Days Like This by Alison Stewart Read Free Book Online Page B

love Daniel and he’ll come home soon, you’ll see.’
    She turned back to her rivers.

    Lily was at her screen when she heard the familiar sounds of fighting coming from the street. She ran to the window in the bathroom, but was too late. The street was empty. She stayed to watch, hoping whoever it was would return.
    ‘What are you doing? Get down from there at once!’ Pym shouted.
    Her father’s sudden appearance in the doorway startled Lily. She wobbled before jumping down from the edge of the bath. It would be easier if she could lock the bathroom door, but a few days after Daniel had gone her father had come upstairs and removed the lock. It wasn’t right that he had taken away her privacy. And his abrupt arrival now made her suspicious that he’d been spying on her. She peered around the bathroom, but there was no surveillance camera that she could see.
    Lily crossed her arms tightly over her chest and waited, glaring at her father. She thought if she could keep conversation to a minimum, she could avoid an outright fight.
    Lily tried slipping past, but he barred her exit. He wasn’t a particularly big man, but his presence was strangely dominant.
    ‘What are you looking for out there all the time?’ her father said.
    ‘Why do you care?’
    ‘What are you looking for?’ Pym said again. He seemed to have forgotten that he’d already asked that question. Lily had noticed that same inability to concentrate in her mother, too.
    ‘I’m watching the Blacktroopers out there attacking people for no reason,’ she answered.
    ‘Get down. It doesn’t do anyone any good.’
    ‘Where do those kids out there come from?’ Lily said.
    Pym ignored her and turned to go back down the stairs.
    ‘Do they want to sabotage your wonderful life? Are they anti-Committee?’ she shouted.
    That made him pause and turn to look at her, but he wasn’t going to be drawn. His refusal to explain anything was so frustrating. No wonder Daniel had been furious all the time.
    ‘Max will be here tomorrow night for dinner and he wants to say hello, as usual. Dress properly and no talk about Blacktroopers attacking people. Understood?’ Pym said coldly.
    Oh God, not again
. Lily took a deep breath. ‘I … do… not… want… to … see … Max!’ She spoke each word clearly. ‘Just because he’s “important”.’
    Pym looked at her and didn’t deny it.
    So Max
must be
Committee.
    ‘Why aren’t you Committee, Dad? Is there something wrong with you?’ She wanted to stir him.
    ‘Just do as you’re told,’ he said, then turned his back on her and went down the stairs.
    Lily gritted her teeth.
Not much longer
, she thought. She waited for a minute and then climbed back onto the edge of the bath.
    The image of her father’s face stayed with her. He had looked even more fake than usual. It was like someone had taken an iron and smoothed out his skin to get rid of wrinkles and press his body free of bulges. He was a smooth, flat man. How old was he? Fifty-four, and Megan was a year younger. It was unnatural.
    On an impulse, Lily jumped off the bath and followed her father down the stairs. She was just in time to see the door to her parents’ wing of the house slam shut. She watched the closed door for a while and then walked down the hall passage towards the front of the house.
    Lily stopped at the front door and put the palms of her hands against it. It was made of a solid, gold-coloured wood. Leadlight glass had once filled the top third, but that was now boarded up. When people used to visit, their silhouettes had made shapes on the glass. Lily leaned against the door. It was bizarre to think that there had been a time when air had flowed in and out whenever someone opened this door. Real, outside air. A time when you could smell the beginning and end of the seasons and the promise of rain.
    In the time before the warming had really taken hold, the windows in the house had been made of only single glass rather than the double