Page 34 of The New Girl

‘Totally obsessed,’ Clara added.

Safa thought Denise’s mum sounded a bit strange. Denise said she shouted all day long, because the four boys drove her crazy, and now she was completely obsessed with star signs.

‘What star sign are you?’ Denise asked Safa.

‘Cancer.’

‘Oh yeah, that’s April, right?’

‘No, it’s July.’

‘Oh yes, sorry, I got mixed up. What date?’

‘The eleventh.’

‘And how about your Mum and Dad?’ Denise asked.

‘Aries and Pisces.’

‘Right, yeah, so what exact dates? My mum says if you know the exact dates you can really tell a lot about a person.’

Safa thought it was odd that Denise wanted to know her parents’ star signs, but then a lot of things in Ireland seemed strange.

‘Mama is the tenth of April and Baba is the fifteenth of March.’

Denise wrote the dates down on her hand.

‘Couldn’t you have brought a copybook out with you?’ Clara glared at her.

‘I forgot.’ Denise shrugged.

Clara pulled a copybook out of her bag and wrote the dates down. ‘Speaking of your parents,’ she said, ‘where exactly is your Dad in Greece? Like what part?’

‘He’s in Athens. Well, that’s where he was the last time we heard from him, but ... but that was almost two months ago.’

Clara wrote ‘Athens’ down beside the star signs. ‘Was it any particular area in Athens, or, like, a specific refugee camp or anything?’

‘It was a place run by the Red Cross in the centre, I think. I don’t really know.’

Clara wrote ‘Red Cross’ and ‘centre of Athens’ in her notebook.

‘Why are you asking?’ Safa was suddenly suspicious.

‘Oh, it’s just that my mum was asking me about you and how you were getting on and all that and I realised that I didn’t know much about your parents and stuff and Mum said it’s important to be interested in people and ... and ...’ Clara trailed off.

‘And not just be all about yourself,’ Ruby added.

‘Yeah, like, all “Me me me”,’ Denise said.

‘Exactly, so I just thought I’d ask you more about yourself. Like, for instance, what date did you arrive in Ireland?’

Safa didn’t like all the attention and the questions. She preferred just to sit back and listen to the girls chatting. The three of them were staring at her and Clara was holding her pen in the air, waiting for an answer. It felt like an interview or even an interrogation.

Safa fidgeted with her watch strap. ‘I don’t know, it was last winter, January, I think.’

‘Do you think it was the first week, or maybe into the second week?’ Clara pushed for more information.

Safa shuffled uncomfortably. ‘I don’t know.’

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