The Changeover Read Online Free PDF Page B

danger might also be depressing.
    "I couldn't do anything about it," she said to Jacko, who was peering at the stamp on his hand again, rubbing it anxiously. She wanted people to think she was talking to him, but actually it was with herself that she was holding a discussion.
    "I did have the warning," she admitted aloud, "but it did me no good. I just stood there and let it happen. I knew it was set down to happen as soon as I went in at the school gate this morning."
    Laura usually enjoyed the bus ride up Kingsford Drive. It was slower and easier than the anxious morning rush. Often she felt a little of herself running out into houses and telegraph poles along the way, as if she were a blob of bright paint put down on wet paper, spreading out and dyeing the world with faint traces of her own colour, even as she took colour back from the world. This is what it feels like to be this shape, this size! Greenness feels like this! Every telegraph pole stood centred on a single leg gathering wires up, looping them over little stunted arms, and Laura felt her way into being a telegraph pole, or a roof rising to a ridge and butting against itself. The Baptist church squared its concrete shoulders, its doorway touching its own toes, carrying a great weight of square, white blocks on its bent back.
    "Don't rub it! You'll make it sore," she said to Jacko. "Soap and water will get it off," but he went on pushing at the back of his hand as if he would like to rub the very flesh from the bones. "Pretend it's a mosquito bite and leave it alone."
    The dreadful stamp seemed deeper than ever as if it were slowly sinking down into him, visible, but subsiding beyond recall — like a coin dropped into deep water, reflecting light while vanishing for ever. Jacko sighed deeply and rolled his head against Laura's shoulder, and she felt a restless heat creep through her, almost like a little blush of horror, for she thought she detected the faintest touch of stale peppermint, as if Carmody Braque's breath was somehow coming out through Jacko.
    "There's Brown," she said with relief, pointing as much to distract herself as Jacko. Brown was a thoughtful dog, a familiar, rust-coloured acquaintance, wandering along, frowning and disappointed by the contents of the summer gutter — icecream wrappers and soft-drink cans. Jacko looked at Brown for a moment and then he turned his head away.
    "He wasn't nice," he said. "That man wasn't nice, was he, Lolly?"
    "Don't think about him!" Laura said, though she herself could not stop thinking about Carmody Braque.
    They arrived home reasonably cheerful. Laura scrambled an egg for Jacko and went to extra trouble, dividing his orange into segments for him and cutting his sandwich into four little triangles like those sold in the teashop three places away from Kate's work.
    After the scrambled egg and sandwich Jacko went willingly to bed — quite to Laura's surprise for it was often difficult to persuade him to go. Usually he wanted to stay awake until Kate came home and played a lot of energetic games, running and hiding under the bed and having to be pulled out by one leg, his pajamas wrinkling and going grey with the sort of dust that likes a good bed to hide under. Space under beds was always dusty, filling itself greedily with coffee mugs, plates, and books. But tonight Jacko went quietly to bed and listened to his tiger book and a story read from one of the new library books, watching Laura trustfully, his stamped hand hidden under the pillow. Laura had, of course, tried to wash it clean again but the stamp was part of him now, more than a tattoo— a sort of parasite picture tunnelling its way deeper and deeper, feeding itself as it went.
    "Ugh! What a thought!" Laura said. "Grow up! Be mature!"
    At half-past eight she heard footsteps on the path.
    That was quick, she thought with relief and surprise, for Kate never closed the shop five minutes early even when the Mall was quite empty in case Mr Bradley