Читать книгу A HORSE FOR ANGEL - Sarah Lean, Sarah Lean - Страница 7

AITING AGAIN. THIS TIME IN THE CAR WHILE Mum rushed into the supermarket on the way home. She didn’t leave the keys behind, so I couldn’t open the windows or listen to the radio. I could only hear something rumbling outside and my own sighing.

Waiting makes you sigh. And sighing makes a white patch on the window so you can write HELLO backwards.

An old lady with a trolley stopped to read my message. So I smiled. But she frowned and walked on. So I wiped the window and watched a giant thundering yellow crane instead. It turned slowly in the sky, with a big chunk of concrete swinging on a thin wire below it. I didn’t blink for ages. Just watched it sway.

Mum came out of the supermarket, carrier bags in both hands, her big black handbag containing everything-anyone-could-possibly-need (and probably a hundred more things as well) weighing down her shoulder. Her phone was crushed between the strap and her ear.

I watch her face for clues and can usually work things out and guess what she’s decided. She has an are-you-listening-carefully face, a don’t-question-me- I-know-what-I’m-doing face and a slightly smiley making-up-for-what’s-missing face the rest of the time. And I could tell two things by the way her eyes were fixed on me as she walked and talked. The two things I could tell were this: first, the phone call was about me; and second, I didn’t have a choice.

“There’s been a change of plan,” Mum said, swinging the shopping bags into the back seat. “You’re going to Aunt Liv’s for the Easter holidays.”

I wasn’t expecting that.

“But I always stay with Nana in the holidays. Why have you changed it? Because I touched those stupid lights?”

Whatever she was about to say, she didn’t.

“It has nothing to do with that.”

“Yes, it is. You’ve changed it because of what happened earlier.”

“That’s not it at all. Nana’s had to go up to Leicester on the train to look after her cousin, who’s had a fall. Aunty Annabel. You remember her?”

Nope. And if you fold your arms, you don’t have to try to remember either.

“The one with the poodle,” Mum said, and I could hear her trying hard not to make this about the incident.

I couldn’t picture Aunty Annabel, just a trembling, pinkish poodle and a funny smell of ham.

“I thought you said it died.”

“Yes, but you know who I mean.”

“Why can’t somebody else look after her? Why does it have to be Nana?”

Mum continued as if I’d said nothing.

“The decision’s been made. When we get home, I want you to go up in the loft. There’s a big grey suitcase up there that you’re going to need.”

I noticed we’d completely left out a whole middle bit of the conversation where I could say I didn’t want to go. Which is always part of Mum’s master plan. Cut out the annoying middle bit and get to the point, or the next appointment. Never mind what I want.

“Start packing tonight,” she said. “You can do the rest tomorrow when we get back from your maths tutor and before swimming club, then I’ll drive you down to Aunt Liv’s on Sunday.”

I don’t like drama club and I don’t like the maths tutor either because her house smells of garlic. My swimming teacher says I swim like a cat, like something that doesn’t want to be in the water.

My life is a list of mostly boring or pointless activities that I didn’t choose, with a car drive and waiting in between. If you practise long enough, you don’t have to care that everything has been taken out of your hands. That’s what mums are for.

“So how was drama club? Apart from—”

“Fine,” I sighed.

When we got home, we ate cold pasta salad out of supermarket cartons. Mum had her phone glued to her head again and while she was talking she waved a finger towards the loft door in the hallway ceiling at the top of the stairs.