Happy Birthday and All That Read Online Free PDF

lost one. If you hear of anyone who might be interested …’
    Posy knew that Caroline probably wanted to know if there was any gossip about Al, anything that Frank might have told her.
    Now that the worst of the divorce was over, Posy sometimes envied Caroline. Imagine being able to live on toast and jam and Diet Coke if you wanted, and not having to make proper dinners. Men always seemed to want to eat something proper and fattening. Caroline had lost piles of weight. Al was meant to have Finn on Saturdays or Sundays, so Caroline could have a whole day to herself, but it usually ended up being just an afternoon. Al was always oversleeping, or the van broke down and he was stuck somewhere with the battery in his mobile running low.
    â€˜Fancy coming round for some coffee?’ Caroline asked.
    â€˜Just a minute …’ Posy could see Tom on the other side of the room. He was trying to drive the tractor up the slide, whilst two girls in sparkly pink- and purple-striped velour leggings pelted him with pieces of the vanilla-scented playdough. She knew that Kate must have made it. She could smell that it was real extract, not cheap artificial essence. She picked some lumps of it out of Tom’s hair, and a big clod out of the hood of his fleece. What a good shot one of the girls was. Then she heard Isobel crying and retrieved her from her car seat on the stage. She stopped crying straight away, but Posy could feel the unmistakable bulge in her nappy. She took her off to a freezing side-room, the store of Sunday school collages in balls of tissue paper, dangerously tall stacks of chairs and damp floor cushions that belonged to nobody.
    â€˜At least you can’t crawl yet,’ she told her as she wiped and dried and packaged her up again, dismissing as usual thoughts of the possibly carcinogenic gel in the nappies.
    She gave Isobel to Caroline and went to wash her hands. The light in the Ladies seemed impossibly bright. She caught herreflection in the mirror in the instant before she had adopted her usual expression, a resigned, things-could-be-much-worse smile. So that was what she was really like. Her eyes looked as though they had been punched out, her chinline was undefined, her lips were like a pair of dead worms.
    â€˜I am turning into a playdough woman,’ she thought.
    Back in the hall she said, ‘Coffee next week would be great.’ She would have to pull herself together, knock herself back into shape. ‘What day suits you? Any day’s good for me really.’
    â€˜Tuesday morning?’ Caroline offered.
    â€˜Or afternoon? Tom’s at pre-school in the morning, say about one-thirty, that would give me time to do his lunch … I’ll just check.’ She found her DoDo diary under a box of breadsticks and some tissues in her bag. There was a column for each member of the family. Week after week, page by page, the same things came around - ballet, toddlers, preschool, Frank’s guitar pupils, music club, Tumble Tots - sometimes it calmed her to see it. Her days were prescribed, stretching out in front of her and behind her. Had they really managed to do all of those things? It should have been like a metronome, keeping them all to time, but colds and tummy bugs and mysterious viruses so often interrupted the flow that she sometimes wondered if she’d ever pick up the beat again. The whole world would go marching on without her, leaving her stuck for ever at 3.47 a.m. looking out of a bedroom window with a sticky bottle of Calpol in her hand.
    â€˜Oh no. The health visitor’s coming. I don’t know why. I expect Isobel’s on the At Risk register or something.’
    â€˜Probably she fancies Frank,’ said Caroline. ‘Or she wants to see how the experts do it.’
    â€˜Monday afternoon?’
    â€˜Fine.’
    â€˜Oh, that’s my birthday. I hadn’t even written it in. Well you come to me then. Come after school for