Summer Daydreams by Carole Matthews Read Free Book Online

thoughts of an impressive hairdo, a quirkily different outfit suitable for an art student and maybe even some slap, go completely out of the window. Instead, I pull back my hair into a ponytail, bite my lips a bit to make them red and then throw on whatever’s to hand that looks clean.
    I blow a kiss to Olly and Petal. If they have got something contagious I should try to keep my distance. ‘Love you both,’ I say. ‘I’ll phone when I can, to see how you are.’ Olly groans and Petal bursts into tears. ‘Don’t go, Mummy,’
    she sobs. ‘Don’t go.’
    That’s my heartstrings twanged to breaking point. I rush over to cuddle her, taking her in my arms and pressing her against my chest. I’m a terrible mother for even thinking of leaving her.
    ‘Go,’ Olly croaks. ‘You’re going to be late.’ So I am.
    ‘I’ll be back before you know it,’ I promise Petal and she wails some more.
    With the sound of my daughter’s crying ringing in my ears, I belt out of the house, leg it down into town like a thing possessed and fly through the doors of the college at a speed that Usain Bolt would be proud of. But nothing can disguise the fact that I’m late, late, late. And on my first day, too. I could weep.
    Without too much fuss I’m pointed towards my classroom and dash in there, still out of breath and panting in the style of Dude. Everyone else is in there, sitting down, looking bright-eyed and attentive, ready for action. I already feel that my morning has seen enough action to be going on with. All eyes swing towards me.
    An elderly, pinch-faced woman stands at the head of the class. She looks as if she feels that life has dealt her a mean hand. She’s immaculately dressed, stylish but with an individual edge. She also doesn’t have a hair out of place. The sharp glance at her watch tells me that my tardy arrival hasn’t gone unnoticed.
    ‘Good morning,’ she says crisply. ‘So glad that you were able to join us.’

Chapter 12
     

     
    The rest of my week does not get any better. Nor the week after. Nor the week after that. I race home from college every night at five o’clock, say hello to Olly and Petal and then race out again to get to my shift at Live and Let Fry by six. By the time I finish at ten o’clock and the entire population of Hitchin is filled with chips, I am on my knees. Then I rush home to take over from Olly, while he goes off to do his night shift at the pizza factory. When he’s not making high-end, boxed pizzas, he swaps his beloved sixties gear for a black T-shirt and ripped bondage trousers and sets off – hair gelled into mountainous, and possibly lethal, spikes – to do the punk gig that he bagged at a local bar. The brief peck on the cheek in the kitchen as we hand over the baton is the closest we get to a sex life.
    During the short window of time after closing Live and Let Fry and before I collapse into bed with exhaustion next to my darling daughter, I’m also supposed to be wonderfully creative with artwork to take in for the next day. It’s fair to say that my meals of late have been largely chip-based.
    I ’m so grateful that Olly and Petal did only have a quickie stomach bug and were both as right as rain again within a couple of days. Is it bad that I don’t have time to either be ill myself or to have my family ailing?
    It will get better, I keep telling myself. It has to. Because I can’t really afford for it not to. Everything is riding on this and I’ll let so many people down if I can’t cut it – including myself.
    Plus, it seems that my main course tutor, Ms Amelia Fallon, has taken an instant dislike to me. Every time she talks to me she curls her nose up and I wonder if it’s because I am permanently surrounded by eau de fish and chips or if there’s another reason for her distaste.
    It could well be that I’m the only one on my course who’s always late, always harried, always one step behind everyone else. But then Ms Amelia Fallon seems to