After Cleo Read Online Free PDF

There were a couple of finishing touches she wanted to make. She’d show me later on, she said, after work.
    â€˜Who have you got today?’ I asked.
    â€˜Teenage boys,’ she replied. ‘We’re taking them to the aquarium.’
    â€˜So you’ve got someone to help?’
    â€˜Yeah, they’re pretty immobilised.’
    Waving goodbye from the verandah, I watched her stride down the path to the grey bus parked outside. How she managed to transport her clients around in it was beyond me.
    Whenever she drove my car, she could barely execute a parallel park without scraping somebody’s paintwork. In charge of the bus, she became a different person – capable, co-ordinated.
    â€˜Have you got a licence to drive that thing?’ I called, only half joking.
    She shrugged, climbed into the driver’s seat and gunned the motor.
    The occasions I’d seen her load clients – some with feeding tubes and oxygen tanks – on board, I’d felt humbled. No way would I have been that selfless at her age. Lydia and her friends walked their high-minded talk.
    Some people criticise Generation Y as selfish, living off their parents and being perpetual students/layabouts with an impossibly high sense of entitlement. Some even blame the L’Oréal advertisement ‘Because You’re Worth It’. Personally, I’ve never known a more idealistic lot.
    Lydia’s involvement with disabled people began when she was sixteen and her class was encouraged to do voluntary work for a term. Her friends went for easy stuff like charity shop shifts. Our daughter had to go for something more demanding, which was how Alice, five years older than Lydia, burst in on our lives. While Alice’s mental disability was mild, her personality was storm force.
    The first time she came to our place, Alice’s megaphone voice made Katharine dissolve into tears. Our visitor took a particular shine to Rob. While I was cooking dinner, Alice demanded to take a bath. I asked Lydia what we were supposed to do, but she hadn’t been given guidelines.
    I ignored Alice’s unconventional request until her shouting became unbearable, upon which I filled the tub and handed her a towel. Hovering anxiously outside the bathroom door I asked if she was all right. ‘Fine,’ she yelled, and could I send Rob in now?
    We ended up seeing Alice every week for about five years, gradually learning to respond to her demands as firmly as she made them. No, she couldn’t have three pizzas or a sleepover in Rob’s room.
    After working with Alice, Lydia went on to care for many others whose needs were more complex. She learnt how to transfer clients out of wheelchairs, feed them through tubes in their stomachs, give medication and change adult nappies. She worked in a psychiatric hospital for a while, and as a respite carer.
    People with disabilities had been important to her for almost a third of her life. She loved the work, and it had a social side. She and Ned had met as fellow volunteers at a summer camp for young people.
    I couldn’t help smiling as the bus roared down the street. Our huge-hearted daughter claimed she wanted to make a difference in people’s lives. I was surprised she couldn’t see she was doing that already.
    Later that day, she escorted me upstairs and opened the door to her room. I drew a breath. The shabby collection of furniture had been transformed into a chic Asian temple. Tibetan prayer flags bedecked her windows. Red cushions glowed against the walls. A small Buddha sat cross-legged between a candle and a photo frame, on top of a brightly painted chest. The effect was vaguely altar-ish.
    â€˜Fantastic!’ I said, admiring the Tibetan wall-hanging a friend had given her. ‘It’s so . . . peaceful.’
    The room was perfumed with unworldly calm, as if it could detach itself and float away from the rest of the house.
    Lifting the photo frame,