Read Online Nine Days by Toni Jordan - Free Book Online Page A

not.’
    He follows my eyes. ‘Fifty years of family photos, but none of Connie. If you had met her, you’d see. You look like her. Beautiful.’
    He kisses the top of my head, then shuffles back down the hall. Mum and I sit in silence a little longer until it comes out of me, I don’t know where from.
    ‘It shouldn’t matter what I look like. What difference should it make? It’s not who I am. Why should I care what people think? Why should I look like everyone else?’
    ‘Of course it’s who you are. It’s your body, Stanzi, not anybody else’s. So it is part of who you are. It has to be.’
    ‘I don’t feel like this on the inside.’
    She pours herself more tea. Her eyes are a washed-out blue. I know her eyes. They’ve been looking at me my whole life. There’s no hiding from them.
    ‘That’s a shame,’ she says. ‘The very least we can hope for is to recognise ourselves.’
    ‘I can hardly walk up a flight of stairs. My thighs bleed from chafing. My feet hurt. All the time.’
    ‘I know.’ She leans forward and picks a bit of fluff from my jacket. ‘Was someone mean to you?’
    All I can manage is a nod.
    ‘Was it someone you care about? Someone whose opinion matters to you?’
    I think about Lolita-Barbie, her pointy little nose, her pointy little mind, her stretched-face father. ‘No,’ I say. ‘It was no one I care about.’
    ‘A girl, was it? A mean girl. Right.’ She pushes up the sleeves of her dressing-gown in a dramatic fashion and waves her tiny fist in front of my face. ‘I’m going to get in the car and drive to their house and walk up to their front door and ring their bell and they’re going to get it from me. Them, and their no-good parents. Some people are badly brought up, that’s all. Wait till I get my keys.’
    I smile. I can’t help it. When I was little I loved sitting on her lap, my face buried in her neck, her arms around me. Some nights it was the only way I could get to sleep. She smelled of baby power and raw onions. I’d love to nestle there now but if I sat on her lap I’d put her in intensive care.
    ‘I’m thirty-five. You can’t sort out the parents of everyone who’s mean to me.’
    ‘Why not? Why can’t I? I remember Sharon Lisette, when you were in grade three. She was awful to Charlotte too. Charlotte the scarlet harlot, she called her. What did she say to you? Con Con smells like a tampon, was it? I spoke to her father about her filthy mouth. You’re never too old to be someone’s child. And if I get no satisfaction from those rotten parents I’ll go all the way to their headmaster.’
    ‘Small flaw in your plan. I don’t have a teacher anymore. Or a headmaster.’
    ‘I have a better idea anyway. I’ll get your father to work her over.’
    ‘He’s seventy-six.’
    ‘If he had the element of surprise—who knows? He could kick her in the shins and hobble away.’
    It’s an appealing offer. I tell her I’ll keep it in mind.
    Charlotte and I were born to two people who plainly adored each other. I was a teenager when I realised what a curse this was. It means I will never have a marriage like that. It will be impossible to find someone who loves me that much, ridiculous to think that lightning could strike twice in the same family.
    And after all, what are my options? I know there are men out there who like a full-figured girl. I know there are fetishists and feeders, people who’d delight in my crevices and curves. Yet I don’t want anyone who loves me only for my body any more than I want someone who loves me in spite of it. And the acid test of my acceptance and selfesteem, my one shot at authentic living? The truth is, fat men turn me off.
    Mum strokes my hand. ‘Are you sure about the soup? You always feel better when you eat something.’
    Hot in my fist is the thing that’s caused me all this trouble. I turn it over in my palm and my fingers brush against Mum’s.
    Maybe lightning isn’t the best analogy for love. Maybe love