The Grasshopper's Child Read Online Free PDF

impatiently. ‘Do what you like. You can’t make things worse. And if you want to be a goody-goody, you may go to those meetings, whatever the State calls them. Now GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE.’
    â€˜Thanks. I’ll serve dinner at seven. Er, by the way, if we can’t get new smoke alarms, where can I find batteries for the old ones? They’ve all had the batteries taken out and—’
    â€˜GET OUT!’ screamed Old Wreck. ‘GET OUT, GET OUT! GET OUT!’
    The first book smacked Heidi painfully on the side of the head. Luckily she’d turned out the lamp. She managed to dodge the shower that followed, but Old Wreck’s mad shrieks chased her all the way down to the kitchen.
    At seven o’ clock nothing had changed. Old Wreck sat at one end of the table, Stubbly Chin at the other, both of them totally silent while the slave served them their dinner.

4: Nightmare

    On Saturday Heidi remembered she’d seen carpet tacks in the Utility Room. She borrowed a handful to scatter, point up, on the attic stairs: just as a warning. Even an Indentured Teen’s surely got some rights. If she collected them again every morning, nobody could say she was causing trouble. She found the oven and cleaned it: scrubbed the kitchen floor and washed the rugs. On Sunday she scrubbed the entire hall floor, a task that nearly broke her back — and was screamed at by Old Wreck for invading the Bedroom Floor, even though she’d only been trying to clean the matted carpet in the passage. She hadn’t touched any of the closed doors.
    She was NEVER, EVER to enter the private areas of the house. She must collect washing from the basket on the landing, and return clothes, CLEAN and IRONED, to the same place.
    In the afternoons she ran in the Gardens, and investigated the small greenhouse. She found a store of gardening tools, not too rusted; and assorted old wellies. The Unmissable Blue Walk tempted like a dream, but she left it alone.
    Old Wreck marched into in the kitchen at random intervals, ranting and pulling wild faces because Heidi had used the wrong soup bowls. Or Roger’s breakfast boiled egg had been hard, which her brother could not tolerate!
    Stubbly Chin, now named as Roger, never appeared except at meals.
    She worked like a dog, thinking all the time about the Police Inspector; the words she’d say to him forming and reforming in her head: like a poem she was making up. She’d be at the Learning Centre by two, if she raced her chores. Plenty of time. She only had to choose the exactly right words.
    She could make him believe that Mum was innocent.
    So the days were all right, as long as she kept busy. The nights were terrible. She’d taped cardboard over the hole in her window, but she couldn’t shut out the moonlight, and she couldn’t stop herself listening for flabby, padding footsteps. She lay there rigid, the house a tower of threatening darkness under her, the same old, same old loop running round her brain. Dad in a pool of blood. Mum clutching the knife. The terrible thing Heidi had done.
And then, when she was off guard; when at last she began to doze, the nightmare would lie down beside her. She felt its warmth, she smelt its stink, but she didn’t dare to light her candle, didn’t dare to stir. In the middle of the night, unprotected by her chores, she was afraid it might really be her mother . That Mum’s tormented living ghost had wandered out of her body, and come to Heidi’s bed; and this was the most horrible fear of all.
    Insomnia was driving Heidi crazy.
    On Monday night she was so tired that as soon as she lay down she fell into a horrible pit of confusion, dreaming but still awake. Without leaving her bed, aware of the cold dark room around her, she was trying to get to Dad, who lay bleeding behind the Steel Door in the basement. Her mum, small and slimy as a slug and crying like a baby, was crawling around the Garden