Moon Pie Read Online Free PDF Page B

three: he was more bewildered than upset. But Martha was nine, and she understood. She had a sudden dizzy feeling, like falling; as if she was falling down a hole, plummeting through darkness with nothing to hold on to and no air to breathe, falling and falling until she was so suffocated and squeezed that in the end she was sick on the floor. Afterwards, and even now, she got the dizzy feeling from time to time. It came on her unexpectedly, like a headache. Out of nowhere a thought of Mum would come into her head, and she would start to fall, and fall and fall, thinking of Mum until she was sick. When it happened, she told people she had a stomach bug. She didn’t want to tell them what it really was.
    Dad never talked about Mum. Straight after the funeral he cleared out her clothes and gave them away, and put all the photographs of her into the attic; he didn’t even keep a picture for his room. Whenever Martha started to talk about Mum, healways changed the subject. He said they needed to move on. He had all the love that Martha and Tug needed, he said. But Martha knew he couldn’t talk about Mum because he was so upset.
    For about a year their routines stayed the same. Dad took Martha to school and Tug to playgroup, and went off to work at the television studio in the mornings. In the afternoons Grandma and Grandpa picked them up from school and playgroup and took them home. When Dad came back from work they had tea together, and played and talked. On Wednesdays Martha went to Cookery Club and on Fridays to Costumes Club. Every Thursday Dad played five-aside football. And although it was not at all the same without Mum, at least they were still themselves.
    Then Dad began to change. He decided he didn’t like being a cinematographer, and, even though he handled the best-known television programmes and knew all sorts of famous people, he gave it up, and stopped working altogether. At the same time, they left the big old house on the hill and moved down into the suburbs, to the small house near Grandma and Grandpa. It was less expensive, and more convenient. Only a few months later Dad had an argument with Grandma and Grandpa, and theystopped picking Martha and Tug up from school and coming to tea. Dad said it didn’t matter now that he was at home himself.
    Then he started to behave strangely.
    It was the little things they noticed first. He no longer found the time to make banana pancakes on Sunday morning, or read bedtime stories, and he was always too tired to play tennis. Before long he was too tired to take them to school in the mornings, and in the evenings he often forgot to make tea. He began to look strange too. Putting away all his smart suits and blazers, he wore nothing but old pairs of jeans and T-shirts. He went for days without shaving, and almost never brushed his hair. ‘It doesn’t bother me,’ he said. ‘I don’t see why it should bother you.’ Now even his voice sounded different, sometimes whispery, sometimes loud and sudden. He was no longer quiet, as he had been in the months after Mum died. He was often larky and excitable, even hilarious. He specialized in lavish surprises. In the summer he hired a pink stretch limousine to take them to the opening night of a new movie in town (though when they got there they found it was the wrong day). And at Christmas he bought a spectacular display of lights for the front of the house featuring three snowmen, six reindeer, aSanta Claus and thirty-two elves (but he must have put it up wrong because it fell off into the street and broke).
    It was as if he had become a different person.
    What should I do about Dad
? Martha asked herself.
What would Mum do?
    I must do something
, she thought.
I must keep my head, and think. After all, I am eleven
.

8
    D octor Zhivago
is one of the world’s greatest movies, Marcus said. He kindly explained it to Tug.
    ‘Zhivago is a poet. Tonya is the daughter of a doctor. Lara is a dressmaker’s daughter. Pasha is a