Postcards From Berlin Read Online Free PDF Page A

smell the pollen through the thin
     green skin. And we have all made resolutions: Sinead to stop biting her nails, Richard to drink wine instead of whiskey, Daisy
     to have a cat — though Sinead protested at this, as she felt it didn’t quite qualify as a resolution — and I have resolved
     to take my painting more seriously. And to that end, today, the first day of term, I am going, all on my own, to an exhibition
     that I read about in the paper, at the Tate Modern. It is called Insomnia and this is its final week. It is a series of sketches
     by Louise Bourgeois, done in the night, fantastical — dandelion clocks, and tunnels made of hair, and a cat with a high-heeled
     shoe in its mouth. And I shall buy a catalogue, like a proper artist, and be inspired, perhaps, and start to draw quite differently:
     not just flowers but pictures from my mind.
    I am dressed to go straight to the station after dropping Daisy at school. I have a new long denim coat, stylishly shabby,
     that I chose from an austere, expensive shop in Covent Garden with unsmiling scented assistants and very few clothes on the
     rails: my Christmas present from Richard. It’s cunningly shaped, clinging to the body then flaring toward the hem, and almost
     too long, so you’d trip without high-heeled shoes, and it’s dyed a smudgy black, like ink, and the fabric feels opulently
     heavy. Not the sort of thing I’d ever normally wear to the school gate, but today I shall wear it. The thought of my outing
     gives me a fat, happy feeling.
    I make toast. Sinead is packing her bag in the hall, cursing under her breath. Yesterday we had the usual end-of-holiday panic:
     She’d just come back from Sara’s and she suddenly thought of an essay that had to be done, on something complex to do with
     the growth of fascism in the thirties and therefore requiring major parental input. Richard was provoked into a rare outburst
     of irritation with her.
    “For God’s sake, Sinead. How the hell did this happen? You’ve had the whole bloody holiday.”
    She shrugged, immaculately innocent, with an expression that said this was nothing to do with her.
    “I forgot,” she said.
    Then Daisy, who’s now recovered from her flu, though still not eating properly, decided we had to go shopping: There were
     girls who’d given her Christmas presents and she’d had nothing for them. Even at eight, that intricate web of female relationship,
     of things given and owed, of best friends and outsiders, is beginning to be woven. So we bought some flower hair clips from
     Claire’s Accessories and found an obliging Internet site so Sinead could write her essay, and today we are organized: clothes
     washed, lunch boxes packed, everything as it should be.
    It’s a windy, busy morning. Large pale-brown chestnut leaves torn from the tree in Monica’s garden litter our lawn. The letterbox
     keeps rattling as though there are many phantom postmen. When this happens, I jump.
    Daisy comes downstairs, dressed for school, tidy and precise, but her face is white. I put some toast in front of her.
    “D’you want honey?”
    “I’m not hungry,” she says.
    She sits neatly in front of it, her hands in her lap, looking at the toast but never touching it.
    “Try and eat something,” I say.
    “I don’t want anything,” she says.
    I can’t send her to school with nothing inside her.
    “Perhaps a Mars bar — just this once?” I’m a bit conspiratorial, expecting gratitude.
    “I don’t want one,” she says.
    Sinead leaves to catch her bus, her body misshapen from the weight of the bag she carries on her shoulder. She wears her uniform
     according to the girls’ illicit dress code: her skirt rolled at the waistline so it’s far too short, karma bracelets hidden
     under her cuffs, her socks pushed down and tucked inside her shoes.
    I brush Daisy’s hair in front of the big mirror that hangs over the fireplace. Her fair hair is thick, lavish, the brush won’t
     go right through