Оценить:
 Рейтинг: 0

A Heartbeat Away

Автор
Год написания книги
2018
<< 1 ... 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 >>
На страницу:
9 из 11
Настройки чтения
Размер шрифта
Высота строк
Поля

I felt troubled by the expression on his handsome face. The dad I remembered was my hero; he made me laugh and bought me presents. When he was there, murmured an inner voice, and a distant memory of him shouting at my mom leaped, unwanted, into my mind.

“Well, we won’t need to bother the wonderful Browns again, will we?” he said. “Now that your dad is home.”

All those weeks I had longed for him to return. All those times I had blamed my poor mom for chasing him away. And now he was here and he wasn’t what I remembered. The world closed in around me and I saw Homewood Farm slipping away.

“Will you come for Christmas lunch with us?” I asked in a wobbly voice, guessing at his answer. He grinned again and held out his arms.

“I think we’ll all just stay here,” he announced. “I’m sure your mom will be able to find something nice for us to eat.”

“My mom’s not very well,” I told him. He turned to eye the motionless form beneath the bedspread.

“Oh, I think she’ll pull herself together now that I’m here.”

For the first time in my life I withdrew from my father’s embrace and walked slowly back down the stairs thinking of the big warm living room at Homewood Farm and the huge turkey I had seen Mrs. Brown preparing the other day. But it would be all right when she found out, I decided. Mr. Brown would be sure to come and get us. Except, I didn’t have any presents for Mr. and Mrs. Brown. I raced into the living room to retrieve the shiny red paper with the Christmas trees from where it lay crumpled in the hearth…but what to give them?

My eyes flicked desperately around the room, before finally alighting on the bowl of fruit. With great deliberation I chose the brightest orange and the most perfect apple to wrap up in the Christmas-tree paper and place beneath the tree. For Daniel I would draw a picture of Chocolate. With a new flood of happiness, I went off to get my pencils.

The knock on the door sounded at a quarter to one. I knew that was the time because I had asked my dad on a dozen occasions when half past twelve was—aware that when we didn’t turn up at Homewood, someone would look for us. The someone was Daniel. When I opened the door, he grinned and stepped straight inside.

“My mom says you’re late,” he told me in a breathless voice. “We’ve got presents for you and I got a bike from Santa. Come see. It’s just outside.”

I followed him out into the crisp air, feeling glad about the presents I had so carefully wrapped that morning and recalling the picture of Chocolate with pride.

“Isn’t it ace?” he cried.

I nodded, gazing appreciatively at the shiny red bicycle.

“So are you ready?” he asked eagerly.

I stared at the ground.

“Tell your mother that Mick McTavish says thank you very much for looking after his family and finding them somewhere to live, but we won’t be needing your help anymore now that he is home.”

My dad was standing behind us in the open doorway, his arms folded across his chest and a satisfied smile on his face. When Daniel gaped at him, he laughed.

“Don’t worry, lad. I’m not going to bite you,” he said. “Now, run off home and deliver my message.”

Daniel gazed at me and I could see my own disappointment mirrored in his deep brown eyes.

“But what about the presents?” he whispered for my ears only.

“Can’t I just go for a little while,” I begged my dad. His face clamped up.

“Not today, Lucy,” he told me.

I wanted to scream at him, but all I did was watch the big fat tears dripping onto my shoes as Daniel rode off down the lane, back toward Homewood Farm and presents and Christmas lunch.

CHAPTER 6

For six months my dad stayed with us, and for six months I watched my mom turn herself inside out. Or that was how it appeared to me. Before he’d returned home, she was vague and distracted, content to dwell in her own private world for hours at a time, but now she seemed in torment, dragging all her feelings and emotions down deep somewhere inside herself where none of us could go. Sometimes I would look at her, sitting in her chair with that strange, distant expression in her faded gray eyes, and wonder if perhaps one day she would retreat so far inside herself that she would turn completely inside out and be lost to us forever.

