Odd Socks by Ilsa Evans Read Free Book Online

front of me, so I honk to let him know his actions haven’t gone unnoticed. A couple of teenagers in therear of the bus copy my earlier gesture but I ignore them blithely and turn up Forest Road towards Ferntree Gully Central.
    Then I close my eyes and take a deep breath in an attempt to clear my body of residual stress. When I open them again I’m in Ferntree Gully Central, so I slow down because the little township is a positive mecca for elderly people, and running over a stray one would really not help this day pick up. Within a few minutes I’m turning into my mother’s street, and then into her driveway.
    I park on the terracotta cobblestones and, leaning back to wait for her, feel myself start to relax as I contemplate the weatherboard house before me. I don’t think it matters whether you live across the world or across the street, most people experience a sense of coming home, of revisiting roots, whenever they visit the house they grew up in. I know I do – but I also know that, in my case, the days for this are numbered. The rambling white weatherboard I grew up in is far too big for my mother alone, and the block it squats on is far too big not to attract a wealth of developers as soon as the house hits the market. Which means that, sooner or later, in this spot I’ll be staring not at a gracious old weatherboard starting to feel her age, but at a row of pea-in-the-pod brick units.
    I press down on the horn impatiently and an elderly gentleman who is planting a series of wilting daisies in his lawn next door looks up and frowns at me with annoyance. The front door of my mother’s house opens wide and, a few seconds later, my mother herself comes bustling out and down the brick path to where it intersects with the driveway. She is wearing a loud floral pinafore over a purple skivvy, thongs and a huge smile.
    â€˜Teresa, darling! How lovely!’
    â€˜Sorry I’m late, Mum,’ I say as I give her outfit a cursory glance. ‘You wouldn’t believe the day I’m having!’
    â€˜Of course I would, honey. You aren’t a liar – never have been.’
    â€˜Oh. Okay. Hey, you’re not wearing that are you?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜That –’ I gesture at the pinafore ensemble ‘– to the hospital.’
    â€˜But you said eleven o’clock, Teresa!’
    â€˜It is eleven o’clock. Actually, it’s a quarter past.’
    â€˜Already?’
    â€˜Yes. So could you get changed – quickly?’
    â€˜Eleven o’clock!’ Mum shakes her head with amazement and wanders back up the path still repeating the time in a disbelieving voice. She slams the door behind her and I roll my eyes and settle down to wait.
    When I was a small girl, I firmly believed height had a direct correlation with intelligence. That is, the taller a person was, the smarter they were. And vice versa. I hadn’t just plucked this theory out of the ether either, because in my household there was very good reason for believing it. My father was a six-foot-four criminal lawyer who, when he was home, generally wandered around muttering unintelligible sentences and radiating intelligence. Then there was his assorted family, with not one adult non-tertiary educated or under six foot, and all the children rapidly approaching that mark. My older brother and I were in the same mould – both tall, bright and precocious. And then there was our mother.
    She is, to be blunt, an idiot. And a tiny idiot, at that. With heels she might break the five-foot barrier, but they’d have to be pretty decent. I don’t want to know what it says about my father that he, in his thirties, married a minute eighteen year old with the IQ of a damaged gnat. Obviously, he was one ofthose men who are fatally attracted to dumb blondes – the dumber the better. And with my mother he hit the jackpot.
    Age doesn’t appear to have made much difference