Summer Daydreams Read Online Free PDF

8
     

     
    Tonight is a rare occasion. Olly and I are in bed together – alone. Petal is fast asleep in the next room for once, and even the dog has stayed in his bed.
    We only rent this small, two-up, two-down, terraced house, but we’ve done our best to make it home. The landlord is very tolerant of our somewhat eclectic decorating style. All he says when he sees yet more of our handiwork is ‘just make sure it’s all magnolia when you leave.’ Can’t say fairer than that.
    On the downside, the house is on a busy main road so all our conversation has a backdrop of thundering traffic. On the upside, it’s just a short walk into the town centre – ten minutes max, which is just as well as neither Olly or I drive. Olly has actually passed his test whereas I haven’t. Sometimes he does a bit of van driving for friends for some extra cash, but we can’t really afford to run a car. We own a slightly battered but much loved Vespa scooter as our sole mode of transport. It’s not exactly practical now that we’ve got Petal – we can’t exactly put a toddler on the back of a scooter – but Olly has owned it since he was nineteen and I think he’d rather saw off one of his arms than part with it. He insists that it was his impressive skills on his scooter that made me fall in love with him. Even now, he and Petal sit and polish it together for hours on end. I snuggle down next to Olly. My shiny new handbag sits on the dressing table and I’m admiring it by the light of the moon, watching the myriad colours as they glimmer.
    ‘Phil said I should do something more with my life,’ I tell him.
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘He said maybe art college.’
    Olly makes a ‘hmm’ noise in the dark. Is it a yes ‘hmm’ or a no ‘hmm’? Can’t be sure.
    ‘Soooo, I took Petal into the college this afternoon,’ I continue. ‘Just to see what they had on offer.’
    I feel Olly sit up slightly. ‘You’re seriously thinking about it?’
    ‘I really don’t know,’ I admit. ‘But it got me wondering. Maybe I shouldn’t spend my life in a chip shop.’
    ‘But you love it.’
    ‘I do,’ I agree. ‘But perhaps I could love something else more.’ I can’t even begin to express how proud I am of the makeover at the chippy. It turned out so much better than I’d expected. If I can do something like that in a weekend on a tiny budget, what else could I achieve if I really put my mind to it? I hoped Olly would understand that. ‘Perhaps I should try to achieve something, be a better role model for Petal.’
    ‘Hmm.’ That noise again.
    ‘We should both try to do more. Build a better life.’
    ‘We’re doing OK.’
    ‘We’re not,’ I remind him. ‘Not really. We can barely make ends meet.’ There’s certainly nothing left over for luxuries. ‘You can’t want to spend the rest of your life in a pizza factory?’
    ‘I haven’t actually thought about it,’ Olly admits.
    ‘Well, I have and I want to do something about it. The college have got an art and design foundation course starting in a couple of weeks. I’ve already spoken to the admissions staff and they’ve got a few places left.’
    Olly sits bolt upright now and switches on the bedside light.
    ‘You’re kidding me?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘How much is it?’
    Now the hard part. Gulp. ‘The best part of two and a half grand including materials and exam fees.’
    ‘Wow.’
    Wow, indeed. Like the price of the handbag, I might as well have said a million pounds. Now it’s out, I rush on. ‘It covers fine art, fashion, textiles, photography and print techniques.’
    I confess that I haven’t been able to stop pouring over the brochure since I picked it up.
    ‘What do you get at the end of it? Can you walk straight into a job?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Two and half grand is a heck of a lot of money for an “I don’t know”.’
    That I do know.
    Olly sighs. ‘We simply don’t have that kind of money, Nell. How would we manage? Would you have to give