Double Read Online Free PDF

really well and . . .”
    “That was nice of him,” I said.
    Who the hell was Frank? A rich uncle? Their dad? Their mum’s boyfriend?
    “Yes,” Edie said, smiling. “It was.”
    She put her hand on mine, and we drove along like that for a while, with me looking at our hands, and her looking at the road.
    “I thought you’d be angry,” she said.
    “Do you want me to be?”
    “No,” she said. “God, no. I just thought you would be, that’s all. You’ve every right.”
    It made me smile, the idea that I was entitled to anything.
    “It’s done,” I said. “I don’t see the point.”
    I shut my eyes again, and for a while I slept for real. I dreamed I was looking at my face in the mirror. I was wondering how the hell I’d ended up looking like I did.
    It was the killing of the engine that woke me again, the lack of sound, and then the slam of Edie’s door. I opened my eyes, alone on a dirt track surrounded by nothing but green. It was getting dark. It was unreal, like waking from one dream into another. I’d never been in that much space before. The wind blew across the land and straight at me, like now that I was there it had something to aim for. I could hear it singing through and over and under the car. For less than a second I wondered if Edie had left me there, if she’d worked it out and abandoned me. And then I heard the creak of a gate and she was back, striding through the sheer emptiness, opening and closing the door, bringing a little piece of the gale and the smell of cold grass in with her.
    “Welcome home, Cass,” she said.
    The car stumbled through the open gate, slicing through wet mud and tractor marks. Edie got out to shut it again behind us. The green plain narrowed into a tree-lined path, and then there it was. Cassiel’s mother’s dream house. There was a light on downstairs and it spilled out warm and yellow into the air. Edie beeped the horn twice, and the front door flung open. It wasn’t until the porch light snapped on that I saw her properly, thin and dark and windblown, an older version of Edie, just as fragile-looking, just as small. She put her hands to her mouth the same as Edie did when she first saw me. Then she was jumping and waving, her shouts vanishing into the wind. She ran at the car. I watched her close in on us like a tornado, like water. There was no escaping her.
    Edie stared at me. “What’s wrong?” she said. “You look like you’re going to be sick .”
    “Nothing.”
    “You’re scared. What are you scared of?”
    I didn’t have time to answer. Cassiel’s mother was on us, on me. She wrenched open the door with both hands. The wind grabbed my hair and filled my ears, and she tried to pull me straight out by my arms and throw herself on me at the same time.
    I heard Edie get out of the car on the other side, free and unnoticed, like she was invisible, like she wasn’t there. I saw myself suddenly from the outside, in this wind-racked, mud-filled place, pretending to be this woman’s son. I couldn’t breathe.
    Wouldn’t she know? Wouldn’t she know as soon as she touched me?
    Cassiel’s mother had bangles that clanked and rang, and her nails were bitten so hard, so far down, I couldn’t look at them. I tried to get out of the car with her still clinging to me. I tried to stand up.
    “My boy,” she said, and then she pulled me into the crook of her neck, my forehead on her shoulder, my back bent over like a scythe. Her clothes smelled of the warm inside, of dog and log fires and cooking, of cigarette smoke. I felt her breathing, thin and weak, like she was worn out from years of doing the same. She laughed into my hair and tightened her thin arms across my back. Her breath smelled of flowers and ash.
    I stored it in a quiet and empty place in my mind. So this was what a mum felt like.
    Cassiel’s mother drew back to look at me. Her eyes were wild and triumphant, and at the dark center of them there was something like fear. I tried not to