Chapters (40)
- Cover
- About the Author
- PENGUIN BOOKS
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- THE BEGINNING
She went to the final assembly, where Clem’s class put on sunglasses and floppy hats and sang ‘The Sun Has Got Its Hat On’ – although that day it was raining steadily. She rearranged lessons so she could go to the sport’s day, where she saw Sasha losing at the hoop race. Her face, that had been open with eagerness when she stood on the starting line, closed like a door when she reached the ribbon and looked around her and saw everyone else had finished. She saw Clem win the sack race, shooting off before the starting whistle went and bounding along in her hessian, chest out, with a purple, cheating face and gleaming eyes. She ran in the mothers’ race herself, although she was absurdly nervous before it began, and came fifth out of fourteen. She went with Aggie to the teddy bears’ picnic in the park that her play group had organized, and sat on a prickly rug in the hot sun with other mothers as their children tottered around on the grass and pushed each other and howled while heat rash erupted on their chubby arms.
Late at night, she cooked rock cakes for the end-of-term party. Her shoulders ached; there was a band of tension wrapped like wire round her temples; her eyes were hot pebbles in her skull.
She bent over Aggie as she lay asleep in her bed and her daughter’s eyes snapped open, like a doll tipped upright. She stared glassily.
‘You’re a bit of old rope, Mummy,’ she said in a thick, frayed voice. ‘Bit of old rope.’
The girls had five days between term ending and leaving for Australia. They went to the playground in the park, and for hours Irene pushed Aggie on the swings, ran in a circle with the roundabout until she could hardly breathe and her head was spinning wildly, bought ice creams. One day, they went to the outdoor swimming pool with Karen and Ben. They had a day out in Kew Gardens, where Clem ran off and hid among the palm trees for so long that Irene alerted the security guards. She cooked them comforting meals and afterwards they all sat squashed on the sofa together, watching favourite videos, Aggie hotly on her lap, with her hair tickling her cheek. Everything that was ordinary became special. Far away, she felt the tears, but they wouldn’t fall. She was like a country in drought; a dry, heavy sky and a parched landscape.