At the time I could never have put my feelings into words. I just knew things and they frightened me. But I couldn’t tell my dad because he wouldn’t have listened, and anyway, he didn’t appear to notice. Sometimes he laughed at her and called her names, and sometimes he yelled, especially if ever she came out of herself for long enough to comment on the pile of bills that lay unpaid on the bureau, or the fact that his hand constantly dipped into the blue pot on the shelf. The one where Mrs. Brown always put the allowance that she collected for my mom on Fridays.

We didn’t see Mrs. Brown that Christmas Day. I thought she would surely be by, and I sat for hours in the window, watching out for her blue car and imagining the scene at Homewood.

The presents I had wrapped remained beneath the tree. I kept glancing at my lovely blue jodhpurs and longing for the presents that awaited me, but as the hours ticked by and the afternoon shadows lengthened in the lane outside our cottage, I slowly realized that no one was going to stop that day. Something inside me tightened. What if the Browns never stopped by again?

I looked across at my dad, sitting in the chair beside the fire. He was happily drinking his way through a second bottle of red wine and his eyes were half-closed as he stared at the flashing TV screen, while my mom just gazed vacantly into the fire, lost in a world I could not enter. Tomorrow, I decided, I would go and see Daniel whether my dad liked it or not.

I slipped out of the house next morning before anyone was awake. It wasn’t very difficult because my mom never got up early anyway, and through the wall I could hear my dad snoring so loudly that nothing could have disturbed him.

Last night I had lain in the dark, listening to him cursing in an angry voice. When the thumping noises started again and I heard my mom cry, I just pulled the covers over my head and snuggled down into the darkness, thinking of Daniel and Chocolate and Homewood Farm.

As soon as the early-morning light filtered through my window, I struggled into my jodhpurs, filled with determination, and crept along the landing to peek into my mom’s room. My dad was slumped beneath the bedclothes, his whole shape heaving with each rumbling snore that filled the room. I hardly dared to sneak past him to peep at my mother, but I made myself because I knew that Mrs. Brown would ask me how she was.

I tiptoed around the end of the bed to check on my mom. Her face was crumpled in sleep, all lined and gray, with a strange dark mark down one cheek, a purple mark—like the one I got on my side when I fell from Chocolate. Something fluttered inside my stomach, then gurgled up into my throat, and I ran from the room on wooden legs, down the stairs and out into the lane. And I kept on running until I saw the gray roofs of Homewood against the frosty hills.

I walked along the side of the big stone house and in through the small gate that led into the back garden, where Daniel and I spent so many happy hours. The gentle, rhythmic thud of the milking machine filled the crisp air. I heard a cow bellow, impatient to be milked, and a warm glow spread through me. I felt that I was home.

The delicious aroma of bacon wafted from the kitchen as I approached the back door. I crept inside to hide behind Mr. Brown’s tall chair and peered out at Mrs. Brown, who was standing at the oven. She spoke to me without turning around.

“Are you hungry, Lucy?” she asked, as if expecting me.

When I emerged from my hiding place, nodding soundlessly, she beckoned me over and laid another place at the table.

“Mr. Brown and Daniel will be in shortly,” she said. “They’ll be so pleased to see you. Daniel has a new puppy. It came on Christmas Day and he’s been dying to show it to you.”

I picked up the thick bacon sandwich she’d placed in front of me and started to talk with my mouth full, but she didn’t tell me off.

“Is it a Labrador, like Timmy Brocklebank’s puppy?”

She looked around from the stove with a smile, lifting her hand to push a stray lock of fair hair back up into the knot on the top of her head.

“How did you know?”

“Because Daniel loves Labradors,” I told her. “And Father Christmas would know that, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes, I suppose he would,” she agreed with a thoughtful expression on her smooth plump face.

I took another large bite of my sandwich. “Father Christmas knows everything, doesn’t he?”

“I expect so,” she replied.

“Then why didn’t he remember to visit my house last night?” I asked with a troubled frown.

Mrs. Brown put down the spatula she was using to turn the bacon and crossed the kitchen to crouch beside me, so close that I could smell the scent of violets mingling with the aroma of bacon. I pulled in a big breath and looked up into her misty brown eyes.

“Oh, Lucy,” she cried. “He didn’t forget you. It was just…”
<< 1 ... 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 >>
На страницу:
9 из 11