Coming of Age Read Online Free PDF

because we’d taken the last exam and we had the rest of the day off. Maybe he and this woman have been to that restaurant lots of times, but you’ve just never seen them.”
    â€œSo if she’s a friend, why hasn’t he told me about her?”
    â€œEither she is someone special and he doesn’t want you to know about her, or she’s so unimportant he’s forgotten.”
    Amy says slowly, “I think she’s special. He said he’d had a wonderful day.”
    Ruth sounds impatient. “You’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Why didn’t you tell him you’d seen her and ask him who she is?”
    â€œI can’t explain.” Amy curls the telephone cord round her fingers until it hurts. “I don’t want to pry.”
    â€œLook, Amy. Suppose your dad has got a girlfriend. It’s been years since your mum . . .”
    â€œSix years,” Amy says abruptly.
    â€œExactly. So why shouldn’t he?”
    â€œBecause –” Amy is surprised and alarmed that her eyes sting with tears – “because he belongs to me.”
    â€œHey, come on, Amy. Get a life. You’re his daughter , not his –”
    â€œI know what I am.” Amy rubs the base of her right hand into her eyes. “You don’t need to remind me.” She hears Ruth’s front-door bell ring.
    â€œEddie’s here.” Ruth’s voice is flustered. “Sure you won’t come with us?”
    Amy stares across the hall floor. The late-evening sun filters through the stained-glass windows in the front door, dappling the tiles with rainbow-coloured, gently moving shadows.
    â€œI’m not in the mood. Those exams have worn me out.”
    â€œYou’ll be sorry.”
    No, I won’t. All that silly chat, all that noise. And Pete, with his skinny chest and big ears. Why would anyone want to spend the evening with him?
    Amy goes back to the kitchen, clatters plates into the dishwasher, lays the table for breakfast. Then she runs up to the room which is her special sanctuary: Mum’s study.
    That day of the funeral, in the evening, when everyone had gone, she’d written Dad a note: Please can we keep Mum’s room just as it is? Not touch anything? Ask Dora to keep it clean, but not to move anything or make it different?
    Dad had nodded, immediately understood.
    Now Amy opens the door. The room lies directly above her own bedroom and shares the view of the garden. Here she can see over the paved terrace leading from the house, over the lawn and the rose garden, out across the silver birch and rowan tree to the Common and the deep fir woods beyond.
    The sun lies low in the June sky; a blackbird sings from the birch. Amy looks at the old sofa and slouchy chairs, the wide desk under the window, the shelves piled with books on gardening and design. Even now, when she buries her face among the cushions, she remembers the smell of Blue Grass, the perfume her mother always wore, its pungent freshness.
    One cushion in particular. Mum had made it as a present for her, that last Christmas. She’d embroidered her favourite stained-glass window from Saint Luke’s: Saint Elizabeth, standing proud and stocky with her bare arms and feet, holding in her apron nine pink roses and a loaf of bread.
    â€œ She’s carrying her garden with her ,” Mum always said. “ What I love about her is her strength .”
    Amy raises her head.
    â€œSomething’s going on, Mum. I don’t know what it is and I could be wrong. But at supper tonight, Dad lied to me. That’s never happened before and I’m scared.”
    She looks above the small stone fireplace. On the wall hangs Mum’s portrait, painted by a student friend. Mum sits in a garden on a curly iron chair, behind her a pale purple lilac tree in full bloom. She wears jeans and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled to her elbows. She holds an apple, out of which she’s