The Astrologer's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

told me I’ve
always done it, since the fire. The rocking helped me get to sleep in the beginning,
and I still do it after I climb into bed each night, or else the sleep won’t come.
Just another thing that isn’t common knowledge about me. It’s what I do when I’m
at home, and I can let it all hang out, and there’s no one to judge, because she
never did. She accepted me and loved me and called me: the most precious thing in
the whole world . Another sob escapes me then, harsh and monstrous.
    I’m still crying noisily, steadily, when a deep voice, male, calls through the bathroom
door, ‘Hello? Joanne?’
    It’s like magic, the man’s voice. Instantly the tears, the rocking, the noise winding
out of me, it all stops.
    I am a single pent-up breath.
    The guy tries the bathroom doorknob but I shot the bolt out of reflex, and the steam-warped
door rocks in its frame, but doesn’t budge. I almost fall face-first off the top
of the toilet, scrambling for the taps above the sink. I turn them both on, full
force, to disguise the sound of my desperate breathing. But he is undeterred by the
loud sound of running water. Rattle , rattle goes the door.
    ‘It’s Hugh,’ the voice calls out—male, posh, drunk , because it comes out:
    Ish Hee-yoooooo .
    ‘You said I was supposed to come back and see you.’
    Statement, not question; all the words slurring together. It takes me a beat extra
than it should to work out what he’s saying. Was she expecting him today?
    Trapped like an animal, I half-turn from the basin towards the ancient washing machine
in the corner, as if I might somehow take shelter inside it, and hear someone else
outside laugh, ‘Maybe she’s in the shower?’
    The way my skin is prickling now actually hurts .
    A third voice butts in. ‘Bet you’d like to see that, Charlie, you dog.’
    Charlie, the dog, laughs and says, ‘We can wait. We can wait all night, right Hughey?
Because you’re worth it. Don’t you wanna know how much ?’
    My eyes fly to their own bulging reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror, scar
flaming in the water-stained glass.
    Men. Three. In my house.
    Hugh, Charlie and a third one, whose confident sneer had made my skin crawl. What
if they try to force their way in?
    I hug myself, rocking, as the water runs and runs noisily down the plughole. For
the second time today, I am outnumbered by strangers in my own home. It’s as if time
and sound are magnified, made elastic, by my fear.
    The doorknob rattles again and I almost tip over into the mirror, in horror. Leave
me alone. My throat works at the words, but they do not come.
    ‘Now you bastards have got me here,’ the one called Hugh snarls imperiously, ‘what’s
supposed to happen next ? Jo-aaa-anne?’ he adds sharply, singsong. ‘Is everything
o-kaaaay?’
    Everything is not okay, it is not okay , but I pitch my voice higher than usual, like
I’m doing a comedy version of my mother’s voice, and quaver, ‘Now’s not a good time,
young man. Come back another day.’
    Then I turn the water off, listening hard, fingers tangled in the spokes of the taps,
which feel like the only things keeping me up.
    ‘She can’t be decent,’ sniggers the nameless one. ‘Maybe the hot, naked, psychic
lady needs a hand?’ He doesn’t bother lowering his voice.
    The male equivalent of giggles erupts outside— hor hor hor —and I feel my face flush
right up to the hairline.
    The door jumps as a fist is rammed into it. ‘I told you this was a waste of time,
Rosso. She hasn’t even done it. I let her take my money, Jesus. Get my birth chart
done to find out how my life’s going to “turn out”! It’s going to be a sterling life,
and I don’t need a bullshit psychic to tell me that. Only morons believe in this
stuff.’
    Hugh, Charlie, Rosso.
    Mum took this guy’s money ?
    He sounds like a born-to-rule arsehole. Mum usually gives shitheads like this a miss.
She has a meter. She can just tell. How did she let this one