Читать книгу Sarah Lean - 3 Book Collection - Sarah Lean, Sarah Lean - Страница 20

NUMBER 4, ALBERT TERRACE WAS A TALL HOUSE made of rust-coloured bricks, with crumbly grey cement in between. The blue paint flaked around the big windows, made it look as if it had sad old eyes. Where we lived now had just been built when Mum and Dad moved in; everything in it was ours. The builders made the outside; Mum made the inside. She varnished the window frames every year, to keep them shiny.

A car pulled up and a lanky man got out. He buttoned his grey jacket, said hello kiddiewinks, but Dad didn’t make us say hello back.

He handed Dad a key, held his arm out, said, “It’s got great views over the common and good-sized bedrooms; it’s a fine example of Victorian history.”

We’ve done Victorian history at school and I learned what it was like for children living back then when we rehearsed for Olivia! – misery, disease and empty bellies.

The small garden at the front had a pot of sunflowers with green heads tethered to sticks; there was a small concrete yard out the back. We were going to have to share the garden and yard and a washing line and a shed with the people in Flat 1 downstairs.

Flat 2 was empty. Our footsteps were loud along the hall and in the hollow rooms. The rooms were all painted the same plain colour, like old book pages; they smelled of dust and other people.

We all looked out the window at the common. A big patch of land for everyone.

Dad nodded towards the view. “Somewhere for you to throw a Frisbee, hey, Luke?”

Luke went out, slamming the door. The bang crashed into the walls of the empty rooms. Through the window I saw Luke running across the common. Dad swore. I said my twelve times table in my head. Miss Steadman said I needed more practice, and you can’t remember your tables unless you keep saying them over and over and over.

The lanky man was still waiting outside. “I’m sure you’re going to like it here,” he said. But I could tell he didn’t care because he was staring at the big wad of money in Dad’s wallet. They signed bits of paper and swapped them.

We found Luke throwing stones in the stream under a little brick bridge. His face was blotchy.

“I’m sorry, son,” said Dad, “but we don’t have a choice.”

“This is your choice, not ours,” said Luke, spitting out the words.

Luke looked at me, knew I was with him. We would never choose to leave our home. Mum was still in every cupboard Dad made for her, along every shelf he put up and she painted. She was in the soft carpets and the flowery paper on their bedroom wall, in the light switches, on every handle of every door she held open, in the grain of the wooden kitchen table where she always was when we came home from school. I don’t think we had opened the windows since she’d been gone. Sometimes after school, you could still smell her when you got home.

“I don’t have a choice,” Dad snapped. “There’s going to be some redundancies at work. After all these years H. Packaging is downsizing.” He sighed and paced. “They’ve cut my hours. I have to make sure we don’t lose everything.” He wiped his hand over his face and beard. “I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t understand.”

Luke wiped his nose. He threw his handful of stones in the water. “Try me,” he said.

Dad sank his hands in his pockets. He stared at the back of Luke’s hanging head. “I’ve sold the house.”

“Without telling us!”

“Look,” he said, “we can’t … I can’t afford to stay where we are any more. I’m trying my best.”

“Try harder,” Luke sniffed. “Isn’t that what you’d say to me?”

Dad walked off, barely looking over his shoulder. “It’s the way it is, Luke, like it or lump it.”

He shouldn’t say things like that; he never used to say things like that. It’s not fair.

“When?” Luke shouted. “When do we have to move to this stupid place?”

Dad stopped and turned. “Friday.”

I felt the sob catch in my chest.

Luke was mad as anything. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”

Dad kept walking and muttered, “It’s better this way.”