Divided Kingdom Read Online Free PDF Page A

dark ball came curving across the perfect grass towards me. No sooner had the man released the ball than he began to follow it with nimble, urgent steps, as though he regretted having let go of it, as though he no longer trusted it, as though he feared what it might do. The ball kept rolling, growing larger and larger, until it seemed that its voluptuous, hypnotic revolutions might swallow me completely, but then the train slid into a tunnel, its brakes wincing and grinding, and when we emerged again into the fading light, the brick walls and hanging baskets of a station rose up before me, and the train shuddered to a halt. My companion touched me on the arm. We were there.
    I had been hoping for a long walk, which would have given me the chance to prepare myself, but the woman stopped outside a green door no more than a few hundred yards from the station. My nerve had held all day. Now, though, I found my stomach tightening, and the palms of my hands were wet. She heaved asigh – almost, I felt, on my behalf – and pressed the bell once, firmly. A window on the first floor scraped open, and an elderly man with a huge bald head peered down.
    â€˜Ah,’ he said.
    The man’s head withdrew, and the window crashed shut. The woman smiled at me, dimples showing in her cheeks. She was trying to convince me that what was happening was normal.
    When the front door opened, the man’s eyes jumped from the woman’s face to mine and his lips drew back and his teeth appeared, grey-white, like ancient cubes of ice. Was he smiling or gloating? I couldn’t tell. It was even possible that he had suffered an involuntary spasm of some kind. Clearly we had come to the wrong address. I’d been led to believe that people who lived in the Red Quarter were special and rare, like black pearls or white whales, like four-leafed clover, but so far as I could see there was nothing remotely special or rare about the man standing in the doorway. He was just plain odd. I turned and gazed at the woman who had brought me there, endeavouring to compress all my doubts and fears into a single look, but she merely nodded at me and those smooth dents showed in her cheeks again.
    â€˜You must be Thomas,’ the man said finally. Reaching down, he took my right hand in his and shook it vigorously. ‘Very pleased to meet you. Very pleased indeed.’ He tried to step back, so as to let the woman pass, but the doorway was too narrow. ‘Do come in,’ he said. ‘Both of you. Follow me.’
    There had been no mistake. This was Victor Parry, my new father.
    My first glimpse of my new sister, Marie, came half an hour later, and with her appearance I felt the anxieties that had taken hold of me begin to loosen their grip. I was sitting in the living-room with Victor Parry and my travelling companion, about to reach for a cup of tea, when I heard light footsteps on the stairs – or, rather, I heard a series of subtle creaks, as though someone was walking on tiptoe, trying their utmost not to make a sound. Glancing beyond Victor Parry’s shoulder, I saw a girl framed in the open doorway. She was dressed in a black ribbed sweater, ashort, slightly flared red skirt and a pair of black tights. As I caught her eye, she winked at me and put a finger to her lips, then she disappeared from view.
    â€˜Marie? Is that you?’ Victor’s head half turned, but only in time to hear the door to the street click shut. He let out a heavy, almost vaudevillian sigh. ‘You’ll have to forgive her,’ he said. ‘She’s always off out somewhere, doing God knows what.’
    I had already forgiven her, of course. That dark hair curving in beneath her chin like the blade of a sultan’s dagger, those lips that slanted a little, as if one side of her mouth weighed more than the other. That conspirator’s wink, which the grown-ups hadn’t noticed. During the weeks that followed, Victor would often