Me and You Read Online Free PDF Page A

was exaggerating. ‘Nice. Not too bad.’
    ‘Snow?’
    How much snow could there be? ‘There’s a bit.’
    ‘Is everything all right? You sound a little weird.’
    ‘No. No. Everything’s fine.’
    ‘Put Alessia’s mum on so that I can say hello.’
    ‘She’s not here. It’s just us. Alessia’s mum’s at home.’
    Silence. ‘Ah . . . Tomorrow I’ll call you and you put her on. Or else get her to call me.’
    ‘Okay. I have to go now though, the pizzas are here.’ And then turning to an imaginary waiter, ‘That’s mine . . . Mine’s the one with the prosciutto.’
    ‘All right. I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t forget to wash.’
    ‘Bye.’
    ‘Bye, darling. Have fun.’
    It hadn’t gone too badly – I’d pulled it off. Feeling satisfied, I turned on the PlayStation to play Soul Reaver for a bit. But I kept thinking back to the phone call. Mum
wouldn’t let up. I knew her too well. If she didn’t get to speak to Alessia’s mother she was capable of driving up to Cortina. And what if I told her that Mrs Roncato had broken
her leg while she was skiing and was in hospital? No, I had to find something better. Nothing came to mind at the moment though.
    The smell of dampness was beginning to bother me. I opened the window. My head just fitted through the bars.
    Mrs Barattieri’s garden was covered in a carpet of rotting leaves. A street-lamp cast a cold light that fell on the ivy-covered gate. I could see the courtyard beyond the lawn. My
father’s Mercedes wasn’t there. He must have gone out for dinner or to play bridge.
    I went back to bed.
    Mum was three floors above me. She was probably lying on the settee with the Dachshunds curled up on her feet, a tray of milk and sponge cake on the coffee table. She would fall asleep there,
watching a black and white film. And my father, when he got home, would wake her up and take her to bed.
    I put my headphones on and Lucio Battisti began singing ‘Ancora tu’, ‘You again’. I took them back off.
    I hated that song.

 
    4
    The last time I’d heard ‘Ancora tu’ I was in the car with Mum. We were stuck in traffic on Corso Vittorio. A group of demonstrators had taken over Piazza
Venezia, and like heat the traffic jam had expanded, paralysing the streets throughout the whole city centre.
    I had spent the morning in my mother’s art gallery helping her to hang some pictures by a French artist whose exhibition she would launch the following week. I liked the huge photographs
of people eating alone in crowded restaurants.
    Scooters slalomed between the cars. A homeless man was sleeping on the steps of a church, huddled up in a grimy sleeping bag. Rubbish bags were wrapped around his head. He looked like an
Egyptian mummy.
    ‘Come on! What’s going on?’ My mum pushed hard on the car horn. ‘This city is becoming unbearable . . . Would you like to live in the country?’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘I don’t know . . . Tuscany, maybe?’
    ‘Just us two?’
    ‘Dad would come up on the weekends.’
    ‘And what if we bought a house in Komodo?’
    ‘Where’s Komodo?’
    ‘It’s a faraway island.’
    ‘And why would we go and live there?’
    ‘They have Komodo dragons. They’re these huge lizards that can even eat a live goat. And they run really fast. We could train them. And use them to defend ourselves.’
    ‘From whom?’
    ‘From everyone.’
    My mother smiled and turned up the volume of the car radio and she began singing along to Lucio Battisti: ‘ Ancora tu. It’s no surprise , you know . . .’
    I began singing along too and when we came to the verse: ‘ Amore mio , have you already eaten? I’m hungry too and not just for you ,’ I took her hand like a forlorn
lover.
    My mother laughed and shook her head. ‘You’re silly . . . you’re silly . . .’
    I realised that I was happy. The world was outside the car windows, and Mum and I were in a traffic bubble. There was no more school, not even homework or those billions of things I