Read Online Black Diamonds by Kim Kelly - Free Book Online Page A

do they grow? I have a vague idea of the fruit on the branches, but what does the tree itself look like? Perhaps they don’t grow on trees at all but the devil pours them into the bins at the grocers when we are not looking.
    The obsequious Mr Saunders slithers away with his instructions and says that he’ll contact my father with a quote next week — he needs to confer with Beelzebub first. The fun’s gone out of it altogether. Perhaps I won’t have a garden at this house at all. I look up at the gums drooping over the stubbly brown grass and I droop too.
    Father putters home, he looks tired and painfully sober, and suggests we retire to the parlour for a sprawl. He pours himself a fat finger of malt and it disappears into him before he says: ‘So how did it go with the Ackermans, my girl?’
    I tell him all about it, leaving out my idiotic rhapsody at the end, of course, and emphasising that The Lad appeared vastly improved in spirits, leaving out that he appeared magnificent, actually.
    â€˜Good, good,’ he nods, well pleased with me. Why, I don’t know; it seems such a simple exchange as I told it just now. What lessons as to the tangled world and poverty and hypocrisy was I supposed to take from it? The questions are on the tip of my tongue when he says: ‘It’d be a fine idea to go back in a week or two to pay a call on Mrs Ackerman, introduce yourself and let her know she’s not forgotten, hmm?’
    I stare.
    â€˜The lad’ll be starved for company too no doubt.’
    Hmm indeed. The Lithgow conspiracy envelops me again and I am fast beginning to suspect that my father is its ringleader.

 
    DANIEL
    She’s come back all right. I’m exactly where I was before, exactly a week later, except I’m fully clothed, because it’s freezing, waiting to see who’s coming round the back. And bloody grateful now that someone’s coming because I’ve never been so bored in all my life. It’s just me and Mum all week: I watch her cooking, sweeping, dusting, and in the garden, and milking Beatrice, and doing the washing, folding it and putting it away, then reading something or other out here in the sun, and I realise something as I watch her: she’s peaceful in her quietness, and maybe she steadies herself in her routines. I’m lost without mine. And out of sorts about it. Which side of my arse needs a break now? How long will it take for that itch under the cast to shove off? If it happens beyond my knee, I can’t reach it with anything. Jesus. And every time I get up and lurch around, my head spins from the rush of blood. Mum says: ‘Stay put. It will heal quicker.’ No it bloody won’t. I’m nearly ready to beg to be let back in the Wattle. And that thought turns my head inside out, running through everything again. Shut it off. I even wonder once or twice if Dad got the better deal. I don’t really, I’m just that bloody bored. Soon I won’t be able to sit out here at all; winter’ll be here in the next five minutes; don’t want to think about what I’ll be like indoors.
    Mum’s gone on her peaceful and steady way up to town to get flour and eggs, half her luck, and I hear that pony and trap pull up. I think I’m imagining it, I’m that badly hopeful, then I think it must be Mrs Moran, who said she’d stop by again to check my circulation. On Saturday she told me it was important I keep moving my toes, meaning that failure to do this might result in worse things. That’s been another thing to think about. But when I hear the knock I know it’s Francine Connolly. Still, I don’t believe it. Until she comes round, trips up a bit on nothing that I can see on the ground, like she does it every day, and says: ‘Hello.’
    And I don’t know what to say. All I can think of is that I haven’t had a shave yet today, which is very unlike me; won’t let