Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(2)

ONE




Joan smoothed down her hair and did a last mirror check in Gran’s upstairs hallway. She had a date today. With Nick. In the mirror, her eyes went soft and happy. Joan had been volunteering at a museum with him over the summer break. She’d had a crush on him all summer, but everyone at work had a crush on Nick.

He’d asked Joan out yesterday, biting his lip and nervous, as if he thought she might say no. As if just being in a room with him didn’t make her heart stutter.

Now they were going to spend a whole day together, starting with breakfast at a café on Kensington High Street. Joan checked her phone. An hour to go.

She was nervous too, she admitted. A waiting-for-the-ride-to-start mix of nerves and excitement. She and Nick had been getting closer and closer over the summer, but this felt like the beginning of something new.

Laughter rose from downstairs, and Joan took a deep, centring breath. Her cousins were already up. Their familiar, comforting bickering washed over her as she descended the stairs.

‘Best forged painting in the National Gallery,’ her cousin Bertie was saying.

‘Easy,’ her other cousin, Ruth, said. ‘Monet’s Water-Lily Pond.’

‘That’s not forged!’ Bertie said.

‘I rest my case.’

‘You can’t just say a random painting!’

Joan was already smiling as she reached the bottom of the stairs. Most of the year, she lived with Dad in Milton Keynes. She liked her quiet life with him, but she liked this too—the noise and clatter of Gran’s place. She stayed with Gran every summer, and she looked forward to it every time.

In the kitchen, Ruth was perched on the broken radiator under the window. At seventeen, Ruth was a year older than Joan and their other cousin, Bertie, but this morning she looked like a kid. She was still in her pajamas: grey flannel bottoms and a Transformers T-shirt with the Decepticon logo: big beaky robot mouth. Her dark curls framed her face.

‘Is there any tea in that cupboard?’ Ruth asked Bertie.

Bertie craned to check, one eye on his frying pan of mushrooms and tomatoes. ‘Only that smoky stuff Uncle Gus drinks.’ He seemed to be dressed for a 1920s boating trip on the Thames, straw hat covering his black hair. All the Hunts had eccentric fashion sense.

‘That stuff tastes like a—’ Ruth cut herself off as she caught sight of Joan in the kitchen doorway. She took in Joan’s new dress and sleek hair, and her face lit up, a slow illumination of glee.

‘Ruth,’ Joan protested. ‘Don’t start.’

But Ruth was already crowing. ‘Look at you!’

‘You got a job interview?’ Bertie asked Joan. ‘I thought you were still volunteering at that museum.’

‘I’m having breakfast with someone,’ Joan said. She was already red. She could feel it.

‘She got dressed up for a date,’ Ruth said. She put her hand over her heart. ‘It’s the ultimate nerd romance. They’re going to the V and A after breakfast! They’re going to look at medieval textiles together!’

‘Nerd romance?’ Joan protested, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling again. ‘You know the V and A has other stuff too. There’s historical wallpaper . . . ceramics . . .’

‘A story for the ages,’ Ruth said. She leaned back against the window, hand still over her heart. ‘Two history geeks volunteer at a museum over the summer break. And then one day they’re mopping floors together, and they look at each other over their mops . . .’

Joan snorted. She went over to steal a corner of uneaten toast from Ruth’s plate. ‘You should come help out sometime,’ she told them both. ‘It’s actually really fun. We learned how to repair broken ceramics the other day.’

‘One day, I’m going to record you so you can hear what you sound like,’ Ruth said. She made stiff robot arms. ‘I am Joan. I love community service. I’m so square, I only cross the road when the green man says I can.’

‘Yes. That is exactly what I sound like,’ Joan said.

Ruth grinned. She might have been a year older than Joan, but their relationship had always been flipped. Ruth saw rules as other people’s problems. Joan was always playing the older sister—taking shoplifted things from Ruth’s pockets and reshelving them, and dragging Ruth to the end of the street so that they could cross at the lights.

Aren’t you a goody-two-shoes, Ruth would say, but she was fond about it. They’d known each other far too long to think they could ever change each other’s natures.

‘Go on,’ Bertie said to Joan, and he sounded just as fond now. He put the whole pan of mushrooms and tomatoes on the kitchen table. ‘Tell us everything.’

‘Let us live the nerd romance vicariously,’ Ruth said.

Joan kicked idly at Ruth’s shoe. ‘I like him,’ she told them both.

‘Really,’ Ruth said, with the indulgent patience of someone who’d been hearing about Nick all summer. She reached over to take a mushroom from the pan.

‘You know the rest. We’re having breakfast this morning. And then we’ll walk up to the V and A.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Ruth said. ‘And then are you two history nerds going to sneak behind the exhibits and . . .’ She mouthed at the mushroom, licking it with exaggerated tongue curls. ‘Mmm—mmm—’