Swallowing Grandma Read Online Free PDF

sleep of one who has no conscience. We’d had another row after tea because it was nearly a month since I’d gone to see Auntie Cissie, and because I wanted to read a book instead of listen to how ill the butcher’s daughter’s neighbour had been after eating squid on holiday. Before she’d gone up I’d mentioned casually about some new outfits, maybe, with the birthday money. She paused at the bottom of the stairs and checked me up and down while I was standing under the hall light.
    ‘You are a bit scruffy at the minute, it’s true.’ She peered forwards, frowning. ‘Your jumper’s hanging funny; that’s you pulling at the cuffs. Still, you’ve had your wear out of it.’ She nodded. ‘I’ll have word with Dickie. He says there’s some Marks and Spencer’s seconds coming on Munawar Noor’s stall next week. Munawar told him he could have first pick.’
    ‘What like?’
    ‘I don’t know. Knitwear, I should think. That’s what he mainly sells, in’t it?’ She turned away and started to pull herself up the steps. Behind her back, I stuck my tongue out as if I was being sick. ‘He’d some nice embroidered cardies last time, do you remember? But they’d none in your size. I’ll ask Dickie to watch out for them coming again.’
    ‘Could I not have something a bit more, a bit more, young? Like, I don’t know – ’ as if the idea had just that second occurred – ‘a trouser suit?’
    ‘Trouser suit?’ She paused in her tracks and half-turned, clutching the banister with a freckled hand. ‘What would you want a trouser suit for? You look like the side of a house as it is. Backside like yours, you’re best off in skirts. Trouser suit? You’ll be wanting jeans next. And a sight you’d look in those an’ all. There’s more to life than fitting in with the crowd.’
    I should bloody well hope so, I thought. ‘Palazzo pants are quite flattering if you’re curvy.’
    ‘Palazzo pants? Are they them long trousers where you walk on the hems and get them all dirty? You’re not having any of them, they’ll be in holes in no time, I haven’t the money to—’
    ‘No, listen, they’re sort of loose—’
    ‘Oh, I know, them ones like they wear in the army with about fifty little pockets in all your nooks and crannies—’
    ‘No, they’re wide-legged trousers—’
    ‘Yes, well they’d have to be wide-legged for you to fit in ’em—’
    Bitch! Bitch! I wanted to scream at her, but the air had gone out of my lungs like it does in a nightmare and left me with a helium whimper.
    ‘You never treat me— Oh, forget it,’ I squeaked, and flounced off to the kitchen.
    ‘You’ve got to be realistic, I’m only saying,’ Poll called after me. ‘You can’t get away with such as these slim ’uns. You don’t want to make a fool of yourself. Have you forgotten that time you walked around in a strappy top? And you weren’t as big then as you are now. You cried your eyes out, after. I could have told you.’
    Pause.
    Die, you old witch. Do it now. Lose your footing and crack your skull against the skirting board. Lie there pleading for help. In agony.
    Creak creak up the stairs.
    I stood in the moonlight, burning. It helps, times like this, to press my fingers into my scalp, very hard. One day I might push too hard and my fingers’ll go splot into my brain.
    Far-off flush of the toilet. Hiss of the pipes. I conjured Dad up for an out-loud moan; had him sitting at the kitchen table, looking sympathetic.
    ‘It wasn’t a proper top, that was why the other kids laughed.’ He nodded at me encouragingly, like he does in these interviews. ‘It was a thermal vest that Poll made me wear under my jumper, even though it was July. She said, “You’ll be outside a lot, seeing the animals. Stop complaining. We never had any school trips when I was your age.” ’
    I imagined Dad smiling. He’d have known what she was like.
    ‘On the coach no one would sit next to me, so I got a book out and pretended