Paradise Read Online Free PDF Page B

out a packet of chocolate croissants. “Go on.”
    I shrug and sit down, pull open the cellophane. “Since when do we get this stuff for breakfast, anyway? What happened to toast and porridge?”
    Mum smiles. “We’ll have fish and chips later. Cotton candy.”
    “Can we?” Finn asks. “Really?”
    “Yeah, ’course,” Mum replies. “We’re on holiday.”
    But we’re not,
I think to myself. We’re not on holiday. This is it.
    But thick dark chocolate coats the roof of my mouth and sugar rushes to my head, dizzying, drowning the thought, trapping it in its stickiness.
She’s happy now,
I think. Maybe that’s all there is to it. The now. Not what happened all those years ago. Not what will happen tomorrow, in two months, three.
    And I bite down again, flooding myself with sweetness and light.
    Afterward, Mum takes Finn to look at the sea. I say it’s too wet out. But really I’m scared of being disappointed. Scared the Atlantic won’t measure up to Cass’s turquoise-water-and-white-sand photographs. Instead I wash up. It was fine at home, leaving dirty dishes for a day or two. But here it feels odd, like we’re abusing someone, something. The house. Or Eleanor. I stack the plates back in the earth-damp cupboards, find a dish for the butter, a bin for the bread and the last of the pastries. Playing mother. I sing as I work, bits of stuff Luka played, CDs of Cass’s; keeping myself company. It’s not until I close the last cupboard door that I give in to the solitude and listen to the house. Its heaving silence, punctuated by the tick-tocking of the clock in the hall. Counting around the minutes in a place where time stands still.
    I try to imagine Mum and Will running on this carpet, along these corridors. But I can’t. This isn’t a house for children. It’s a grown-up place. All polished mahogany, watercolors, brass door handles. Proper. So different from London. There we lived in a kind of organized chaos: every wall a different shade of red, every shelf sagging under the weight of books, every sill crowded with clay models and wire dolls and guitar picks. The flat was alive; it breathed with us, laughed with us. The walls here give nothing away. And I wonder if this suffocation that I feel is what Mum felt. And if that’s why we lived as we did. Because she could breathe at last. Do what she wanted. Maybe I’ll be different again. Minimalist or something. Mum says minimalists just have no imagination. But I think I’d like the space. The clean sharpness of corners.
    My stomach swirls again; the insects are stretching their wings. Because I’m wondering now if Mr. Garroway will repaint. Blot us out with two tins of magnolia. Like we were never there. Wondering if that’s what Luka will find. Then I get this urge to phone home. Not the flat; I’m not that ghoulish, ringing to see if some stranger answers. But London, someone in London. Cass, I guess. Though she’s probably out. Up the main street with Stella, or down at Cinderella’s with Ash. Still, it’s worth a try. I can leave a message, leave our new number. Then I realize I don’t know our new number. Don’t even know if there’s a phone. I look around the drawing room — that’s what Mum called it; not
living room,
because there’s nothing alive about this place — but I can’t see anything. No silver plastic cordless handset. Not even one of those retro ones with the dials. It’s not in the kitchen either. Maybe there isn’t one at all. Maybe they cut themselves off completely. An island.
    The insects flap now, slow beats, but quickening. I breathe harder, looking for something to calm them. And I find it. A flicker of memory of Luka with wire between his teeth and pliers in his hand. I go to the front door and find what I’m looking for. Phone cable. Held against the frame in neat plastic keepers. No trailing wires to trip over here. I follow the line down and along the hallway baseboards, trace its arc around the