Читать книгу The Last Family in England - Matt Haig - Страница 38

shoes

Later, Kate was pulling her face up in front of her bedroom mirror. She always did this. When she was on her own. Under the glare of the spot lamp, she’d place the tips of her fingers on her hairless face and stretch the skin up as far as it could go, forcing her eyes to retreat into hiding. Then, after a while, the hands would move up and around to the temples and push back in an attempt to make the creases of her forehead invisible.

She turned, noticed me. ‘Prince, how long have you been there?’

I wagged my response and tried to look sentimental. Kate smiled at me, she was tired, but she smiled. And the smile was beautiful, natural, for my eyes only. No one ever got this Kate smile, not even Adam. Every other smile in her collection was false, a disguise, but this was real.

You see, Kate and I, we had a special relationship.

She told me all her secrets. Everything she kept inside, hidden away from her species. Well, not everything.

Kate moved away from the mirror to shut the curtains, and then took off her shoes. In contrast to her usual routine, she left the shoes out on the green carpet and sat on the edge of the bed. The shoes had fallen in such a way, and at such a distance apart, that it was as if the real Kate was staring at an invisible, younger, more supple version of herself doing the splits.

The smile had gone from her face now as she sat on the bed, listening. Listening to Adam talking to Charlotte in her bedroom, telling her why she wasn’t allowed to go and see The Mad Dogz of War, his voice getting louder and louder, his breath getting shorter. The argument ended with the sound of Charlotte beating her hands onto her bed. Adam trod his way back to Kate.

‘Charlotte,’ he sighed. ‘She’s just impossible.’

‘She’s a teenager, teenagers are always impossible. We should know that by now.’

‘Hal. Was he really like that?’ Adam’s voice was hushed, although Hal was plugged into his headphones in his bedroom.

‘Well, he hasn’t been perfect, has he? And anyway, it’s always meant to be harder for the youngest. The second child is more impossible than the first, it’s a well-known fact.’

Adam crouched down, cracking his knees as he did so, and started stroking the top of my head.

‘What do you think, Prince? Have you got any parenting tips you can offer us?’ he asked.

But as usual they did not listen to me. In fact, unless I had actually stood up and spoken the words out of my mouth, I doubt they would have ever been able to understand me. Adam stared blankly into my eyes before turning to Kate.

‘I suppose I’d better take him down.’