Read Online Nine Days by Toni Jordan - Free Book Online

afar. I lift the cup and lean it against my forehead, then my cheeks, and the heat seems to soften the hard pain in my head. It’s late, I know. She was already in her dressing-gown when she opened the door. I should let her get to sleep.
    ‘Mum,’ I say.
    ‘Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat? Toast. I could cut you up an apple. There’s pumpkin soup in the freezer. It’s five minutes on defrost. Five minutes.’
    I shake my head and she waits, in that way she does. Shesips her tea and looks nowhere, as if she’s looking for nothing, as if everything she’s ever wanted is within reach and there’s nothing to search for, nothing to do. The photographs of us are framed on the walls, the kitchen bench, on top of the buffet. In her youth she had a luminous perfection that radiates even from the old photos, the black and whites of her on her own. And that smile! Even now when she smiles, there’s no one else in the whole world but you and it’s impossible not to smile back.
    Now her beaming face is a little shrivelled apple, red cheeks, all faux-indignation and a sly lopsided smile. In the right light, she’d pass for her mid-fifties. She’s had a charmed life. Only child brought up by her father who died just before she married, a saint of a man who adored her. Dad was her first boyfriend and only love; she went from being looked after by one man straight to the bed of another. When you’re beautiful, life is easy. Someone will always look after you.
    The door swings open. ‘Stanzi!’ says Dad. He’s in his pyjamas, an old-fashioned blue stripe, required bedtime uniform for the stylish elderly. During the day, he still looks sprightly,
not a day over seventy-five
as he says, but now he seems fragile and vulnerable, almost like a small boy waiting to be tucked in. Just the sight of him, my heart flutters on a string.
    ‘I didn’t hear you come in. How are you, sweetheart? Stanzi?’ he says. Not
have you been crying
or
do you have any idea how late it is
or
you’re not upsetting your mother are you?
He bends to wrap an arm around my shoulder, and he kisses me. My father kisses hello and goodbye. Friends, family and random strangers. I don’t move. I can feel his warmth and bones and sinews through the flannelette. I don’t even lift myhuge arm to touch his hand. I want to tell him I’m good, I’m fine. I look at Mum.
    ‘Good night,’ Mum says.
    ‘What?’ he says. ‘Why?’
    ‘Later,’ Mum says.
    ‘Have I done something? I can undo it. Or if I haven’t done anything, I can. Just watch me.’
    ‘It’s nothing, Dad.’
    ‘I can help, whatever the nothing is,’ he says. ‘I’m an expert at nothing. Whenever anyone wants help with nothing, they call me.’
    ‘Kip,’ Mum says. ‘See you in the morning.’
    ‘Secret women’s business, is it? Just pretend I’m a girl. A somewhat hairy girl.’
    ‘Good night, Dad.’
    ‘That’s so unfair. It’s discrimination, plain and simple,’ he says.
    Normally he would stay and tease us more, this old joke of his. When we were little, Charlotte and I loved it when he sat on the floor with us, playing dolls or dressups.
Just because I’m a boy doesn’t mean I wouldn’t make a fine girl,
he would say, and we would laugh at our ridiculous father, so unlike the fathers of our friends. Dad is not the least bit feminine and of course that was the joke of it—this big man, nose bent from a break that hadn’t set right, folded on the floor, huge boots and wide cuffs, nestling down with us. His big hands dressing small dolls, rocking one to sleep, brushing another’s hair. But tonight is not the time to play. He glances at my mother’s face and gives up.
    ‘I’ll say goodnight then, my beautiful girls.’
    There is something in the way he says it. He sees me, but still he says it. I look around at the photos: at all the Alecs and Libbys, the Mums, Charlottes and me. ‘I’m not beautiful,’ I say. ‘Mum and Charlotte are, but I’m