The Flavours of Love Read Online Free PDF

gather all my strength together. I exhale to release the anger and tension. ‘Look,’ I sound normal again, ‘let’s go to bed and talk again tomorrow. Hopefully we’ll both have clearer heads and maybe you’ll be able to tell me more. OK?’
    Shrug. Then: nod.
    I stand first. Both of us have left little mounds of food on our plates, me more than her but I think for a moment to tell her to finish it, to remind her she’s going to need her strength in the coming weeks and months whatever she decides. I can’t do that, though. It’s wrong on every level, and it’ll become something else for us to fall out over.
    Before she can escape, I move around the table to her and swamp her in a hug. I may want to scream at her right now, but I love her and I want her to know that. She’s my world. She and Zane are my world, especially after what happened to Joel, especially after the secret I was forced to keep and the choice I had to make. I want Phoebe to know that I did what I had to do, it wasn’t easy, but I did it for her because I love her so much.
    In my hold, she freezes. She’s unable or unwilling to accept anythinglike that from me. I hug her and Zane all the time, and while he hugs me back or rolls his eyes until it’s over, this is almost always Phoebe’s reaction nowadays: a rigid body in my arms as another reminder that no matter how hard I try to pretend, our family is shattered and my attempts to put us back together aren’t working.
    ‘I love you, baby,’ I whisper, as I used to do every day when she was a newborn, a toddler, a child. ‘ I love you, baby ’, I used to whisper because she had saved me. In ways I didn’t even admit to Joel, she’d helped me to put my life back on track and overcome some of my greatest fears. And then she turned twelve and a half and those days ended; cut short by the guillotine of losing Joel.
    I’m treated to another shrug from Phoebe, this time to get me away from her. She doesn’t need me, she’s telling me. And she certainly doesn’t need my declarations of love.
    I hold out my hand as she is about to turn for the door. ‘I need your mobile.’
    ‘What?’ she asks, incredulous.
    ‘You need to sleep, you can’t do that if you’re texting or on the net all night. Phone.’
    ‘No!’
    ‘ Phone ,’ I insist.
    She bunches the two plump lines of her lips together over her gritted teeth, her eyes narrow to slits of naked disgust. I stare back at her, silently reminding her of the rules: after what she did last time, she can only have a phone if she gives it to me whenever I ask, and as long as I know the password so I can check it whenever I want.
    Her breath comes in shallow, outraged bursts as she reaches into her rucksack that she’s decorated with blue, purple and red jewelled butterflies like the ones she used to sew the curtain, and throws the retrieved shiny silver and black gadget onto the table. Before I can pick it up, she snatches it up again, fiddles with the back until it is open, then slips out the rectangular battery and pockets it. She doesn’t want me to know the secrets that live in her phone.
    That isn’t part of the deal, but I’m not sure I have the energy tofight about it right now. I certainly don’t think the sickness is going to be held back much longer. I am breathing through my nose, trying to stem the flow but even that’s ceasing to be effective.
    Without bothering to reassemble her little box of secrets, she throws it onto the table and storms out of the room.
    ‘Just so you know,’ I call, causing her to pause on the fifth step to listen to what I am saying, ‘I’m taking the router up to bed with me, too.’
    After she realises that I am cutting her off for the night, that she won’t be able to email or get onto social media on her iPod or the computer in her room, every stamp upstairs is increased to earthquake level. The slam of her bedroom door is so hard I swear the very foundations of the house shake.
    I don’t