The Astrologer's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

wrinkly face and ring of crazy-scientist white
hair surrounding a freckly bald spot. There’s really no point. We always leave.
    I don’t know how Mum found the place, but it’s fifteen minutes door-to-door to my
school by tram, so she’s right, it is perfect, even though she’ll never get me to
admit it and I might now never get the chance.
    I should have said something, yesterday. Like hello or good morning .
    Or goodbye .
    A squeal of pain escapes my throat, like the sound of a wild pig in fear for its
life. I have to lean against the doorframe for support, conscious my breathing sounds
ragged, as if I’m trying to outrun something.
    But it’s inside me, and I can’t.
    God, she could be anywhere—I can’t make myself think past that—while I’m marooned here, in a city I barely know.
    The weak kitchen fluorescent barely penetrates the darkness beyond our door. I take
a tentative step forward and peer out and down into the stairwell. It could be an
actual well out there. Maybe if I set foot past the threshold, beyond the thin puddle
of light, I will fall straight through the earth.
    Below, the bean sprout people are silent. The air outside my apartment is heavy with
the scent of dust and the mouldering cardboard boxes that are stacked on every landing
in the building. But I breathe it all in gratefully because it does not smell like inside , everything stinking of nerves and fruitlessness and waiting .
    Which is what Mum’s clients have been doing. She only ever has two or three on the
go at a time, but no more. I know that, because she told me once that it was exhausting—the
constant expectation. ‘If I don’t keep it down to manageable numbers, love,’ she
said, ‘I make mistakes. And precision is everything.’
    She had a waitlist that long to see her. Lately, she’d been turning people away;
I know because I heard her on the telephone being apologetic, but firm. And we’ve
had so many hang-ups I knew people were pissed. Some would just call to see if she
was answering. I’d say my name, get a second of breathing, then dial tone.
    The waitlist, the live cases, will all be in Mum’s missing journal. I described it
to the police: dark red, bound in fake leather with gold scrollwork on the front
cover and the spine. Mum couldn’t believe she’d gotten it for a dollar from the five-dollar
shop across the road that doesn’t live up to its name; everything’s so expensive.
‘Donny must have missed this one when he was repricing everything,’ I remember her
laughing as she held it up for me to see, flicking through the unlined, white pages
with the thin edge of gilt around each one.
    I think I’d mumbled something sarcastic back, like: ‘Well, doesn’t that look special .’
    But I would do just about anything right now to get hold of that book. Next to talking
to Mum? It would tell me what was going on inside her head before she…
    I cut that thought right off at the knees and go back through our apartment, turning
on all the table lamps for extra company. I paw through the kitchen cupboards first,
then Mum’s reading room. Ransack her bedroom and the hall cupboards next, before
digging through the bathroom cabinets, which are full of shed hair and half-finished
bottles of Bio-Oil, for the scarring. She never would have hidden anything in here,
where the air smells constantly of mould. But still I look.
    Then I look at everything again, everything she might have touched, even under the
couch, running my hands through the dust balls and staples and crumbs; peering inside
all the seat cushions for things that might be secreted there. As if Mum was some
kind of spy who had to hide all the information she was putting together on people,
or risk having it fall into enemy hands.
    Nothing.
    The only pieces of paper with Mum’s brittle-looking handwriting on them are in her
filing cabinet, which is filled to capacity with superseded notes, finished charts,
all past history. The police took all her old