Erimentha Parker Chapters 12 & 13:
Plot -
- Mum takes Ruby food shopping and says she can get a treat. She choses a blueberry nature bar and a carton of banana milk. Mum buys Nathan a chocolate milkshake and chocolate buttons and then comments that he will be hyper tonight. Ruby then essentially says she is full of tit because sugar doesn't trigger hyperactivity in children
- While browsing the frozen ravioli they bump into Julia, one of mum's friends, who invites them round for a BBQ as a "New School Year celebration of sorts"
- They waffle on about aerobics and yoga
- We finally find out that Julia has two daughters, and one of them is Kimberly.
- Ruby goes to visit her grandmama (yep that is the term she uses) who is fluent in 5 languages, partially fluent in another 7 and a bookworm just like Ruby
- Ruby posts a letter into her grandmama's letterbox before going in to talk to her
- Grandmama compliments Ruby's outfit and she makes sure to say she has had the skirt since she is 8 (wow she even body checks in her book!)
- They go on a walk even though it is cold and talk about books and then how last summer they swam in the river. An old man had let Ruby use his tape measure to calculate the height and width of the river so she could calculate the hydraulic radius, which Ruby then turned into a special presentation for her grandmama
- I think Grandmama is meant to give Ruby good advice by saying unkindness doesn't last forever, and that she will always have friends in books but the conclusion is basically Ruby thinks she can try change Kimberly which probably isn't the best message
Quotes -
- "I flinch at the informality of the invitation"
- "I speak French, of course, but that's only because Mum grew up in Paris"
- "I expect my cheeks are as red as cherry tomatoes in the bitter wind and I feel them with the back of my hand - my cool fingers burn against the sensitive tissue"
- "I would like to have the postman deliver my letters too but the stamp-cost is simply too high (no way could it be covered by an eleven-year-old's pocket money!)"
- "It's not that she wants to completely isolate herself from the outside world but her dissolving eyesight means that she can no longer drive and she was never a fan of buses" (Ruby please never use the word dissolve when talking about eyes)
- "Grandmama bundles herself up in a warm ski coat, the same one she wears on our annual trip to the alps"
- "Outside the wind bites at our cheeks, nipping at my nose like an excitable puppy"
- "I admit defeat and deflate like an untied balloon released from a child's sticky fingertips"
- "I was always one to meticulously stay within the lines and was even given a special certificate for it when I was in reception ... Dad framed it and hung it on the wall"