The Testament of Jessie Lamb Read Online Free PDF

services.’
    â€˜Wouldn’t helping with children make more sense?’
    â€˜How can I go and help look after someone else’s children?’
    â€˜You looked after me!’ I butted in. ‘You were brill.’
    She gave me a watery smile. ‘That was then, sweetheart.’ She turned back to Mum. ‘How can I do that, when the woman who had them is dead? And all I can do is envy her? They shouldn’t let me near children.’
    It was Mum’s turn to get up and go to Mand. She knelt by her chair. ‘Come on, love,’ she said. ‘Shush now.’ She tore a new piece off the kitchen roll. ‘Have you got any hidden fags?’
    Mandy laughed in the middle of her crying and said, ‘Bedside cabinet, top drawer.’
    Mum nodded at me to get them. I went into Mandy’s bedroom, that used to be hers and Clive’s. The curtains were drawn and it smelt fusty. I opened the window to let in the evening air. I could hear wood pigeons burbling in the tree behind her house, and the air had that first spring smell of earth and leafiness. I thought about how kind Mandy used to be with me, when I was little. She used to plait my hair in a special way; and she and Mum used to make my dancing costumes together and really laugh about them, they were giddy like Sal and me. I wished it could have stayed like that. I wished we could still be happy together.
    I turned back to the bedroom. On the purple wall opposite the window Mandy’d done a mural of two stone windows, copied from a room in the Alhambra in Spain. She and Clive had visited it together. The painted windows were latticed, criss-crossed black like lace with little dabs of pale yellow showing in the gaps, like sunlight. I used to think it was beautiful but when I looked at it today it looked like a prison. I opened the jumbled drawer by her bed. The cigarettes were right on top.
    As I came out of the room I heard the murmur of their voices. They’d shut the door, they were obviously trying not to be heard. I thought they must be talking about me so I crept to the door and listened.
    â€˜I think you’re mad,’ Mand was saying.
    â€˜Joe doesn’t care if I’m there or not.’
    â€˜Yes he does,’ said Mand. ‘You know he does.’
    â€˜He talks to Jessie more than he talks to me.’
    â€˜So you think it’s alright–’
    â€˜There aren’t exactly any angels in the case, are there?’
    â€˜Look, if you were madly in love–’
    â€˜It’s not about being madly in love, it’s about being visible. He looks at me–’
    â€˜Sssh,’ said Mand, so I pushed the door open. They each took a fag and lit up. I cleared the table, wondering about Mum and some other man. Then I realized she had distracted Mandy, and I thought that must be why she’d said it. I felt sadness like a stone in my tummy for Mandy, and for how her flat which used to be my favourite place in the world had turned into a smelly prison.
    Mum drove home slowly, she’d had way too much to drink. I asked her what had happened to Mandy’s theatre group.
    â€˜They haven’t got any bookings,’ Mum said. ‘It would be good if she had a project to work on, but no-one’s thinking about children’s plays.’
    â€˜What about the other things she does?’ Mum and Dad used to call them her fads. She joined a circus skills group, and an all-women choir. Before that she did guitar lessons and Italian classes. She’d done half an Indian cookery course. After a few weeks she always got interested in something new. She wasn’t that different to Dad, really–back then he was always going off on some new branch of knowledge, reading up on ancient civilisations or learning Esperanto. But Mum took him more seriously. She thought what my Father of Wisdom learned was proper, and Mandy’s just a craze.
    â€˜She’s dropped all her