One More Time Read Online Free PDF Page B

hallway floor, just how foolish I was. A thirteen-year-old who slept with his brother or sister every night—if anyone heard about it they would have laughed their heads off. People might have eventhought it was perverse, which was the furthest thing from the truth.
    It wasn’t just a case of being utterly frightened of sleeping alone: it was the fear of closing my eyes and not knowing what was happening in the room from then on. That’s what bothered me most: the fear of not knowing. Having somebody beside me relieved that fear enough to feel safe and to sleep soundly.
    I sat down on the floor with my knees tucked up close to my chin. I began to feel sorry for myself, mainly because I felt stupid.
    The night stretched on endlessly. I was exhausted but just too frightened to close my eyes. Each time I felt myself nodding off I would wake with a fright.
    What’s there?
    There was nothing there; it was still just me and the hallway.
    You’re an absolute chicken!
    I don’t know when it happened but sometime in the dark of that night I drifted off to sleep. I woke up lying in the same position on the hallway floor, astonished I had made it through the night. The sunlight that crept through the hallway curtains was the brightest and most comforting I’d ever seen. I couldn’t believe I’dmanaged on my own. It was still very early morning but I was ecstatic.
    Tired but triumphant, I climbed into my own bed, and within minutes I went back to sleep. That night had been a breakthrough. When I awoke there was a note at the foot of my bed. ‘Well done, Sean, so proud of you. Love Sarah.’ I still have that note.
    And just like that, I was sleeping on my own every night. I stopped my hand-washing ritual. I even managed to cut back on the foot-rubbing too. It felt as though a weight had been lifted, a weight I’d been carrying for too long. Shortly afterwards the praying began.

4. Three thousand steps
    ‘Okay, we eat here, lunch.’
    We had reached a small village, about three hours from our intended destination of Ulleri. The village was simple, not more than three guesthouses and a number of small barns. Apart from the blue roofs on the buildings, it blended chameleon-like with the surrounding countryside, the buildings overgrown with plants and trees and the brickwork weathered brown, so that you barely noticed the village until you were almost upon it. A group of young children scurried out as we arrived. They greeted us with such cheer it was as though we were arriving home.
    Mani pointed to one of the huts.
    ‘We eat there.’
    I was starved and would have eaten anywhere.
    A middle-aged Nepalese man emerged from the teahouse. He had a gentle face and a welcome grin which he directed towards Mani—they were obviously friends—and immediately began to converse in Nepali. Suddenly I felt like a spare tyre. Mani would be more comfortable eating here with his friend, especially since quite likely he’d order dal bhat.
    Eaten with the bare left hand, dal bhat was quite messy. The idea of the dish was simple: add lentils to rice, eat it with the spicy onions and follow that with a hefty portion of the potatoes—generously washed down with plain yogurt. I had tried it on many occasions in India and found it to be quite pasty and tasteless. Years of growing up eating stews and lentil soups had killed off my palate for such dishes.
    ‘Dal bhat at eleven in the morning,’ Mani had explained, ‘and again at four in the afternoon. Then at the night, seven o’clock and maybe again before sleeping.’
    ‘That’s a lot of dal bhat.’
    ‘Mani love,’ he had replied, rubbing his stomach for effect.
    So much of the same food, I thought, couldn’t be healthy, let alone interesting. It was economical alright, and easy to make in bulk. But still, I didn’t likethe taste of it. I chose something different at this teahouse—noodle soup and a bottle of Coca-Cola and retired to the company of my own thoughts. Mani opted to eat