The Changeover Read Online Free PDF

way Kate would worry and start wondering if she shouldn't change the display, or run a little advertisement in the local paper.
    The shop was between a window full of handbags and suitcases for people who wanted to travel elegantly and a shop full of dresses 'for the fuller figure' which showed large, tactful dresses all in wine-red and grey this week. Laura and Jacko ignored them and burst into the bookshop, Jacko already holding his hand out and shouting anxiously to Kate. There was only one customer, a tall man who made up for being a little bald in front by wearing his hair rather long at the back. He was reading a book, but gloomily, and not at all as if he intended to buy it.
    "Look, Mum!" Laura cried imperiously, holding Jacko's hand out to her mother as if it were a vital clue in a mystery. "The little shop next to the Video Parlour has opened for business again. There's a really horrible man in it and he frightened Jacko." As she spoke she knew her words were reducing the experience to a childish complaint, not revealing its true quality.
    "This hand wants to be washed," Jacko begged. "It doesn't like it." Jacko and Laura talked together, their words winding in and out of each other in a ragged part-song of explanation and complaint.
    "Dear me!" said Kate in a nervous, but fairly motherly, voice. "That is clever, isn't it? What will they come up with next? However, I can see why it scares you, Jacko. Sweetie, I can't do anything about it now, but I'll get on to it with the scrubbing brush a little bit later— or rather Lolly will— and we'll soon have you pink and plain again."
    At work Kate was always nervous about being motherly, as if it had suddenly become a little illegal to be openly fond of her children. Even now, when there was only one customer, probably not wanting to buy, Kate knew she belonged to the shop until 8.30 pm and was not free to wash evil stamps off Jacko's hand.
    "Have you got bus money?" she asked.
    "Could we have just one game of Space Invaders?" Laura asked back, answering Kate's question by rattling the bus money in her pocket. She had once got into trouble for spending the bus money on Space Invaders and then walking home. "It might cheer Jacko up."
    "You know I don't like you going in there," Kate said, "and certainly not with Jacko. For one thing it always looks foggy with cigarette smoke, probably worse. No — you go home, and I'll follow as soon as I can. How was Mrs Fangboner tonight?"
    "Fanging around!" Laura said. "Nice to Jacko and threatening me with spots from fish and chips."
    "She's good-hearted really," Kate said, looking around in case some friend of Mrs Fangboner had come into the shop.
    "Why doesn't she show it more, then?" Laura asked. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. Doesn't she realize that? She should embroider 'Be good-hearted!' on her tea towels, and then take the advanced course in it, and like me, too."
    "Don't let's push our luck!" Kate said, grinning, and Laura grinned back, comforted by seeing that Kate was really there, even if she was being more of a bookshop manager than a mother at that moment.
    "All right! We're off and away!" she said. "Don't forget the fish and chips."
    "When have I ever forgotten the fish and chips?" Kate replied. "It's worth a few spots not to have any dishes to wash."
    The fish and chips were always bought at Soper's fish shop, and sometimes they were lovely and sometimes disappointing, but the uncertainty of which it was going to be was almost adventurous, and the possible loveliness something to be looked forward to. As they waited for the bus Laura could smell the fish and chips cooking and patted Jacko, who was leaning against her leg like a tired dog. Laura was glad it was summer and that they would be getting out of the bus in broad daylight, for though the bus stopped almost exactly behind the telephone box that stood outside their gate, the few moments that separated them from their door often felt dangerous, and tonight such