Drawing with Light Read Online Free PDF

I’ll pay for travel and a hotel in Paris.’
    Just as we’re dropping off to sleep (Rachel under her muslin drapes, between lilac sheets, me snuggled in a pink duvet on a pink futon mattress next to her), Rachel says, ‘We should ask Mr Ives straight out, what he meant about Francesca. Find out how he knows her. What she does. Where she is. We could find her, Em. Imagine that! After all this time.’
    â€˜I don’t think so,’ I say. ‘Just leave it, now, Rach. Please?’ I turn over, pretend to be asleep. It’s not long before I can tell Rachel really is asleep, and I lie there in the dark, listening to all the familiar sounds of a normal house, in a normal busy street in a town at night: radiator pipes clanking, bath water running; sirens and traffic and voices as people go along the street; a dog barking. The street light glows orange through the bedroom curtains.
    Amanda comes out of the bathroom and crosses the landing into her room; finally she switches off the radio, and the house is quiet. The street noises settle down too. But I’m still awake, thinking about Francesca, and Paris, and Rachel’s take on the world. How everything to her is straightforward and simple and has an explanation.
    I haven’t mentioned Seb once.
    By the time Rachel and I get downstairs in the morning, Amanda’s already gone to work. She has left us a note, and ten pounds:
    Help yourselves to breakfast: croissants in the oven, fresh grapefruit in the fridge. Buy yourselves something nice for supper: I’m going out tonight.
    â€˜Your mum’s really kind,’ I say.
    Rachel gives me her A-level Psychology look: sort of knowing and analytical. ‘She’s trying to buy our love, you realise. Lots of single parents do it, to make up for not being there. Because they feel guilty.’
    â€˜You talk such rubbish,’ I say.
    â€˜Shall I dry your hair?’ She looks at me still wrapped up in my white towel turban, smelling of Amanda’s expensive geranium and orange bath oil ( for relaxation and a sense of balance ).
    â€˜Go on, then.’
    â€˜I’m going to straighten it,’ Rachel says. ‘Smarten you up. I’ll do your make-up too.’
    By the time she’s finished, I don’t look like me. I purse my lips in the mirror: they’re sticky with dark red lipgloss and lipliner. My eyes are ringed with black, like a cat’s. I mess my hair up a bit with my hands.
    Rachel watches over my shoulder. ‘Leave it,’ she says. ‘You’re spoiling it!’
    We go down to the bottom of town first, to look at a jacket Rachel’s seen.
    We look at the stuff in the posh shops, but we only ever just look, because it’s all too expensive and in any case, the clothes are probably made by child labour and Third World exploitation and all that. It’s hard being ethical and fashionable. Next we go to the charity shops, because sometimes you get bargains in there.
    â€˜This looks like your sort of thing!’ Rachel holds up a black vest, with a velvet edge.
    I find a skirt I like too. Three pounds for them both!
    â€˜Now, coffee,’ Rachel says.
    We go to Madisons, upstairs in the mall, which means we go past Bob and his dog on the way. Bob’s this homeless bloke me and Kat have known for ages, from when he first had Mattie as a puppy. She’s a lurcher cross: smaller than your average lurcher, but skinny and beautiful.
    â€˜Hello, Bob!’ I say. I give him a two-pound coin. ‘For your cup of tea.’
    â€˜Thanks, sweetheart.’
    I pat Mattie. She stands up, as if to be polite, and then she turns round again three times and settles back on her blanket, curled round, watching me with her beady brown eyes.
    Rachel doesn’t approve. ‘That’s why you never have any money. And he’ll only spend it on booze or drugs,’ she says as we go up the escalator. ‘You shouldn’t encourage