The Year of the Rat by Clare Furniss Read Free Book Online Page B

be with you all the time.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Well, apart from anything else, it would drive us both completely stark staring mad. You’d kill me if I wasn’t already dead. Or vice versa. You know how we argue, sweetheart,
if we have to spend more than two hours together in a confined space.’
    ‘No we don’t.’ I think about it. ‘Not really.’
    She raises an eyebrow. ‘Remember that week in Barmouth when it rained non-stop and we couldn’t leave the caravan? You said you needed counselling after that holiday. You said you
were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.’
    It’s funny, I’d forgotten about that bit. I’d remembered the one sunny day when we all had ice cream on the beach and Mum and me buried Dad in the sand. But I can’t deny
she’s right.
    ‘And what about when you had your appendix out and I took a week off work to look after you?’ she continues. ‘You said you’d pay me to go back to work. You got on your
knees and begged me.’
    I groan, remembering. ‘You kept trying to cook me things.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And then expecting me to eat them.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And you kept making me watch
The Sound of Music
and then you’d sing along.’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Really loudly.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘And out of tune.’
    She stops and stares at me. ‘
Out of tune?
I don’t think so, Pearl. I have an excellent singing voice. Loud perhaps. Out of tune, no.’
    ‘Flat as a pancake,’ I laugh. ‘And that’s being kind.’
    She’s about to retaliate when she stops herself and smiles. ‘You see? You’re just proving my point. We’re arguing already.’
    ‘You’re arguing.’
    ‘Look. No one wants to spend twenty-four hours a day with their mother, dead or alive. Now come on. Shift. You need a good breakfast before exams.’
    ‘I’m not hungry.’ I haven’t really been able to face food since Mum died, but today it’s even more true than usual. ‘Anyway, I don’t care about the
exams. What’s the point?’
    She stares at me.
    ‘The point is you’re brilliant, my love, and I don’t want you messing everything up because of me and my bad timing. I’m not having everyone blame me. “Poor Pearl,
she’d have gone to Oxford AND Cambridge and won the Nobel Prize and written a string of international bestsellers—” she breaks off to take a breath, “if it hadn’t been
for that no-good mother of hers kicking the bucket at the wrong moment.” I won’t have it. Now come on. No more self-pity. Go and have a shower.’
    I haul myself off the bed.
    ‘But come and give me a kiss first,’ she says. I walk over to her and let her kiss me on the cheek. Then I lean on the window sill with her. It’s been raining during the night,
but the sky is a perfect pale blue now, and the air so clear and fresh that everything looks new and bright.
    ‘Are you nervous?’ she asks.
    ‘Not really. I just want it to be over.’
    She puts an arm round me and I rest my cheek against hers for a moment. She smells of smoke and perfume.
    ‘How?’ I say. ‘How can you be here?’
    She shrugs. ‘You wanted to see me, didn’t you?’
    I know she’s avoiding the question.
    ‘You will come back, won’t you?’
    ‘Course.’ She flicks her cigarette stub out of the open window. It soars in a perfect arc and lands in the fishpond, disappearing under the algae to join my mobile phone. ‘Now
go on. You’ll be brilliant, my love.’
    When I come back from my shower, the bedroom is empty.
    I knew it would be, but I cry anyway.
    As soon as I hear the sound of Dad’s key in the front-door lock, I switch off my bedside light and my iPod and pretend to be asleep. He’s late back from the
hospital tonight; it’s almost ten thirty. I always make sure I’m in bed by the time he gets back otherwise he just goes on and on about The Rat: what amazing progress she’s making
and how he can pick her up and give her cuddles now, and how the nurses are dying to see me and maybe I can go