The Playground Read Online Free PDF Page A

sorry?’ Addie was on my knee now, wriggling as I tried to put on her socks.
    â€˜Ah, pet, you’ve heard that expression, haven’t you? Didn’t you learn it at school? Omnia transeunt,’ she said it again, liking how the words sounded on her lips. ‘This too shall pass.’
    â€˜I know. I’ll be – we’ll be – fine but it’s just the practical things. I think the immersion heater’s broken for starters. I can’t get any hot water this morning.’
    â€˜You’ve probably just tripped a switch.’
    With that, she was up a ladder on the landing, peering into the fuse box. I watched her flesh-coloured tights straighten and gather around her ankles as she stretched and lowered herself.
    â€˜But you’re fine,’ she said, face a little flushed as she landed on solid ground again, problem solved.
    â€˜I mean, you’ve got your monies sorted?’ she asked, on our way back to the kitchen.
    â€˜Yes and no.’
    â€˜How much do you need?’ she asked, exhaling as she sat back down, her voice a little weary.
    â€˜Oh, Mum, I absolutely hate this.’
    â€˜I know you do. Go on, how much?’ She flattened the ancient, curled-up cheque book and held her pen poised above the amount field, no longer bothering to fill in the little stub opposite as she used to do so meticulously, before my endless requests for help. Her eyes went vacant, dazed-like as she filled it in and signed her name.
    â€˜Will that do you?’ she asked, handing it to me. I thanked her, hugged her and slipped the cheque into the back pocket of my jeans.
    Difficult stuff out of the way, we both scurried in the other direction.
    â€˜Are you ready to feed those swans?’ Mum said, smiling again, turning to face her granddaughter.
    â€˜No. I want to stay with Mama.’
    â€˜No meaning yes?’ I said, sweeping her up round the belly and putting her, protesting, into her coat, hat, buggy.
    â€˜Listen, thanks a million, Mum. You look lovely, by the way. That colour really suits you.’ I was doing what she did, that subtle but frantic scrabbling back when I’d offended or been short with her or when I just felt guilty.
    â€˜Good colour, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Lovely. Where’s it from?’
    â€˜It’s an odd label, something like “prison” or “empathy” or …’ She stretched her arm over her shoulder and tried to fish for the tag. She turned her back to me, gathered her hair, held it in her hands and stood still. I separated some strands caught up in her necklace and felt for the label, fighting sadness as I imagined her standing just like this while my father, or some boyfriend before, closed the clasp on a piece of jewellery or fastened a zip on an evening dress. Now she had to struggle with the wretched, fiddly things herself. I turned the label in my fingers: ‘Therapy,’ I said, knowing I could never say that I didn’t intend buying one, that I was just admiring it to be nice to make up for not being nice moments earlier and that I was surely too young to be wearing the same clothes as my mother. But this had happened several times lately – older women giving me fashion tips. Somehow I had caught up with her and her friends. For so much of my life they had been old while we were young but we’d begun to seek each other out and now when both generations were together it wasn’t the awkward or bored imbalance it used to be. I would find myself listening, nodding, interested and impatient to get my point across.
    My mother put her hand round my neck, drew me close to her, kissed me on the forehead.
    I watched them leave from the sitting room window: my child cocooned in her granny’s care; Mum puffing her cheeks out, singingoff-key, eyes to the ground, trusting neither the uneven pavement nor her own increasingly unreliable feet.
    I opened the window and climbed out