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‘It’s not just swimming. I know when the river is dry you two go into the cemetery.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ Alicia shrugged. ‘We look at the names.’
‘It’s morbid,’ Beatrice said.
‘No.’
‘And you’re lying again—you can’t read.’
‘Ragno doesn’t know that.’ Alicia smiled, for she hid it so well that even Beatrice had only recently found out.
‘He’s trouble, Alicia.’ Beatrice turned to her as if to warn her.
‘Not to me.’
‘You were seen holding hands.’
‘I like holding his hand,’ Alicia said.
‘The nuns think you get up to...’ Beatrice’s voice trailed off.
‘To what?’ Alicia let out a scoffing laugh and then made a gagging noise, for she could think of nothing worse than kissing. ‘Oh, please—we are friends and that is that. I don’t understand why everyone is so mean about him.’
‘I wasn’t being mean.’
‘Yes, you were,’ Alicia said. Though she loved Beatrice, she still stood up for her friend Ragno. ‘You were being mean. I can hear it in your voice that you are cross. Everyone always is when they speak about him.’
‘Because he roams wild. He sleeps in sheds most nights, and he steals—’
‘Eggs,’ Alicia said. ‘For breakfast.’
Beatrice paused then, and nodded. ‘His mother is a disgrace.’
‘She’s been kind to us, though.’
Alicia did not understand Ragno’s mother. She barely housed or fed her own son, yet he had given her a bag a few weeks ago, from his mother, and in it had been sanitary pads and tampons—a far cry from the awful strips of cloth the nuns allocated them. Alicia and Beatrice had spent a few nights reading the tampon insertion instructions, agog! As well as that there had been a glossy magazine, and Alicia had pored over the pictures of gorgeous dresses within, running her finger over the pages as if she could feel the fabric. It hadn’t swayed Beatrice’s opinion, though.
‘She’s unmarried,’ Beatrice whispered as they entered the convent and then climbed the staircase and took their seats outside Reverend Mother’s office.
‘So?’ Alicia shrugged. ‘We’re probably bastards, too, yet the nuns take care of us.’
‘Don’t say that word,’ Beatrice warned. ‘Anyway, it’s not just because she isn’t married. You know what they call her?’
‘Yes,’ Alicia said. ‘And it’s because she’s a beekeeper.’
‘She isn’t though.’ Beatrice shook her head. ‘That’s just what the locals call her.’
‘Why?’ Alicia frowned.
‘Because she gives away honey.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Alicia admitted.
Beatrice rolled her eyes. ‘For someone who’s getting bosoms, you don’t know very much.’
That was another way they were different, Beatrice was still like a stick, and Alicia was starting to fill out. It horrified her—she had thought she was dying when she got her first period, and she hated the little buds of her breasts. She wanted her old body back—the one that had let her swim in her knickers and run...
‘Men go to her home,’ Beatrice explained.
