Slated by Teri Terry Read Free Book Online Page A

exercises to do, all right? If you’ll do them – really do them, and try hard – then we’ll get you in school next week. Deal?’ She holds out her hand.
I stare back at her. It is Thursday, today; Monday is only four days away.
‘All right. Deal,’ I say, and grasp hers.
Amy peeks in at the back of the hall, probably sent to find out why I haven’t come out yet.
Penny spots her. ‘Amy? Come in. You can help.’
Soon they have me visualising a Happy Place. I choose my dreaming green place of trees and flowers, lying back and looking up at clouds in the sky. Whenever I am upset or scared, I am to go there in my mind. Until it becomes automatic.
Easy, right?

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
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‘Are you sure you’re all right watching both of them?’ Mum says, turning at the door.
‘Yes, I told you,’ Amy says. ‘Go on.’
Me, I’m not convinced about this. The noise is getting into my head. How can someone so small make so much noise? Screaming Mummy over and over.
The door shuts, and out the window I see Mum and Dad walking off down the road to the pub, with Dad’s younger sister, our Aunt Stacey, who seems immune to the wailing of her small son.
He draws in a shuddering breath to fill his lungs for another onslaught.
Amy bends down. ‘Robert, want a biscuit?’
His mouth wobbles. She holds out her hands, and he looks up at her, indecision playing across his tear stained face. She scoops him up and into the kitchen. In seconds he is giggling and chomping biscuits on the floor.
‘How does he go from screaming to laughing in a minute?’
‘He’s just a baby; easy to distract.’
Sebastian wanders in, takes one look at Robert and jumps out of reach up on the worktop.
‘Kitty?’ Robert points. ‘Kitty!’
He drops his biscuit and pulls himself up holding the legs of a chair, pointing at Sebastian. He takes a few steps then falls on his backside, looks startled. His face screws up.
‘You’re okay, Robert!’ Amy scoops him up and holds him so he can reach one hand to Sebastian, who looks resigned.
‘Pet kitty nicely, like this,’ she says. And shows him much like she did with me on my first day.
But he doesn’t get it, more thumps him than strokes, then runs his hand the wrong way so his fur stands up. Sebastian jumps down and disappears out the cat flap.
Amy sits and starts tickling Robert on her knee before he can get upset, and he giggles.
An hour or so of playing with cupboard doors and banging pots with wooden spoons follows. Robert starts rubbing his eyes, and falls asleep in Amy’s arms.
‘Tea?’ she says, and I get up to fill the kettle, put it on the stove.
Amy turns in her seat, and I see her watching. Like Mum said. She is watching both of us . Like I might burn my hand on the stove, or wobble and fall over on my arse like Robert.
Nurse Penny said to Mum I am like a small child. But look at him: he can’t learn things as fast as I can. He couldn’t even pet the cat right. Amy says he’s been taking his first steps for weeks, yet he still falls over; he is a year old, but can barely talk.
When I was Slated I could walk in weeks, no wobbles. Talking in complete sentences days after my first words. I was faster than many, true, but even the slowest ones can hold basic conversation in a month or two.
My memories are gone, but parts of me remember. My body, my muscles. Like my left hand with a pencil. It knew what to do with it once I put it there. So it isn’t the same thing as starting over, at all. It is more that given the right trigger, you can do things you forgot. Who knows what else I am capable of?
I put cups of tea on the table, and sit down.
‘Ow, my arm is falling asleep. Can you just hold his head?’ Amy motions and I slip my hands under Robert as she shifts in her seat. He doesn’t wake.
‘Thanks. Isn’t he adorable?’ she says.
I shrug, unconvinced. ‘Too noisy, when he’s awake. I like him better this way.’
‘True. How he howled for his mother.’
‘She didn’t seem