Always and Forever Read Online Free PDF Page A

skin, but their mother’s fine bones and lovely eyes. When Mel had first met
    Adrian, he’d had the build of a marathon runner, despite living off Chinese takeaways and pizzas. But over the years, lack of exercise and a fondness for the wrong sort of foods had made him more solid. Cuddly, she said.
    ‘Needing to go to the gym,’ Adrian would remark good humouredly.
    If they could afford the gym, that was.
    Mel patted him affectionately on the arm on her way to the utility room to get a wash going.
    ‘Are you sure the dishwasher’s real y broken?’ she asked.
    Broken appliances meant organising someone to come and fix them at a time when someone would be in, a task on a par with choreographing Swan Lake on ice. ‘The dishes are dirtier now than when they went in,’ Adrian said.

    He gestured to the worktop, where a white mug speckled with food particles sat. ‘Sure there isn’t a spoon stuck in the rotor?’ asked Mel hope

    ful y.

    “Fraid not.’
    She set the washing machine going, emptied out Carrie’s juice cup and snack box, then tackled Sarah’s spotty bag of equipment, her mind whizzing through al the tasks she had to complete before bed. Then she stuck the mushroom and pepper chicken for the girls’ dinner in the microwave, put a pan of pasta on and got out a new wiping-up cloth, flinging the old One into the utility-room washing basket like a basketbal pro. ‘Wil you keep an eye on the girls while I change?’ Mel was halfway out the door as she spoke.
    ‘Yeah,’ replied Adrian absently.
    Upstairs, Mel ripped off her work clothes and pul ed on her grey sweatpants and red fleece. She removed her earrings quickly - Carrie loved pul ing earrings and Mel had lost a real y nice silver one already this week - and was back downstairs to finish the children’s dinner within three minutes. The girls were already on their father’s lap, his col ege books shoved out of the way as they told him al about their day. ‘I did a picture for you, Daddy,’ said Sarah gravely. She was a daddy’s girl and could cope with any childish trauma as long as her father’s arms were around her. ‘You’re so clever,’ said Adrian lovingly, and kissed her blonde head. ‘Show me. Oh, that’s wonderful. Is that me?’

    Sarah nodded proudly. ‘That’s Carrie and that’s Granny Karen -and that’s me.’ From beside the cooker where she was stirring Mel looked over. Like al Sarah’s pictures, it was in the yon triad of pink, orange and purple, with Adrian, Mel’s her, Karen, and Sarah al big and smiling. Carrie, whom

    Sarah had never quite forgiven for being born, was a quarter the size, like a dwarf stick-person. There was no sign of Mel. ‘Where’s Mummy?’ asked Adrian.
    Mel, who’d read plenty on separation anxiety, wouldn’t have asked, but her breathing stil ed to listen to the answer.
    ‘She’s on another page. At work,’ Sarah said, as if it were perfectly obvious. She produced another picture, this time of a bigger house with her mother outside with her briefcase in her hand. The briefcase was nearly as big as Mel herself, but she had to admit that Sarah had got her hair right: half brown, half blonde and frizzy.

    ‘Oh,’ Adrian said.
    Mel could feel him looking at her sympathetical y over Sarah’s blonde head, and she flashed him a comforting look that said that she was fine. And she was, if the definition was Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.
    ‘But Mummy is only at work sometimes. The rest of the time she’s here, looking after al of us. She’s a super mum,’
    Adrian insisted. ‘She should be the star of the family picture, shouldn’t she?’
    Sarah nodded and snuggled up to her father, one delicate finger tracing her granny’s lurid yel ow hair. Granny was in the family picture but not Mummy. Mel felt another stab of bitterness, this time directed at her mother.
    An energetic sixty-one-year-old, Karen Hogan was both Mel’s secret weapon and the source of enormous