The Lives She Left Behind Read Online Free PDF

‘Ignore her. He’s only gone and delivered you into the hands of the most dangerous girl in the whole school. I’ll
look after you. I’m the sensible one. I’m Ali.’
    And that was how the three of them turned into a trio, how Jo’s life became more bearable and how she let more normal emotional comforts in. Lizzy – who turned out
to be Lucy – and Ali had been inseparable for years. They had met on their first day at primary school when the teacher paired them up for a spelling exercise. Ali was immediately fascinated
by Lucy’s insouciance, by her declared lack of interest in anything she termed boring and also by her clothes, which seemed to come from a richer and softer planet than the one Ali inhabited.
Lucy was secretly impressed by the fact that Ali knew so much stuff.
    It took three weeks before Fleur found a private psychiatric clinic for Jo, in a large country house half an hour from Exeter, and that was a valuable three weeks because it cemented Jo’s
friendship with Ali and Lucy before more tablets arrived to take the edge off her. The doctor had a name full of harsh sounds and a voice to match so that Jo could often not understand the
questions he asked her. He listened to Fleur more than he did to Jo, nodding as Fleur described events that Jo had trouble recognising. He accepted Fleur’s account of Jo’s imaginary
voices and suggested a new brand of antipsychotic. ‘It is mild,’ he said, ‘only mild. You will hardly notice but very good, I think.’
    Jo noticed and Ali noticed and Lucy noticed. After school, Jo would usually go back to one or the other of their houses. Lucy’s house was modern and airy and full of colour. Lucy’s
parents, who were both something to do with media consultancy, treated their daughter as if she was an amusing acquaintance of their own age and gave her an allowance which meant Lucy’s room
was always full of shopping bags and new clothes, a rainbow array of disposable self-indulgence. Ali’s home, indeed her whole life, was the antithesis of that. Her family lived in a Victorian
villa with narrow windows – an old and serious place where the ceilings were high, the bulbs were dim and the walls were grey. There was nothing soft about it. The rooms were full of trays
and boxes of bones and broken pottery and occasionally, when her mother came back from her latest excavation, Ali would find fresh boxes had overflowed into her bedroom. Her mother, who was the
prototype of Ali’s short and powerful build, told her they were interesting and she believed her. While Christine Massey was away digging, Ali and her father would potter round the house in a
companionable and undemanding alliance. He became much more fun. When Christine returned in a welter of rucksacks, the communication switched to Colchester colour-coated beakers, Samian bowls and
the rim shapes of black burnished ware. Ali longed for the time when she would know enough to say something about them that her mother would want to listen to.
    The whole house smelt of old earth and slow decay and Jo woke from her first sleepover on a mattress on Ali’s floor to find herself staring into the eye sockets of a skull with a sword-cut
across the top. She didn’t mind that at all. She stared quietly at the skull until Ali woke up, wondering what sort of soft, flexible flesh had once turned it into a face, what sort of brain
had steered it along and who had mourned for it.
    That was before the new tablets came. Afterwards, few thoughts like that could penetrate the chemical barrier. ‘You’re a lot more normal these days,’ Fleur said.
‘That’s a relief, I can tell you. No more talking to the fairies.’
    ‘Why do you have to take them?’ Lucy asked indignantly, sprawled across her bed. ‘They’re bad for you. You’re much quieter. My mother says you should call
ChildLine.’
    ‘It’s not her fault,’ said Ali, who was sorting her homework into folders. ‘You know what Fleur’s