Red Ink by Julie Mayhew Read Free Book Online

everything.
    Forever.
    To Babas, a line had been drawn in the earth and Maria had stepped across it. He could not look her in the eye. His words and stories dried up.
    Maria’s Mama, always in the background, stepped forward and became the industrious one. She would not allow shame to be brought upon her family. She would not watch her husband shun his only daughter. She decided they must leave the island to allow painful wounds to heal. So Mama, Maria and Maria’s unborn baby, at the time no bigger than a butter-bean, made their way to London where Mama’s sister had gone to live some years before.
    “They will be more understanding there,” said Mama.
    Babas took one last look at Maria, his little love, his little dove.
    “Pah!” he said, instead of goodbye.

7 YEARS BEFORE
    I’m eight and three-quarters years old.
    There is a bong sound. Soft and comfy. The ‘no smoking’ light comes on above my head and Mum says, “tut”. Sometimes Mum goes and smokes in the toilets. This always makes the air hostesses cross and gets Mum a big telling-off.
    Mum is click-clacking with her seatbelt, making it complicated. Really, it’s easy. Mine’s fixed. Friendly hands around my waist. I’m already eating Cherry Drops to stop my ears popping. Crack the hard shell and there’s a fizz inside. I’m ready for lift-off.
    The smell of meat and baby-food potatoes is filling up the aeroplane. The meal is the best bit. You get a tray with four other littler trays on top. One has a yogurt in with a swollen-up top. You have to be careful when you open it. It could pop all over you, or over the seat in front, or on a stranger sitting nearby. If that happens, it’s very funny, but you have to say sorry. Another little tray has a bread roll with a packet of butter and margarine. Butter AND margarine, you get to choose. If you can’t decide, you can have butter on one half of your bun and margarine on the other. Mum puts the salt and pepper from the sachets on top to make salt and pepper-flavoured bread. Another tray has the hot stuff in. When you take the foil off, the steam gets you with a sting. The last tray has a warm jam sponge. Well, it’s not always jam sponge but it is always an afters. If you think about it, with the yogurt, that makes two afters really.
    I’d quite like to take the small trays home with me. The air hostesses probably just throw them out. You never see air hostesses washing-up. Some of the trays are blue and some are yellow and their edges are smooth and shiny. I’m not sure what I’d use mine for, but I’d find something. They’re just nice to have really. I ask Mum if I can keep the little trays and she just says, “You are not eating your mashed potato, no? Melon?”
    The hot stuff is too much food for me and too little for Mum. So when I’m halfway done we take my big, blue tray with the foil and swap it with Mum’s. That way it looks like I’ve been good and eaten all mine, and Mum gets seconds. You shouldn’t have seconds if you’re fat but Mum is skinny so it’s okay.
    “If she turn to the side, she disappear,” is what Auntie Aphrodite says. She says it really grumpily, so it must be a bad thing to disappear. Auntie Aphrodite has boobies that finish where her belt starts and arms like marshmallows. She is named after the goddess of love and the most beautiful woman ever. Mum says this is
very
funny.
    “Flowers they are growing wherever she is walking, birds they are flocking wherever she is flying!” Mum says before doing a harrumph noise and laughing a lot. I have never seen Auntie Aphrodite’s flowers or her birds, but I would like to.
    When we get to Crete, Auntie Aphrodite will make all the food and Mum won’t eat much of it, probably because she’s so full from all that aeroplane dinner.
    We’ll have Toblerone for afters on the plane too. One of those big triangle ones in the boxes off the air hostess’s trolley. I always say how nice the pilot bears are on the top of the