Lemonade and Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

made up of that many coincidences. It was the guy who’d followed me into town. The man who wasn’t stupid, because he’d always kept someone else in between us. Like the woman with the noisy shoes. I could see his face in my mind, and the memory of what he’d threatened came back again. My legs weakened and some of my lunch found its way up into my throat.
    I forced out a long, slow breath and told myself I mustn’t throw up. Outside the cathedral wasn’t the ideal place to inspect the remnants of sweet potato and pepper soup. And there was probably some sort of city ordinance against throwing up on consecrated ground.

Chapter 5
     
     
    Auto pilot. That’s what took me through the rest of the day. I don’t remember much about how I got back to work, and the only thing that marked my final class out from any other was that Arthur complained of feeling ill.
    Arthur’s a Lang/Lit student with a less-than-enthusiastic attitude towards work. I moved him to a seat by the window and opened it slightly, amid exaggerated complaints about the drop in temperature. I turned the radiator up. It’s hard to please everyone.
    Arthur’s face took on a light green tint. The others said he hadn’t been to bed the night before. Had been partying. That usually meant industrial amounts of either cider or Jägermeister - a seventy-percent-proof, lethal German spirit with herbs and spices. It was a digestive, meant to be drunk in small quantities.
    This information was passed to me too late. So was my lunge for the plastic waste-bin. Arthur stuck his head out the window and puked onto the fancy canvas that stretched below our classroom in a canopy. I later heard that some of this made it as far as the ground two floors below. It eventually took two cleaners with long ladders, disinfectant and a mixture of cleaning materials and ingenuity to scrape the remains from the navy blue canvas. I put up a black mark (at least with the cleaners). Life is often unfair.
     
    *
     
    “Mum, you’re not gonna get stressy and do one, are you?”
    “Do one?” I asked innocently, like I’d no idea what my daughter was talking about. Millie is eight years old, one of the younger kids in her Year Four class. Not a headstrong teenager with an attitude problem. So where does she get language like that?
    I knew what the trouble was. Tom had been taken out for a friend’s party and she was stuck at the bus stop with me. The next bus wasn’t due for twenty minutes, and twenty minutes is a lifetime for kids when they’re bored and thinking about brothers doing more exciting stuff. She’d been sniping at me ever since I’d picked her up.
    I ignored her insult and told her we could sit upstairs in the bus. It was meant to be a treat, but you’d think I’d suggested some form of medieval torture.
    My car still wasn’t ready. I suppose it had slipped farther down the work docket in favour of newer, sexier cars that were easier to fix. I had no idea what was wrong with it, for the mechanic had gone into garage-speak and lost me at the first hurdle.
    That was one of the things on my bucket list. A course in car maintenance for the beginner, so I could give Jemima her best chance of a stately old age and she wouldn’t end up discarded in some breaker’s yard. I don’t do lists (as you know) but I figure a bucket list is different.
    I hadn’t told Millie about the trainers yet. She was behaving badly and I don’t believe in buying my kids’ good behaviour. The little savages will only use it as a weapon to beat you over the head with.
    The house was cold when we got in, so I shoved the gas fire on immediately, ignoring the fact that the price of gas had gone up yet again, and I still hadn’t paid the bill.
    Tea was hardly exotic, beans on toast. My daughter pulled a face and smothered the lot with ketchup. You try your best, but it seems everyone’s a critic. Still, the moral victory was mine, for it comes from my healthy choice menu list, and the