Midnight Dolphin Read Online Free PDF Page B

ready-made salad Dad had
bought. Dad pulled a bit of a face.
    ‘ Actually
things are not so good at work at the moment Luce’ he replied. ‘The
company’s losing money and quite a few of us have been put at risk
of redundancy’ he continued.
    ‘ What does
that mean Dad?’ Lucy asked.
    ‘ Well it means
I might lose my job’ he replied. ‘Money’s going to be pretty tight
if I do. On the other hand if it happens I’ll be able to spend more
time with you until I find a better one.’ Dad pulled a wan smile
for Lucy’s benefit. ‘Truth be known I’m sick of that job and I
won’t be sorry to see the back of it if they do let me
go.’
    ‘ I’m sorry
Dad’ said Lucy sympathetically. ‘When will you know?’
    ‘ Oh it could
be before Christmas, or it might be in January. It’s hard to know.
Don’t worry too much Luce’ he added. ‘I was put at risk of
redundancy a couple of years ago and I’m still here aren’t
I?’
    Lucy looked at
her father as he took a mouthful of rice. He might be at risk of
redundancy, but ever since she’d found out that she was supposed to
grow out of her special link with Spirit, she felt as though she’d
been under a death sentence. At school they’d been doing the French
revolution in history, and it was as though she looked up and saw
the guillotine blade descending in slow motion, getting closer and
closer to the back of her neck.
    Still, she
didn’t like to tell him that and she’d be genuinely sorry if he
lost his job.
    ‘ So I suppose
we wont be spending much this Christmas Dad?’ she asked. ‘No
Christmas tree?’
    ‘ That’s right’
he agreed. ‘We’ll have to watch the pennies. No six foot Christmas
trees or big fat turkeys. We’ll have to get the plastic tree out of
the loft.’
     
    After dinner
they cleared away the plates and washed up together, with Dad
cleaning the plates and Lucy drying them. They watched TV for half
an hour and then Lucy said she’d go up and get ready for bed. She
said she wanted to read before lights out. As she left the room she
could see Dad re-reading a letter from work with a concerned
expression on his face.
    Sometimes Lucy
was almost overwhelmed with the need to stretch out to Spirit with
her mind and talk to him, telling him everything that had happened
in her day, even though she knew that he couldn’t always understand
the things that were going on in her life from a human perspective.
When she felt like that it was much easier to focus her mind and
then tumble through into the world of water.
    Lucy had that
feeling tonight and felt a surge of optimism that it would be easy
to get through to Spirit again, and that everything would be okay
again. Lucy focused and relaxed her mind, and tried to feel her way
through the door between her conscious and her unconscious that
would allow her to access Spirit’s world of water. Try as she might
though, it would not work. Lucy went to the bathroom to get a glass
of water and then returned to try again. Surely this was just a
temporary glitch. This time, she thought, it would work. Lucy tried
for ten long minutes, but the longer it went on for, the more
impossible it seemed. It was as though not only could she not find
the door between her conscious and unconscious, but the door was
not there at all. Maybe her mind was growing over it, and then it
would be gone. Maybe it was already too late.
    Lucy broke
down and wept hot, bitter tears. She buried her face in her pillow
to stifle the noise of her crying. She didn’t want Dad to hear. She
didn’t want him to have the satisfaction. If Bethany was there at
least she would be able to bury herself in her aunt’s warm embrace,
but Bethany was far away and she just felt alone. As her tears
finally abated, Lucy felt the book under the duvet and pulled it
out again to look at. There it was, ‘Flora and Fauna of the Cornish
Coast’, the book that Mum must have had at about the same age as
she was now. If only Mum was alive and she