Read Online The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell - Free Book Online
Authors: Lisa Jewell
Ads: Link
him.’ She got crossly to her feet and headed indoors. ‘I’m going to make him a sandwich,’ she said.
She piled offcuts of cold lamb and mint sauce between two fat slices of bloomer and smothered it with Hellmann’s, then found a bag of crisps and a can of Coke and grouped them all together on a tray. She felt furious to be mothering her little brother while his real mother sat drinking red wine, delighting in the attention of a new and unsuspecting admirer. As she made her way through the house she cringed at the cardboard boxes that lined each and every part of the staircase and hallway, the piles of unopened post, the paintings waiting to be hung and the unwashed laundry. Everything was halfway to being where it needed to be, everything was a work in progress, with no systems, no logic, no sense of organisation about any of it. Everyone who came here – including Tim and Vicky – gushed and cooed about the charm of the place – ‘
It’s so cosy! So welcoming!
’ – but they did not see the truth, that this house was the work of a disordered mind and all the enablers she lived with.
Megan paused for a moment on the landing and watched the birds in the trees outside: a cluster of tits and sparrows, all jostling about for space. She put the tray down on the window ledge and sat. From below she could hear her mother and her new friend squawking and shrieking and from above she could hear Alice in Chains blasting from her brother’s room in the eaves. But outside there were only the sounds of nature; the trilling of the tiny birds, the rumble of a distant tractor heading back after a day in the fields, a dog barking somewhere out of sight. She inhaled deeply, holding it in. She missed this when she was in London; not this mad, claustrophobic house and itspiles of stuff, not her crazy mother or her passive father, her troubled brothers and her too-nice sister, but this – the peace and the purity of life outside these windows. She breathed it in again and held it inside her for a beat. And then she picked up the tray and carried it up the eight steps that took her to the door of her baby brother’s bedroom. Eight small steps between
now
and
then
. Between what she knew and what she’d grow to wish she’d never known. Between the past and the future, between a small moment of peacefulness and the worst moment of her life. When her brother didn’t open the door on the fourth knock, Megan felt a tightness in her gut, an overwhelming wave of foreboding. She put the tray down on the floor and kicked the door in. It gave way relatively easily under her amateur karate kick, just a badly screwed-in bolt (fixed by Rhys himself because Lorelei didn’t believe in children having locks on their rooms) on the back of the door.
The music was so loud that Megan could feel it through her feet, through the ancient, buckled floorboards hammered in place three hundred years ago by craftsmen who would not know what to make of this cacophony, who would imagine it to be some business of the devil. And there he was. Her baby brother. The one she’d never felt fitted in. The one she resented and failed to bond with. The small one. The worrisome one. The one she couldn’t talk to. There he was, hanging by his thin, pale neck from the beams high above his single bed, long dead by the look of him, his protruded tongue swollen and obscene, the crotch of his jeans stained wet, his eyes wide open.
3
Wednesday 24th November 2010
Hi, Jim!
Can you believe this weather! They’ve put out flood alerts in some parts of the county! What’s it like in Gateshead? I always check the forecast now for you when I listen to the weather, it looks like you’re ankle-deep too. Yuck! Luckily we’re not in a vulnerable area, and there’s never (FINGERS CROSSED!) been flooding here. My God, just the thought of this house going under, with all my things in it, argh! I have an awful lot of newspapers (oh dear, does that make me sound like a mad
She piled offcuts of cold lamb and mint sauce between two fat slices of bloomer and smothered it with Hellmann’s, then found a bag of crisps and a can of Coke and grouped them all together on a tray. She felt furious to be mothering her little brother while his real mother sat drinking red wine, delighting in the attention of a new and unsuspecting admirer. As she made her way through the house she cringed at the cardboard boxes that lined each and every part of the staircase and hallway, the piles of unopened post, the paintings waiting to be hung and the unwashed laundry. Everything was halfway to being where it needed to be, everything was a work in progress, with no systems, no logic, no sense of organisation about any of it. Everyone who came here – including Tim and Vicky – gushed and cooed about the charm of the place – ‘
It’s so cosy! So welcoming!
’ – but they did not see the truth, that this house was the work of a disordered mind and all the enablers she lived with.
Megan paused for a moment on the landing and watched the birds in the trees outside: a cluster of tits and sparrows, all jostling about for space. She put the tray down on the window ledge and sat. From below she could hear her mother and her new friend squawking and shrieking and from above she could hear Alice in Chains blasting from her brother’s room in the eaves. But outside there were only the sounds of nature; the trilling of the tiny birds, the rumble of a distant tractor heading back after a day in the fields, a dog barking somewhere out of sight. She inhaled deeply, holding it in. She missed this when she was in London; not this mad, claustrophobic house and itspiles of stuff, not her crazy mother or her passive father, her troubled brothers and her too-nice sister, but this – the peace and the purity of life outside these windows. She breathed it in again and held it inside her for a beat. And then she picked up the tray and carried it up the eight steps that took her to the door of her baby brother’s bedroom. Eight small steps between
now
and
then
. Between what she knew and what she’d grow to wish she’d never known. Between the past and the future, between a small moment of peacefulness and the worst moment of her life. When her brother didn’t open the door on the fourth knock, Megan felt a tightness in her gut, an overwhelming wave of foreboding. She put the tray down on the floor and kicked the door in. It gave way relatively easily under her amateur karate kick, just a badly screwed-in bolt (fixed by Rhys himself because Lorelei didn’t believe in children having locks on their rooms) on the back of the door.
The music was so loud that Megan could feel it through her feet, through the ancient, buckled floorboards hammered in place three hundred years ago by craftsmen who would not know what to make of this cacophony, who would imagine it to be some business of the devil. And there he was. Her baby brother. The one she’d never felt fitted in. The one she resented and failed to bond with. The small one. The worrisome one. The one she couldn’t talk to. There he was, hanging by his thin, pale neck from the beams high above his single bed, long dead by the look of him, his protruded tongue swollen and obscene, the crotch of his jeans stained wet, his eyes wide open.
3
Wednesday 24th November 2010
Hi, Jim!
Can you believe this weather! They’ve put out flood alerts in some parts of the county! What’s it like in Gateshead? I always check the forecast now for you when I listen to the weather, it looks like you’re ankle-deep too. Yuck! Luckily we’re not in a vulnerable area, and there’s never (FINGERS CROSSED!) been flooding here. My God, just the thought of this house going under, with all my things in it, argh! I have an awful lot of newspapers (oh dear, does that make me sound like a mad
Similar Books
