Read Online Moon Pie by Simon Mason - Free Book Online Page A

cloud. Somewhere up there was the moon too, floating across the sky like a lost balloon. But she was too sleepy to look for it. Overwhelmed with tiredness, she went on across the patio, and, going through the back door, the last thing she heard was a clink of glass from the shed in the dimness behind her.

14
    S he made a list:
    Get up for breakfast
.
    Swim (twice a week)
.
    Apply for jobs
.
    Haircut
.
    New shirt
.
    Remember tea!
    Dad looked startled when she gave it to him.
    ‘It’s a list for you,’ she said. ‘I told you I would help.’
    He gazed at it, and sighed.
    For several days afterwards he seemed to take his tasks seriously. Three mornings running he managed to get up early enough to give Martha and Tug breakfast before they went to school, and twice he went (unsupervised) to the swimming baths, reporting that each time he had swum twenty full lengths without stopping. Olivia had been there, he said, and had told him she was looking forward to coming round.
    That was interesting.
Perhaps
, Martha thought,
Olivia will get to like Dad again, and she can be his girlfriend after all
.
    She liked helping Dad. She liked being busy and getting things done, even if they were hard.
    The hardest thing was helping Dad apply for jobs. He didn’t seem to want to be helped (‘I’m not really out of work, I’m having a sabbatical’). But she was determined. She used the computer at school to collect a lot of advertisements for him to consider. Many of them were for jobs in the television industry, which she thought he would like.
    He gave them back to her. ‘I want a complete change,’ he said.
    ‘What sort of change?’
    He looked sly. ‘I don’t really know.’
    She collected more advertisements.
    ‘Aren’t you being just a bit bossy?’ he said, when she gave them to him.
    ‘Aren’t you being just a bit lazy?’ she replied. She said other things too, like, ‘You’ll feel better if you have a job’, and ‘You can’t keep on lounging in the house all day’. Now that she was helping him, she was almost enjoying herself.
    Eventually he gave in. On Wednesday evening he took all the advertisements into the front room, andin a little under an hour completed five separate applications: to be a Steeplejack, a Children’s Entertainer, a Lifestyle Assistant, a Groomer in a pet salon, and a Psychotherapist.
    ‘There,’ he said.
    ‘It’s a lot of different sorts of jobs,’ Martha said, perplexed.
    ‘Isn’t it?’
    ‘And you like them all?’
    ‘Absolutely.’
    ‘And do you feel better now that you’ve applied for them?’
    ‘Ecstatic.’
    It was strange that he forgot to post the applications – despite Martha reminding him – but in the end Martha took them to the post office herself.
    On the whole she was pleased with him. He was working his way – slowly – through her list. He was generally well-behaved. There were no midnight picnics, or unorthodox dives in swimming pools, or falling off roofs. There were no more arguments with Grandma and Grandpa, or sulking in the shed. For over a week the house had been calm.
    But now that she was keeping a closer eye on him Martha noticed little things that puzzled her. Littlefits of restlessness propelled him round the house, taking him from room to room with no apparent purpose. Martha would find him unexpectedly looking for something he never seemed to find under the sink, or rearranging the sheets and towels in the airing cupboard. He seemed strangely fond of the airing cupboard. He was secretive too. Several times he suddenly left the house to go on an errand, or out to the shops, reappearing hours later with no shopping and only a sketchy explanation of what he had been doing.
    One night as she was lying in bed almost asleep, he came tiptoeing into her room, kissed her very gently on the cheek, and tiptoed away again; and she heard him go quietly down the stairs and out of the front door, start the car and drive away.
    She kept remembering the