Hot Milk Read Online Free PDF Page A

reception for two hours? No, what you must do is take the little bus which leaves from the entrance of my clinic. It will drop you near the beach in Carboneras. It is only a twenty-minute drive to town from the hospital.’
    Rose looked affronted but Gómez ignored her. ‘Sofia Irina, I suggest you make your way now. It is noon, so we will see you at two.’
    â€˜I wish I could enjoy a swim,’ my mother said.
    â€˜It is always good to wish for more enjoyment, Mrs Papastergiadis.’
    â€˜If only.’ Rose sighed.
    â€˜If only what?’ Gómez knelt on the floor and placed his stethoscope on her heart.
    â€˜If only I were able to swim and lie in the sun.’
    â€˜Ah, how wonderful that would be.’
    Again, I wasn’t sure what to make of him. His tone was vague. Vaguely mocking and vaguely amiable. Which meant it was a bit bent. I reached for Rose’s hand and pressed it. I wanted to say goodbye to her but Gómez was now listening with complete focus to her heart. I kissed the top of her head instead.
    My mother said, ‘Ouch!’ She shut her eyes and leaned her head back as if she was in agony – or it might have been ecstasy. It was hard to tell.

    *

    The sun was fierce by the time I arrived at the deserted beach opposite the cement factory. I made my way towards a small café near a row of gas canisters and ordered a gin and tonic from the friendly waiter. He pointed to the sea and warned me not to swim because three people had been badly stung that morning by medusas. He had seen the welts on their limbs turn white and then purple. He grimaced and then shut his eyes and waved his hands as if to push away the ocean and all the medusas living in it. The gas canisters looked like strange desert plants growing out of the sand.
    A large industrial cargo ship floated near the horizon. It was flying a Greek flag. I looked away and gazed instead at a rusty child’s swing that had been hammered into the coarse sand. The seat was made from a battered car tyre and it was swaying gently, as if a ghostly child had recently jumped off it. Cranes from the desalination plant sliced into the sky. Tall undulating dunes of greenish-grey cement powder lay in a depot to the right of the beach, where unfinished hotels and apartments had been hacked into the mountains like a murder.
    I glanced at my phone. There was an old text message from Dan who worked with me at the Coffee House. He wanted to know where I had put the marker pen we use to label the sandwiches and pastries. Dan from Denver was texting me in Spain about a pen? As I took a sip of my large gin and tonic and nodded my thanks to the waiter, I wondered if I had put the pen somewhere obscure.
    I unzipped my dress so the sun could reach my shoulders. The burn of the medusa sting had calmed down, but every now and again I felt a twinge. It wasn’t the worst kind of pain. In a way, it was a relief.
    Another more recent message from Dan. He has found the pen. It turns out that while I am in Spain he is sleeping in my room above the Coffee House because his landlord put up his rent last week. The pen was in my bed. With the lid off. Consequently, the sheets and duvet are now stained with black ink. In fact, he described it as a haemorrhage of ink.
    He can no longer write things like this:

    Sofia’s bittersweet Amaretto cheesecake – in £3.90, out £3.20.
    Dan’s moist orange and polenta cake (wheat- and gluten-free) – in £3.70, out £3.

    I am bittersweet.
    He is moist.
    Dan is definitely not moist.
    We don’t bake these cakes ourselves but our boss tells us that customers are more likely to buy them if they think we do. We put our names to things we do not make. I am glad the ink has run out of the lying pen.
    I remember now that I must have left the pen in the bed when I used it to copy a quote from Margaret Mead, the cultural anthropologist. I wrote it straight onto the wall.

    I used