Read Online The Pause by John Larkin - Free Book Online Page B

with your name on it.’
    â€˜Shut up, douche!’
    I check my watch. Two minutes forty.
    Mum comes in all smiles and carrying a green recycling bag stuffed full of books and clothes.She’s obviously heard or decided that I’m going to be in here for a while.
    â€˜Hello, darling. Sleep well?’
    â€˜Like a log.’
    â€˜That’s good.’
    â€˜A log?’ says Kate.
    â€˜Yeah. Woke up in the middle of a forest covered in wombat poo.’
    Kate turns away from the seascape. ‘Really?’ Sometimes Kate is about as much use as an ashtray on a hang-glider.
    â€˜Oh, Kate,’ sighs Mum. ‘Go and see where your father’s got to.’
    â€˜Okay,’ she says brightly. She loves being given things to do. Probably keeps her mind from eating itself. Kate will probably end up curing cancer or coming up with a unified theory of the universe, but when Dad told her the joke about how Irish astronauts had landed safely on the sun because they went at night, she believed him. She even told her teacher and the rest of her year-two class the names of the two astronauts: Pat MaGroin and Phil Macavity. Dad felt so bad he went up to school and apologised personally to the teacher.
    â€˜You’d better drop breadcrumbs behind you,’ I suggest to Kate as she starts to leave. ‘Or you’ll never find your way back.’
    â€˜Dec,’ chastises Mum gently.
    â€˜I don’t have any breadcrumbs,’ says Kate.
    I look at her and shake my head. ‘Yeah. That’s the only thing wrong with that plan.’
    â€˜Douchebag!’ snaps Kate as she heads off to look for Dad.
    â€˜And don’t step on any cracks in the tiles,’ I call after her. ‘Or you’ll have to come back and start again.’
    â€˜Why do you have to wind her up so much, Dec?’
    â€˜Because it’s fun.’
    Mum raises her eyebrows. ‘She could say one or two things about you right now, you know.’
    â€˜Yeah. But you’ve drilled her not to. And it’s killing her.’
    Mum comes around behind me and kisses the top of my sun-drenched hair. ‘Oh, you’re nice and warm. You did sleep well?’
    â€˜Yeah. Had a little help.’
    â€˜We all need help at times.’ Mum comes around and sits next to me. She holds my hand. There’s no one else around so it’s okay. ‘Do you want to talk about it? Before they get here.’
    â€˜Not really.’
    â€˜It might help.’
    â€˜I’m not sure I understand it.’
    â€˜How are you feeling?’
    â€˜Better than yesterday. Well, a bit anyway. The pain’s not as bad.’
    â€˜Do you understand what it would have done to us had you …’ She trails off. It’s just too big. ‘You have to know when to ask for help. I couldn’t have survived if you’d …’
    I shrug. ‘I didn’t know I needed help.’
    Mum wipes her eyes. How could I have not realised that this is what it would have done to her, to Kate, to Dad? But that’s the thing when your mind cracks. You don’t know that it’s cracked, because the very thing that lets you know that you have a cracked mind is the very thing that’s cracked.
    â€˜Your dad’s sorry about yesterday.’
    â€˜Yeah, right.’
    â€˜No, Dec, he really is. He wants to take you fishing.’
    We’ve never gone fishing in our lives. ‘Fishing?’
    â€˜I know, but let him. It’s his way of dealing with it.’
    I look at the seascape opposite. I have a psycho moment and so now marine life has to die. Hardly seems fair. I don’t know why we just don’t wander off into the wilderness Lord-of-the-Flies style and slaughter a goat or kill a pig.
    â€˜Was it just Lisa or was it … the other stuff with –’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ I interrupt, because I don’t want to hear her name. ‘Can we leave it?’
    I