Read Online The Truth Club by Grace Wynne-Jones - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Grace Wynne-Jones
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her cheek, like a hamster, when she has to answer the phone.
I turn into a tree-lined, middle-class suburban street and head towards my parents’ home. It has the tidiest exterior of all the houses, because my parents have made convenience a priority: the lawn at the front has been replaced by concrete, and the round flowerbed is liberally scattered with fetching brown, white and pale-orange stones – there are a few plants as well, but the stones are the main feature and naturally do not require watering. Near the front door there is a small and rather polite evergreen tree, which will never, apparently, grow too tall or require much pruning or fertiliser.
‘Hi, Sally!’ Mum calls out as I open the door – I still have my own key. She has a phone stuck to her ear, which is not unusual. ‘I’ve just made some coffee.’ She gestures towards the kitchen. My mother has become a coffee drinker in recent years; she grinds it herself and has a number of special blends in white ceramic jars. She is a small, trim woman prone to darting, eager movements. When she was younger she was pretty in an unexceptional, standard sort of way; now she is what Diarmuid calls ‘handsome’ and I call ‘well maintained’. Her hair colour, for example, varies regularly because she likes to ‘experiment with highlights’, and she is permanently tanned due to some very expensive cream that also protects her skin from ultraviolet rays.
I wander towards the kitchen, which is very tidy and extremely fitted – there are, for example, no stray jars of honey hanging around attracting ants, as there are in my kitchen. What I find is Aunt Marie guiltily helping herself to a chocolate chip cookie. My parents are rather like Fiona in that they regularly acquire seductive foodstuffs and then get guests to eat them. Without the guests, a packet of high-grade chocolate chip cookies could last them a whole month.
‘Oh, hello, dear,’ Marie says, trying to eat the biscuit as fast as possible. She claims to be on an almost constant diet. ‘How nice to see you.’
I say that it’s nice to see her too, even though I wish she wasn’t here. I want to go up to the attic and look for the music box Aggie gave to me and April. She bought it in Switzerland, when she and Joseph were on holiday. I don’t know why it’s suddenly become so important to me, but I don’t like the idea that I may never see it again.
‘What mug would you like?’ Marie is opening one of the tidy cabinets. This is something we agree on: we both believe that coffee or tea tastes better if it’s in a mug that has a pleasing colour and shape.
‘I think they’re pretty much all the same, aren’t they?’ All of my parents’ mugs are blue. They don’t want to be bothered with choosing between different colours and patterns.
‘Oh, no. I got them this nice orange one,’ Marie says.
It is indeed a very nice, bright tangerine colour, and there are small golden stars around the rim. It isn’t the type of mug I would have expected Marie to buy – which is just another reminder that people are rarely quite the way you think they are. They have secrets, hidden parts: things that even they themselves sometimes don’t know are there.
‘That would be lovely.’ I smile. ‘It’s a very nice mug.’
‘I’m sorry I can’t find the honey,’ Marie says, as she places a s teaming mug of tea before me. ‘You like honey in your tea, don’t you?’ She pours in some milk – just the right amount. I smile at her gratefully.
Marie is a curious mixture of things I admire and things I deeply dislike. She is plump and has a bossy side, which retreats and advances or sometimes just hangs around waiting. Because of this, you never know which particular Marie you are dealing with. On some days, you can see she is doing her very best to listen and only give advice if she is asked for it. This, however, is not in her true nature.
Her true nature, when unleashed, says, ‘So, dear,
I turn into a tree-lined, middle-class suburban street and head towards my parents’ home. It has the tidiest exterior of all the houses, because my parents have made convenience a priority: the lawn at the front has been replaced by concrete, and the round flowerbed is liberally scattered with fetching brown, white and pale-orange stones – there are a few plants as well, but the stones are the main feature and naturally do not require watering. Near the front door there is a small and rather polite evergreen tree, which will never, apparently, grow too tall or require much pruning or fertiliser.
‘Hi, Sally!’ Mum calls out as I open the door – I still have my own key. She has a phone stuck to her ear, which is not unusual. ‘I’ve just made some coffee.’ She gestures towards the kitchen. My mother has become a coffee drinker in recent years; she grinds it herself and has a number of special blends in white ceramic jars. She is a small, trim woman prone to darting, eager movements. When she was younger she was pretty in an unexceptional, standard sort of way; now she is what Diarmuid calls ‘handsome’ and I call ‘well maintained’. Her hair colour, for example, varies regularly because she likes to ‘experiment with highlights’, and she is permanently tanned due to some very expensive cream that also protects her skin from ultraviolet rays.
I wander towards the kitchen, which is very tidy and extremely fitted – there are, for example, no stray jars of honey hanging around attracting ants, as there are in my kitchen. What I find is Aunt Marie guiltily helping herself to a chocolate chip cookie. My parents are rather like Fiona in that they regularly acquire seductive foodstuffs and then get guests to eat them. Without the guests, a packet of high-grade chocolate chip cookies could last them a whole month.
‘Oh, hello, dear,’ Marie says, trying to eat the biscuit as fast as possible. She claims to be on an almost constant diet. ‘How nice to see you.’
I say that it’s nice to see her too, even though I wish she wasn’t here. I want to go up to the attic and look for the music box Aggie gave to me and April. She bought it in Switzerland, when she and Joseph were on holiday. I don’t know why it’s suddenly become so important to me, but I don’t like the idea that I may never see it again.
‘What mug would you like?’ Marie is opening one of the tidy cabinets. This is something we agree on: we both believe that coffee or tea tastes better if it’s in a mug that has a pleasing colour and shape.
‘I think they’re pretty much all the same, aren’t they?’ All of my parents’ mugs are blue. They don’t want to be bothered with choosing between different colours and patterns.
‘Oh, no. I got them this nice orange one,’ Marie says.
It is indeed a very nice, bright tangerine colour, and there are small golden stars around the rim. It isn’t the type of mug I would have expected Marie to buy – which is just another reminder that people are rarely quite the way you think they are. They have secrets, hidden parts: things that even they themselves sometimes don’t know are there.
‘That would be lovely.’ I smile. ‘It’s a very nice mug.’
‘I’m sorry I can’t find the honey,’ Marie says, as she places a s teaming mug of tea before me. ‘You like honey in your tea, don’t you?’ She pours in some milk – just the right amount. I smile at her gratefully.
Marie is a curious mixture of things I admire and things I deeply dislike. She is plump and has a bossy side, which retreats and advances or sometimes just hangs around waiting. Because of this, you never know which particular Marie you are dealing with. On some days, you can see she is doing her very best to listen and only give advice if she is asked for it. This, however, is not in her true nature.
Her true nature, when unleashed, says, ‘So, dear,
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