Read Online Infinite Sky by Cj Flood - Free Book Online

that on the phone. Instead, I told her how the two men and Trick were away from the paddock all day while Trick’s mum cleaned the trailers inside
and out, and how the little girls pretended to help, but mostly got in the way, and how the fire was sometimes left to go out and sometimes kept burning through the night. We spent longer on the
phone every week, and I started to look forward to Monday nights.
    The Monday after the break-in though, I wasn’t in the mood. It was hard to be enthusiastic about the travellers with Dad walking around the way he was. He’d even let the bird feeders
go empty, which was unheard of. His robin kept popping up at the kitchen window and pecking at the glass as if to say,
What did I do?
    I listened half-heartedly to Mum’s description of the souks in Tunis, and the people she’d met there, and I answered Yes, and I don’t know, and Probably, to her questions about
whether I’d got the bracelet she’d sent, and whether Sam had read her postcard, and whether Trick was okay, until eventually she gave up and let me go.
    It was hours later, when I was learning the names for wildflowers in bed, when a pounding on my door almost gave me a heart attack. Sam burst in on the third bang. In the past he would have
waited, but these days he thought a warning was sufficient.
    ‘No,
please
, come in . . .’ I started, and then I saw his face.
    ‘What does she say?’ he slurred, and he put too much weight on the door handle, so it looked like it might swing away at any moment, taking him with it. His shaved head made his
brown eyes look enormous.
    ‘What?’ I put my book down.
    ‘What does she
say
?’ he said, louder now. He stepped into my room, without letting go of the door. One of his eyes was closed. He stank of booze.
    I didn’t know what to say, and so I said, ‘Not much.’
    ‘Not much?’
    ‘She tells me about where she’s been, like Beni Khiar . . .’
    ‘
Beni Khiar?
’
    ‘And she asks how we are, says she loves us. That she’s sorry—’
    ‘Ha!’ he said, as if that was the stupidest thing he’d heard in his life. ‘And?’
    ‘And what?’
    ‘What does she
say
? When’s she coming back?
What does she say?
’
    ‘I . . . She didn’t . . . She didn’t say any of that.’
    ‘Don’t you ask her?’
    I swallowed.
    ‘You don’t . . . ?’ He was incredulous, and his mouth opened. He dropped his head back and made this terrible noise, the sort a baby rhinoceros might make if it had three legs
broken, but was still about to charge.
    His eyes glittered and he stared at me, swaying along with the door, one side of his lip raised in disgust.
    ‘Why don’t you speak to her? If you’re so desperate to find out. Why don’t you speak to her yourself?’
    ‘Doesn’t matter to you, does it?’ he sneered. ‘You don’t care, do you?’
    He’d let go of the door handle now, and was halfway into my room, his face a mess of rage and tears and drunkenness, and I got out of bed, ready to fight him if he wouldn’t shut his
mouth.
    ‘You don’t, do you?’ he said. ‘You’ve got
Dad
.’
    ‘How would
you
know what
I
care about?’
    I wished Dad would hurry up and get back from the pub.
    ‘I hate you, Iris,’ he slurred, pointing at me. ‘You shouldn’t talk to her. I hate you. And I hate Dad. And I hate
her
as well.’
    He turned and slammed the door so hard that I felt the air sucked out from around me.
    ‘Why don’t
you
speak to her?’ I shouted after him. ‘If you’re so bothered! Why don’t you speak to her when she rings?’
    ‘Shut up!’ he shouted, and his voice broke, and he ran upstairs.
    I heard Sam throw himself down on his bed in the room above me. I got up. The door handle was still warm from where he’d been gripping it. My hands shook. I
couldn’t hear anything out in the hall.
    He wouldn’t want me; he’d tell me to go away, but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t knock, just pushed the door open gently.
    ‘Get out,’ he said.
    He