighed. I’d heard that one, too.
Dad chimed in. “Not everyone,” he told her. “The Russian guy at number three’s a billionaire.”
“No way!” Eve gushed.
“Straight up,” Dad said, thinking he was being funny.
“Don’t listen to him,” I snapped. “He’s just winding you up.”
“Oh,” she said and broke into a grin. “I knew that!”
“There’s not a castle on Castle Heights, either. It was just named after a family called Castle,” I added, wishing my voice didn’t sound so brittle, but the nearer we got to the house, the more tense I was becoming – if such a thing were possible.
“Got you,” Eve said. She gazed out of the window. “But the houses look like mini castles,” she added in a hushed voice when we turned into the complex. Her head was swivelling from side to side as she took in the snow-topped walls and security fencing that surrounded each property. “Even your gate’s like a portcullis.”
It was a fair point.
Inside, it was easier getting Eve upstairs and out of Dad’s way than I’d thought it would be. It turned out she’d always wondered what my bedroom was like. She started at my dressing table, then moved across to my bedside cabinet, not trying one bit to hide how curious she was about my things. In the end she must have seen every corner of my bedroom, from the revision books on my desk to the clothes in my wardrobe, to the posters on my wall. I didn’t really mind. Having Eve upstairs was way preferable to having her downstairs. “I didn’t know you were into astronomy,” she said, striding over to the telescope by my window.
“Er… Yeah,” I replied as she ducked to squint through the lens.
“How come it’s trained on the gates and not the stars?”
“Dunno. Must have knocked it out of position.”
“Oh.”
I braced myself for more questions, but she’d lost interest and bounded across the floor. “What’s in here? More clothes?” she asked, pushing open the door to my en suite. She gasped. “Oh! You’ve got your own bathroom!”
“Yes. It’s only small…”
“Small? There’s a shower and everything!” She disappeared inside. “Oh, I would give anything for my own bathroom. Or one I just share with Mum. Do you know how disgusting boys are in bathrooms?” She peeked into my bathroom cabinet, sniffed my cocoa butter hand lotion and then turned to look at me. “You are so lucky.”
“I know,” I replied.
Eve returned for another snoop around my desk, then cast her eyes around the whole room. “Where are all your trophies?”
“What?”
“Your football trophies?”
I hadn’t seen that one coming. “I … er … I don’t put them out.”
“What? Why?”
“They get too dusty.”
“But you won Coaches’ Player of the Season. Dust wouldn’t dare gather on that.”
“Well, it does.”
She frowned. “It wouldn’t in my house. Me and Mr Sheen would be on the case.” She paused. “Couldn’t your servants polish them?”
“We don’t have servants!” I gasped.
“Whatever.” She shrugged and then asked if she could look in my en suite again.
“Help yourself.”
When she disappeared I glanced at my bedside clock. Please come quick, Mrs Akboh, I thought.
She didn’t. By the time Dad called upstairs to tell us lunch was ready, I was sure Eve could have recited all of my possessions off by heart, in alphabetical order. If I hadn’t been so on edge, I’d have found it funny.
“I’ll go fetch the food,” I said. “You can play on my Nintendo if you like.”
I should have guessed she’d decline. “No, I’ll come with you. I want to see what a real Hurst’s Modern Kitchen of Mowborough kitchen is like!”
“OK.” I sighed. “But please don’t talk football with Dad,” I added as though it was an afterthought. “He gets bored.”
“No problem. I’ll stick to fishing.”
“Don’t mention that, either.”
“O-kaaay. Have you got a list of stuff I can talk about anywhere?”
I forced a smile. “Oh, Eve. You crack me up!”
“I get that a lot.” She grinned.