I don’t know why I’m so mean to her. I make myself feel bad.

“Hellooo there, Oirish, how the divil are you? I’ve not laid eyes on you for ages. Have you been a-larking about with your mates, you little colleen?”

She is so annoyingly friendly. But I know why she wants to be my bestie. And it didn’t take long for her to get round to it. She said, “Any news of that noice young man at all, at all?”

I couldn’t help myself—it had been a bit of a tense day—so I said, “Oh yeah, do you mean Alex? Actually, funnily enough, Ruby says he’s coming home the weekend after next.”

Lavinia said, “Railly? Well, I might just swing by. I’ve something I want to ask him about a play I’m doing in London.”

She was all smiley and dimply.

I said, in a really friendly way, “Wow, that’s a coincidence, isn’t it? And I expect he’d be pleased to see you. It would be great actually because you could meet his girlfriend, Candice. She’s really, really nice. She’s got . . . lovely . . . hair. But oh no, hang on, I mean maybe three’s company and . . . er . . . no, I mean two’s company and . . .”

Lav laughed. “Don’t you go worrying your pretty head about that, Tallulah Casey, my dear, me dahling girl. I think Alex would always be pleased to see me.”

I said, “Oh, but I think he really likes Candice. I mean, he and she, well . . .”

Lav tapped her nose and then ruffled my hair and said, “When you get a bit bigger, Oirish, you’ll find that boys don’t know what they want until you tell them, begorrah, bejesus.”

As I was banging off through the front door, Flossie came bounding up.

“If you see anything of that Seth boy, let me know. I’ve got bad boy withdrawal! Ciao.”

Trudging home, I was thinking about tomorrow and Sunday. I haven’t got anything to really look forward to. I’ll be just on my owny.

I wonder what Lav meant about boys not knowing what they want until you tell them. She sort of implied that if she wanted to, she could make Alex like her. Even though he’s got a wafty girlfriend. Hmmm.

Is that the right thing to do though? Isn’t it sort of like hypnotizing someone?

Like when you see a hypnotist show and they get a member of the audience onto the stage and say, “Look into my eyes. Not around the eyes, right into my eyes. You are a giant rabbit. You love carrots.” And the person starts hopping around and saying, “Coo, you haven’t got any carrots, have you? I’d love a carrot.”

Maybe it’s like Cousin Georgia said when you do “sticky eyes”?

She says you have to look a boy right in the eyes and then look down. Then you look him in the eye again. And then down again. Sort of like really slow blinking, but it is called “sticky eyes.”