Swallowing Grandma Read Online Free PDF Page A

on. You might have been certifiable. Now, are you having a vanilla slice?’
    Far above me, the spine had melted into long wispy fingers, ghost fingers pointing to the south. I stepped back up onto the memorial. ‘Dad? If you’re still there – I really could do with some help. About the future. Can you give me a sign?’
    I watched my breath mist in front of my face, and waited. A helicopter chopped faintly in the distance. Two metres away from where I stood a wren flittered onto a hawthorn branch, bobbed about, took off again.
    Winston chose that moment to reappear with something hideous in his mouth. I bent down to prise the thing from his jaws but he was too quick for me; he threw his head back and bolted whatever it was down, gagging and snorting. Probably he’d be bringing it back up later, on the living-room carpet. ‘Come on, mutt; home,’ I scolded. ‘You always have to ruin the atmosphere, don’t you?’
    I thought again of the backbone when I got in. The TV was blasting out of the lounge, House-Strip-Neighbour-Swap-Challenge . Still in the porch, bending to unhook Winston’s collar, I called; ‘I’ve been having a think about things, Poll, and I want you to call me Kat.’ I said it quite loudly, partly because there was this bouncy theme tune to contend with, and partly because I wanted her to understand right from the word go that I was serious about it.
    Poll’s frowning face appeared round the door. ‘You want me to call you a cat?’
    ‘No,’ said Dogman’s voice from behind her. ‘Don’t be daft. She wants you to call her a cab.’
    Winston walked stiffly off and I hung his lead up. The urge to impale myself on one of the coat hooks was tremendous. Instead I wrenched my mac off and pulled it down over the hook so hard that the collar ripped. Poll didn’t see this, luckily.
    ‘Come in here and tell us a proper tale,’ she said.
    ‘Can you turn the TV down?’
    ‘I’ll put it on mute,’ said Dogman.
    I wish I could put you on mute, I thought.
    ‘So what do you need a cab for?’ asked Poll, bristling at the thought of any extravagance.
    I sat down heavily on the settee. ‘I don’t. I don’t . Want a cab. I just had an idea.’
    ‘We’re not having any more pets, if that’s what you’re after. It wouldn’t be fair on Winston. And I’m not keen on cats, they bring in dead things.’
    ‘Aye, that’s right, they do.’ Dogman shook his bristly head. ‘Or sometimes things that are still alive. My mother had an infestation of mice once after her Bruno brought in a pregnant one and it got away under t’ cooker. I said to her, I thought cats were supposed to get rid of vermin, not attract it . . . ’ His voice trailed away as, on screen, a busty woman in a T-shirt bent forwards over a workbench.
    ‘Not cats, not cabs. Just listen, will you? All it was, I wanted to change my name slightly.’
    ‘What for?’ Poll shifted her weight onto one foot and started fiddling with the leg of her panty girdle. ‘What’s wrong wi’ t’ one you’ve got?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘So? What’s there to change?’
    ‘It’d be easier.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘Well, Kat, it’s shorter than Katherine.’
    They were both staring at me.
    Poll said slowly, as if she was humouring a mad person, ‘You want us to call you “Kat”?’
    I nodded.
    ‘And shall we get you a collar wi’ a bell on it, an’ a little dish for your milk?’ She started chuckling, and Dogman joined in. Laughter all the way. ‘Kat? By, you come out wi’ some stuff, you really do. Kat. I mean. Whale, more like. Elephant. Tell you what, we’ll call you Ellie, if you like.’
    I got up to go and pushed past them both, treading on Poll’s slipper as heavily as I could.
    ‘Ooh, bloody hell, watch where you’re going,’ she gasped.
    ‘Pussy,’ I distinctly heard Dogman mutter before I could get to the stairs.

    *

    That midnight found me basqued up and buzzing. On the other side of my bedroom wall, Poll slept the untroubled