Chapter 5

I got a succession of strange looks from Elize over dinner. Each time, she looked as though she was about to say something, then changed her mind at the last moment.

After helping clear up the meal debris, I retreated to my room, desperately hoping Elize wouldn’t come in and interrogate me. I didn’t know what to say to her and, even if I came clean with her, at this stage it would seem like an afterthought. There was nothing on TV, so I put on some music and hit the books to do some revision for my GCSE exams.

Yes, revision. My enhanced memory ability came with a gotcha. To recall memories, I needed to be able to uniquely identify what I wanted to retrieve. It wasn’t like a photographic memory, where someone can scan a page of a book and be forever able to recall the image. To benefit, I actually had to have an understanding of the material. That mistake had resulted in my getting poorer marks than I expected on my mock GCSEs, and now I was trying to make up for it.

My parents were actually pretty sanguine about my poor results. The family already had one brainiac in Elize, and they were keen that I should be my own person rather than pressuring me to compete with her.

Having spent much of the afternoon in the garden, including pushing a cumbersome lawnmower around, I found myself yawning frequently and struggling to keep my eyes open. I took a quick shower and turned in for an early night.

“Ouch!” A girl’s voice.

Suddenly I was wide awake. Why was Elize in my room in the middle of the night? Was I about to get the grilling I had been dreading?

I switched on my bedside light and couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Justine, what are you doing in my room?” I hissed. “If my parents find us, they’ll kill me.”

“Elize said we’d be safe,” said Justine, rubbing her shin where she’d walked into a piece of furniture. “She said your parents never enter without knocking, and that would give me time to hide under the bed.”

I looked at her with surprise then arousal. Justine was wearing a tight, white, soft cotton t-shirt that highlighted her breasts, and a pair of pale blue cotton boy-short panties that highlighted a surprisingly long and shapely pair of legs. And she was carrying a hand-towel.

“But why?” I pressed, looking the gift horse in the mouth.

“Do you want the long version or the short version? And it’s extremely rude not to invite me into your bed to keep warm.”

I lifted up the covers in invitation. Fortunately I wear pyjamas so she didn’t get an eyeful. Justine got in beside me and pulled the covers over. She smelt really nice.

“We didn’t get around to reviewing my coursework project because Cathy and Shona kept on and on about your case,” said Justine. “Elize tried to stay neutral but pointed out how unbelievable it was for you to have pulled off some sort of trick. Even my mum and the lost property guy would have had to have been involved. And you didn’t exactly give me anything to defend you with.”