Читать книгу For the Love of Christmas - Kate Forster, Kate Forster - Страница 8

Sofie

Sofie lay in bed and thought about the three things she loved the most in the world.

Taylor Swift.

Bubbles, her dog.

And her mother.

And not one of them was with her.

Taylor didn’t even know who she was, even though she had written to her a thousand times. She had liked every video on YouTube, and had even written to Katy Perry to ask her to stop bullying Taylor, because everyone knows bullies are the worst kinds of people.

Bubbles was in a kennel, because Dad had said he was too much for the farmhouse, and that he would chase the sheep, but she doubted that he would. Bubbles had excellent manners.

And her mum was in America. She knew she wasn’t there for work, or the knee replacement or whatever lie she had been told by someone. What grown-ups needed to realise about telling lies is that if you decide on a story, you need to stick to it, not have different versions.

Only Oscar told her the truth. ‘Mum’s gone to a place where they tell her to stop drinking,’ he said.

‘Why doesn’t she stay at home and we can tell her?’ asked Sofie.

Oscar had shook his head. ‘Doesn’t work like that,’ he said wisely.

‘So how does it work?’ she asked.

‘I don’t exactly know, but not like that,’ he said, seeming less wise.

She wished she were at home, where her mum would have put up all the decorations and there was a real tree in the living room and new presents appearing underneath it every afternoon, as though by magic, all wrapped beautifully by her mum.

Her mum loved to wrap presents. She would make a real thing of it, with all sorts of pretty paper and ribbons, and perfect folding. Sometimes Sofie would help her, and even though it was never as good as her mum’s, she would still be praised for her work.

She wondered what Taylor was doing right now. Maybe singing or dancing or having her friends over. And Bubbles? He was probably in a cold kennel, with no friends or even a blanket for comfort.

Her eyes filled with tears, as she lay in the dark, unfamiliar room.

And her mum? She was in a hospital, Oscar said. Was she in bed? In a gown with ties on the back like they show in the movies? Was she even alive? Dad didn’t talk about her much any more. Sometimes she spoke to her in her head, but sometimes she didn’t want to because, if she started to tell her mum how sad she was, she thought she would never stop crying.

She closed her eyes and thought about going home. She would walk up the path with Oscar and there, on the front door, would be the red wreath. This was the first sign that Christmas was coming in their house. Dad hadn’t put up anything Christmassy in the house, saying it was a waste of money and they would do it all when they got home.

But Sofie had other ideas and, turning on the small lamp by her bed, she opened the drawer in the little table the lamp sat on and took out the folded pieces of paper and a pair of scissors. She started her nightly routine of cutting and twisting and turning the paper as she worked.

She had sixteen snowflakes so far. She wanted to make thirty-nine, one for each year of her mummy’s life. She planned to stick them on every window downstairs, so it was a wallpaper of snowflakes in the house. She had a lot of work to do, she thought and sighed simultaneously, and settled in to her task for the night.