Broken Soup Read Online Free PDF Page A

me—I tried to remember what he looked like. Dark hair, dark eyes—I had a few details, but I couldn’t see him clearly. It was less than a month ago, but I wasn’t sure I’d recognize him again. Did he know what he was doing or was it a coincidence? Which of those was worse?
    I’m not a fan of coincidence and fate and all that.It makes me feel like there’s no point doing anything if you can’t change things, if you can’t be even a tiny bit in charge. Plus I realized that if there was coincidence, there was also anti coincidence, the thing that only just never happens by the skin of its teeth, and because you’re not expecting it you have no idea that it almost did.
    Everywhere I went I pictured him just leaving, disappearing around a corner or about to arrive, but only when I’d gone. It wasn’t a good feeling. It tied me up like a ball of string in a cartoon.
    I didn’t show anyone else in my family the picture, not Mum or Dad or Stroma. I kept it to myself, hid it in the dark far corner underneath my bed where I could reach for it at night and where nobody else ever bothered to go. It had found me so it was mine. That’s what I figured.
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    Every so often, Mum had to go to the doctor to prove she was taking her medicine and not selling it on the black market. She must have cost the National Health Service a pile of money with all the pills she was on, so they probably needed to make sure she was worth it. I swear she had the wrong prescription because the only thing different about Mum since she’d started taking it was that she’d got thinner. The bones in her hands and face were clearer than they used to be.
    I had a list of questions for the doctors, like whether they knew Mum was bereaved and not overweight, and if she ever actually said a word to them because she was pretty much silent at home. I wanted to ask them what happened next, but they couldn’t talk to me because I was a minor and it was all a big secret.
    They didn’t know that I came with Mum every time because without me she wouldn’t even get there. It flew under their radar that I was the one making sure she arrived in one piece and behaved herself, not the other way around.
    The waiting room was jammed with bored kids and posters about sexually transmitted diseases. There were polite notices everywhere that said if you punched any of the receptionists you were in big trouble. This time Mum was sitting next to me with her eyes closed and her nose and mouth buried in a scarf. It wasn’t even cold. Stroma was doing her best to play with three bits of LEGO and a coverless book.
    When they called Mum’s name over the loudspeakers, she ignored it. I watched her trying to disappear inside her own clothes.
    Stroma said, “Mummy, that’s you,” and started pulling at her. The receptionists were watching.
    The doctor’s voice came on again: “Jane Clark to room five.”
    Stroma managed to pull Mum’s sleeve right overher hand, so her arm stayed somewhere inside her coat, lolling against her body, inert like the rest of her, hiding.
    â€œCome on, Mum,” I said, pulling her to her feet by her other hand. “You have to get up and see the doctor.”
    We looked ridiculous, we must have done. Two kids trying to force a grown woman to move. In the end, somebody muttered into a phone and a doctor came down to take Mum upstairs.
    â€œIt’s not working,” I said to him. “Whatever you’re doing isn’t working!” And my voice got louder and angrier in the hush of the room. I sat back down and waited for people to stop staring. Stroma climbed onto my lap and put one arm around my neck. Part of me wanted to push her off and walk out. The other part kissed the top of her head and looked around.
    And that’s when I saw him, the boy. He was sitting on a bench opposite and to my left, in the corner, and he was watching