Brightwood Read Online Free PDF Page A

will brush my teeth every day and not lie that I did it. I will stop picking the paint off the wall behind my bed . . .
    She went in by the front door, crossed the reception area—stacked high with unopened deliveries—and entered the Marble Hall.
    â€œMum?”
    Daisy made her voice louder.
“Mum!”
    Nothing answered, not even an echo. She stood still for a second and then suddenly plunged into the maze of shelving, running as fast as she could up and down the narrow lanes, turning left and right, her eyes wide with searching, as if she could find her mum if only she looked hard enough. She stopped at last and pulled herself together.
    She should make lunch. Lunch was normal.
    Daisy went into the kitchen. She had been teaching herself to cook using recipe books from the library. Her mum never got into the habit of cooking because she had always had people to make her meals when she was growing up. Daisy, however, enjoyed it. The basement at Brightwood Hall was stocked with thousands and thousands of items, and she could always find the ingredients she needed. But today she wasn’t in the mood. She made herself a cheese sandwich.
    Tar was sitting on the table, waiting for her.
    â€œYou should be careful,” Daisy told him. “Mum only lets me keep you because you’re not a wild rat. You look like you used to be someone’s pet. If she sees you on the table, she might change her mind. She told me rats shouldn’t be in the house at all. People put down traps and poison for them.”
    Tar’s gaze was nailed to the sandwich. “I’d never fall for that,” he said.
    Daisy waved the sandwich slowly to and fro in front of him.
    â€œAre you sure?”
    Tar didn’t answer. He was too busy following the sandwich with his eyes, his expression glazed.
    Daisy put the sandwich down abruptly. “You can eat it. I’m not hungry.”
    â€œThe whole thing?” Tar sniffed it. “It’s fresh,” he muttered in a critical voice. “I suppose you can’t have everything.” He began to eat steadily, commenting appreciatively to himself between mouthfuls.
    â€œI wish we still had a TV,” Daisy said. It would have helped take her mind off the fact that her mum was now nearly five hours late.
    â€œThere were a lot of interesting things on TV,” Daisy told Tar. “There was this one show about a huge family that lived in a tiny house. Every time they said anything at all, invisible people laughed! It was very funny.”
    Daisy had asked for a TV for her eleventh birthday. When the day came, however, she got a telescope instead. It was a magnificent telescope, powerful enough to see even quite distant stars. But she couldn’t help feeling disappointed.
    She left the kitchen and made her way upstairs to her mum’s room. It comforted her a little to be surrounded by her mum’s things. Her mum’s long, flowery dress hanging over the chair, her glasses on the bedside table, her dozens of paintings, all turned with their faces to the wall.
    Daisy lay down on the bed and hugged her mum’s pillow, staring at the photograph on the bedside table. It showed her mum’s family on the tennis court, years ago. It was odd to see the court free of grass and bindweed. Daisy’s grandparents had just finished a game of tennis and were standing side by side with their arms around each other. Her uncle Marcus was in the picture too and behind him, a group of other people. Daisy’s mum had told her all their names.
    There was Mr. Hadley, who drove the car and was very kind. And the housekeeper, Maggie, with a jug of lemonade in her hand, and one of the gardeners, who had volunteered to be the umpire. And there, towards the edge of the picture, stood a tall older boy with his face half turned away.
    â€œThat’s James,” Daisy’s mum had said when Daisy asked about him. “He was some sort of cousin. He used to