The House On Willow Street Read Online Free PDF

she’d dropped Kitty off at school and deposited Zach at the bus stop, she came home and spent half an hour tidying the house before she left for work. She loved her children’s rooms in the morning when they were safely in school. Even Zach’s teenage den, with its lurking, smelly sports socks balled up under the bed.
    On all but the most rushed days, she felt a little Zen enter her soul when she went into the rooms of the two people she loved best.
    The added peace came from the fact that her darlings weren’t actually there, so she could safely adore them and the idea of them—without being asked for something or told she was unfair, that all the other kids had such and such,that really, if she could only lend him some pocket money, an advance . . . ?
    Kitty had been right at breakfast: she probably did have more money than Zach. He was forever lending fivers to other people or spending on silly things.
    Kitty’s bedroom was still a shrine to dolls, soft toys with huge eyes and Sylvanian creatures with complicated houses and endless teeny accessories that were forever getting lost.
    “Mum, I can’t find the cakes for the cake shop!” was a constant refrain in the house and Tess had spent ages on her hands and knees with Kitty, looking under the furniture for minuscule slices of plastic cake, with her daughter’s lovely little face anxious at the thought of Mrs. Squirrel not being able to run her cake shop.
    This morning, Tess did a bit of sorting out in the Sylvanian village, then moved on to close the half-opened drawers and tie back the curtains before tidying the dressing table. There was growing evidence of the emergence of Kitty’s tweenage years with silvery bracelets and girlish perfumes in glittery flacons clustered on the table. Moo, Kitty’s cuddly cow, loved to grayness, had a place of honor on her pink gingham heart cushion and it was Tess’s favorite job to make the bed and enthrone Moo on the cushion, ready for that night.
    It didn’t matter that on the way to school Kitty could loudly sing along in the car to questionably explicit pop songs that made Tess wince: as soon as it was time for bed, Kitty morphed back into a nine-year-old who liked to snuggle under her pink-and-yellow-striped duvet, hold Moo close and wait for her bedtime story with the clear-eyed innocence of a child.
    Once it was all tidy, Tess gave the room one last fond glance and moved on to Zach’s room. Zach’s domain was painted a lovely turquoise color, but these days, none of thewalls were visible because of posters of bands, footballers and Formula One drivers.
    The rule was that Zach had to put clean sheets on his bed once a week and run the vacuum cleaner over the carpet. Since Tess had found the Great Cup Mold Experiments under the bed, he had to rinse out any mugs on a daily basis—and he was actually very good about doing it.
    Seventeen-year-olds didn’t like their mothers tidying up their bedrooms. It was all part of the process of growing up. Like the part that said mothers had to let go. Tess knew that. Had known it from the first day Zach stopped holding her hand as they walked into the village school.
    “Ma—let go of my hand !”
    He’d been seven and a bit at the time. Tall for his age, dark shaggy hair already ruffled despite being brushed into submission minutes earlier at home.
    Tess had let go of his hand and smiled down at her dark-eyed son, even though she felt like crying. He was growing up. So fast.
    “Am I embarrassing you?” she asked with the same smile that always shone through in her voice when she spoke to her son.
    Because she adored him so much, she was determined that she would not be a clingy mother, not make him the vessel for all her hopes and dreams.
    “Yes!” he’d replied, shrugging his schoolbag higher over his shoulder as a sign of his machoness.
    Tess had watched him march into the classroom without giving her a second glance.
    Ten years on, he still hugged her. Not