Carry Me Down by M. J. Hyland Read Free Book Online

mostly worried I’ll embarrass myself. She hasn’t asked enough questions and, if she believed me, she would be morecurious. She’s normally a person who asks questions, one after another, and I always answer her questions.
    ‘OK,’ I say. ‘It’ll be our secret.’
    ‘Let’s not call it a secret. Let’s just … let’s call it our sleeping dog.’
    ‘What kind of dog?’
    ‘A red-snorer with long hairy legs that twitch while he’s sleeping.’
    She lies down again. We smile but I want more: I want her to hug me. I lift my arm and put it over her shoulder. She puts her arm around my waist. This hasn’t happened for quite a long time.
    ‘Close your eyes,’ she says. Once I have closed my eyes, she kisses me on the lips.
    ‘Keep your eyes closed,’ she says.
    ‘OK,’ I say.
    She runs her hand along my side, and feels my hip, but she stops suddenly, pats me twice, takes her hand back to herself. And then she is up, too fast, out of my warm bed.
    ‘Goodnight,’ she says.
    ‘But …’
    ‘Goodnight.’
    I sit up till late reading the library book, The Truth about Lie Detection , and with a new pen and a new exercise book I start writing about lies and the way people behave when they lie. I call the book The Gol of Seil and I write about my father’s lie and about my grandmother’s lie and then about my mother’s strange reaction to the truth.
    I wonder what will happen when people find out that I have this rare ability? Or when people realise they can’t deceive me? I’ll need to be careful. I’ll need to be very careful.

5
    I get up early and climb the narrow stairs to my parents’ bedroom. My grandfather built this loft because he wanted a room away from the rest of the cottage where he could repair jewellery. It has two big windows and a low ceiling. Granny is the only one who doesn’t have to stoop when she goes through the door.
    The door is open just enough for me to see inside. My mother is asleep on her side with her foot poking out from under the eiderdown.
    My father is not in the bed. He is sleeping on a mattress on the floor under a brown blanket. He is awake, staring up at the ceiling, or perhaps he is asleep with his eyes open. I’m not sure which.
    I stand on my toes and stare for too long and he sees me. He must see me, his eyes meet my eyes, but no other part of his face moves. He does not speak or look like he wants to speak. He stares at me, a long and empty stare, and I still do not know if he is awake or asleep.
    ‘Why are you on the floor?’ I want to ask, and I would have asked this question last week, but now, somehow, I have lost my nerve, the way I do at school, and I walk backwards, feeling along the wall with my hands until I am out of his sight.
    The stairs are narrow and I go down sideways, holding tight to the rail.
    I make more noise in the kitchen than usual, and hope that my grandmother will hear me from her bedroom at the other end of the cottage. Before long, she comes in.
    ‘John!’ she says. ‘It’s half six in the morning.’
    ‘I was hungry.’
    ‘You little devil. I thought there was a bandit in the house. Come over here.’
    ‘Sorry,’ I say, but I don’t go to her.
    ‘Well, I’m awake now. How about you bring me some tea and sit with me a while?’
    I make toast and tea and bring it in to her bedroom.
    ‘If you’re cold,’ she says, ‘you can pop under the covers.’
    ‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m not cold.’
    I sit on the end of her bed and she eats her toast with her mouth wide open, the way she eats everything, as though she has the flu and cannot breathe through her nose.
    ‘Isn’t it funny,’ I say, ‘how when you have the flu you don’t have a flue to breathe through.’
    She pulls her chin in.
    ‘Like a flue in a chimney …’
    ‘Oh. I get it now. You’d need to be up nice and early to keep up with you.’
    ‘But,’ I say, ‘it is early!’
    She smiles but the smile fades quickly and her ugly mouth turns down again. ‘You