I, Spy? (Sophie Green Mysteries, No. 1) (Sophie Green Mystery) by Kate Johnson

bird turned out to be minuscule and hardly out of primary school. Her name was Jeni (had she not even learnt to spell yet?) and she ate about a square inch of lasagne before declaring she was full.
    I should probably explain that while I am nearly a proper vegetarian (just chip shop fish, I swear), my family just cut out red meat. It was some thing my mother started years before we were born as a health fad, just like she started yoga and taking so many vitamins she rattled. The rest of us sort of went along with it.
    I used to eat all kinds of meat until I was six, when I saw my first adorable baby lamb and asked my mother what it was.
    “Lunch,” she answered, and I’ve not eaten meat since.
    Chalker was explaining this to Jeni, with rather more emphasis on me being really weird, and telling her that he ate chickens “because they’re stupid”.
    I gave him a look. “Then you might as well eat Norma,” I said, and from under the table, the dog gave a sigh. No one knew what breed she really was. She was just pretty and blonde and really stupid, and she’d roll on her back to have her tummy tickled by just about anybody.
    Really, she was Chalker’s ideal woman.
    After tea, Chalker got a text from Tom, the singer in his band. Then Tom turned up, apparently to pick up a CD but really to check out Jeni. Chalker had by this point got his guitar out to impress Jeni, and then he handed it over to Tom and started on the piano to really rub it in. Before I really realised how late it was, it was midnight and we were still singing Beatles songs.
    “Oh my God,” Jeni squeaked, “I have to go to college tomorrow.”
    I blinked at her, feeling cruel. “Which college is that, Jeni?”
    She gave me a defiant stare. “Cambridge.”
    Hardly. At dinner she’d said she adored The Importance of Being Ernest , and when my mother asked if she was an Oscar Wilde fan, Jeni had looked blank and said, “Was he the butler?”
    “Really? What are you reading?”
    Her pretty brow creased. Dear me , I thought, better stop that or you’ll get wrinkles. In, say, twenty years’ time.
    “Well, my main text book is Modern Business . It’s sooo heavy. It really makes my back ache!”
    Since a glossy magazine would probably double her body weight, I wasn’t surprised.
    “Are you doing a business degree, then?” I asked, poisonously. I’d seen that book at school—at school —and it most definitely was not a degree-level tome. In fact, Norma Jean could have critiqued it.
    I caught Tom’s eye. He was trying hard not to laugh.
    “Well,” Jeni said, “maybe, once I’ve got my GNVQ.”
    I bit my lip and couldn’t trust myself to say anything.
    “A GNVQ is equivalent to two A levels,” Chalker said.
    “How would you know?” I asked pleasantly. “You never got any.”
    Chalker scowled, and I got up for more wine. My family was great, so long as you have been healthily immunised with alcohol.
    Tom followed me into the kitchen. “What is she, sixteen?” I asked.
    “Seventeen,” he replied, “she says.”
    “She’s such a child!”
    Tom grinned. “You want to know the best bit?”
    I nodded eagerly.
    “It’s not even advanced GVNQ. It’s intermediate. She failed all her GCSEs.”
    I put my hands to my mouth. That was fabulous.
    When we were at school, we called a GNVQ Generally Not Very Qualified. If you did A levels then you had to do three subjects and fill your timetable up, but the GNVQ lot rolled up for about three hours a day, including study periods. Plus, it was generally acknowledged that any qualification in business meant nothing. It was like on The Secret of My Success when Brantley finds out his college qualifications will only get him a job in the mail room.
    Jeni left soon after to get her beauty sleep before going off to chew her pencil at Cambridge Regional (not quite the same as King’s) in the morning. Tom crashed out on the floor in Chalker’s room. I went upstairs and found Tammy asleep on my pillow,