Saving from Monkeys by Jessie L. Star Page A

to him that time gave me no sense of achievement.
    He obviously misread my grimace of guilt as one of disbelief because he repeated, kind of angrily actually, "Nan didn't come into it."
    "I believe you," I said truthfully, and then we lapsed into silence.
    It took about two seconds for me to realise that us both having our mouths shut at the same time made me very uncomfortable. Sure, when Elliot talked it was like he was trying to prove it was possible to irritate someone to death, but now, in the aftermath of our awkwardly honest comments, it became blindingly obvious that him not saying anything was even worse. Irritating when he talked and more irritating when he didn't. What a talent this boy had.
    I looked over to see whether the quiet was freaking him out as much as it was me, but I couldn't tell as his head was down, his floppy hair ( stupid floppy hair, I reminded myself) hiding his expression. Ten to one that was on purpose.
    "Even if you didn't do it, do me , to make Nan happy, you've got to admit she is," I burst out, not so much breaking the silence as punching it in the face and stealing its wallet. It worked, though, as Elliot lifted his dark eyes to mine and acknowledged my outburst with a slight quirk of his mouth.
    "Yeah," some of the tension left his shoulders and he leant back, reactivating his 'too cool for school' shields. "I think she could only have been happier if I'd developed a debilitating drug addiction."
    "Well, it's not too late," I said eagerly, glad to be back on normal ground with him. "I met a girl in the toilets earlier who offered to sell me something if you're interested."
    "I might save my junkie days for Nan's next stroke." He tilted his drink towards me in a sort of salute. "It'll give me something to look forward to."
    I was used to having moments of genuine shared emotion with Abi; to have that feeling of joint consciousness with my best friend was not unusual. What was unusual, however, was to catch flippin' Elliot Sinclair's eye and have this same feeling of complete understanding. But there it was. As we looked at each other, there was a fleeting moment where the dark humour slipped away and I saw that he felt what I did; a mind numbing terror that we were going to lose Nan.
    I think we were both as genuinely astonished by this as the other. In fact, we were still looking at each other with faint expressions of 'WTF?' when there was a sudden booming shout of, "Sinclair, you bastard!"
    Elliot and I both blinked, and, in the next second, three large bodies appeared next to our table. This sudden arrival forcibly reminded me that the impenetrable bubble Elliot and I had been enclosed in had been figurative rather than literal, and I felt suddenly embarrassed.
    Looking up gingerly, I recognised the newcomers as three of Elliot and Jonah's old rugby mates. To a man they had thick necks, bulging biceps and a brutishly surprised look on their face as they swung their gaze from Elliot to me. Oh, this night just got better and better…
    "Bloody hell," one of them barked, "that's not Cinders, is it?"
    "Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail." I nodded at them each in turn, having followed their example with me and never bothered to learn their actual names.
    "It is!" The ugliest of the three, patted my shoulder with a big, meaty hand and grinned toothily across at Elliot. "Since when do we drink with the help, Sinclair?"
    And there it was. The kind of comment I'd managed to avoid since coming to uni, but which had characterised any time spent with Elliot and his mates in the past. It had taken them less than ten seconds.
    "Fairly sure you're not, Henderson," Elliot said flatly and I looked across at him sharply.
    I could see that his old friends were as taken aback by his unfriendly tone as I was and I wondered what I'd unwittingly ended up in the middle of. Trouble in rich boy paradise?
    "What? You're not going to invite us to sit down?" One of the others asked after an awkward pause, maintaining his