The Piper's Son Read Online Free PDF

Then Lucia brought Sam along because they worked together at a law firm and were united by what they called death by conveying. Dominic and Sam hit it off in an instant and Georgie ran after Sam for a year before he finally figured out how he felt. They spent the next seven years together until Georgie called a break and then things fell well and truly apart and everyone got caught up in the ricochet.
    “Four parties in one weekend”— Lucia’s counting with her fingers —“McDonald’s, bowling, Jamberoo, and a disco party.” Lucia’s sister Bernadette joins them, squeezing between Georgie and Jonesy. Jonesy’s the baby of the group, who’s taught with Abe for a couple of years.
    “So we said to Daniel, ‘Honey, no clowns, no jumping castles, nothing. Just good-old-fashioned pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and a piñata, and for the sake of equality, we’ll invite the whole class.’ Very simple,” Abe explains. Abe and Lucia are always a tag team in the way they tell a story.
    “But then all these parents, who haven’t been to a backyard party since they were six years old themselves, decided to turn up with the whole family. So we had ninety people at my son’s birthday and no one wanted to go home. We ended up having to feed them.”
    “It was like the loaves and fishes,” Abe said.
    “No, the wedding feast at Cana, because we had to give them booze.”
    Abe and Lucia’s daughter is going to communion classes and they can quote every parable in the Bible these days.
    “And Lucia forced me to be in charge of the piñata line,” Jonesy complains.
    “He handed out detentions,” Lucia says.
    Georgie laughs. “Jonesy, you’re a dick.”
    “Next time,
you
do it, Georgie.
Nothing
scares me more than a bunch of kids beating up a goat full of lollies.”
    “It’s about downgrading,” Abe explains to whoever is listening. “I’ve told the kids there’ll be no Christmas presents this year. We’re donating to an orphanage in Sierra Leone and buying a goat from Oxfam.”
    “Lovely,” Georgie says as Abe leaves and joins Sam outside.
    When he’s out of listening distance, Georgie and Bernadette send Lucia a look of disbelief.
    “Let him think he’s saving the world with that goat,” Lucia says.
    Jonesy looks at everyone’s empty glasses and starts working out the round. “You want a beer, Georgie?” he asks.
    “No,” Lucia answers for her. “She’ll have mineral water.”
    A look passes among them all.
    Jonesy taps at the window to find out if Sam and Abe want another beer, and Georgie continues to stare at Lucia. With none of the men around, everything is just about to get more complicated.
    “You can’t have pâté either,” Lucia tells her as Georgie digs her water cracker into the mini feast before them.
    “And why is that?”
    Lucia doesn’t respond.
    Just ask me. Just say the words.
    “Because it doesn’t taste nice,” Lucia says, taking the biscuit out of her hand as if Georgie is her six-year-old son whose mouth she’s about to clear of whatever object he’s just put in there.
    Georgie looks through the glass doors and her eyes meet Sam’s as she tries to ignore the scrutiny she’s receiving from Lucia. It’s why she loves hiding in her house. Because she doesn’t get to see that look in people’s eyes.
    She stands just as Jonesy returns with the drinks.
    “I’m going,” she manages to say.
    Jonesy looks from one to the other. “Ah, come on, G. Sit down. You just got here.”
    She shakes her head and she wants to cry because these days it’s too hard not to.
    Her eyes meet Sam’s through the glass door again and she sees him sigh, the way his body slumps as he stubs out a cigarette, and next minute he’s poking his head through the doorway. All these years and he hasn’t forgotten the SOS plea in her eye.
    “I’ve got to pick up the boy,” he says.
    And there they are. Her options. Sitting among friends who don’t know what to say to her anymore. Or picking up