The Scattering Read Online Free PDF

come of them.
    His thoughts went back to Crowe Street. He remembered he’d been staring into the smoky, stinking streets for ages, stunned, unable to find his legs, or, after the mesmerising motions of the barrel, a modicum of voice. Understanding had come slow and hard: she had been waiting in Kay’s Tavern, his red-haired wife, and they had been due to meet there at four. He remembered hoping she was as late as she usually was for him, or that she’d got caught up in O’Neils, Christmas shopping; he remembered he’d had a bad feeling. He recalled the wintry gust battering the red barrel down Market Street. It was then he’d looked up to see Jaxy and Joe walk slowly towards him, their peaked yellow hats held low.
    The bus pulled in with a jolt. He watched his daughter stamp out her cigarette then press down the creases in her coat. She lugged up the bar of her trolley, wheeled it into the queue. As the long line of late and frustrated voyagers mounted the bus, he watched her quickly slip from the queue, pull a pen and scrap of paper from her bag, look towards the white bungalow and jot down the details from the FOR SALE sign. She mounted the bus and jostled into a window seat at the front. He watched her turn and peer out of the window towards him. He could see her nervous face light up as she caught sight of him behind the flame. She waved and kissed the window with her gloved hand as the bus drove off. He waved back and watched till the diesel trail cleared. He felt the breach that had been between them close a little. After pulling the curtains, he put on the lights and blew out the candle. Vanilla filled the room as he went towards the kitchen to make breadcrumbs.

Hellebores

    â€˜Did you say girls , Bobby Jean?’ Jessica asked, wondering exactly what kind of girls her friend was referring to. ‘I’d love to take them. I would. But this is no place for… BJ, do you know what time it is?’ Jessica held the phone away as Bobby Jean pleaded and hollered on about it being an emergency. ‘I can’t. It’s Jules. First he washed up from God knows where, and now he’s gone off again. I’ve just about got my hands full with him and the plants.’
    But Bobby Jean worked on Jessica carefully, knowing Jessica wouldn’t be able to resist when she told her the girls’ parents had floated off somewhere down the swollen Mississippi; that when the levees had been breached and the bridges destroyed they had never been seen again, and that the two girls had been shunted from Pineville to Baton Rouge to Atlanta. Bobby Jean knew her wards’ story would chime with something deep inside Jessica. Because it had themes that were familiar to her: losing the people we love and having to carry on all alone without them. Bobby Jean knew pretty much everything there was to know about Jessica May Lawson.
    The day the girls were due to arrive Jessica had a clear-out of her house, which was really the living quarters above, and an extension of, her store. She cleaned the spare bedroom upstairs, and had Guy, a landscape designer with no physical strength whatsoever, help her bring into it a double bed and coat rail. She put fresh sheets on the bed, brought in a bedside table from her own room, placed on it a vase of freshly cut irises. Then she went into Tina’s room, stood at the threshold and looked around at the dustsheets covering the furniture. She knew that the two girls could just as easily have had this room, or even a room each, except that it wouldn’t have been easy for her. She closed the door and noted how expectant the house seemed, as if it awaited the arrival of the two young girls, hungrily.
    The next day, Olivia and Ashleigh T. Williams arrived at Lawson’s Nurseries with Bobby Jean over two hours late. Unpacked and seated at the table, the girls sat quietly and had hot chocolate and lemon cake (which Jessica had made especially). When they were