The Truth About Melody Browne Read Online Free PDF Page A

soft cork. After Christmas Melody’s mum had her hair cut into a sort of square shape with a fringe. It had been long and tangly before, almost down to her bottom, and Melody wasn’t sure if she liked it or not, particularly now that her mum’s face was a different shape. But her mum said that when the baby came the last thing she’d want to be bothered with was all that hair.
    And then, one night, when Melody’s mum was the biggest thing that she’d ever seen, so big that she couldn’t even go to work any more and could barely get off the sofa, she started to make a lot of noise and locked herself in the bathroom and her dad told her that the baby was coming. A lady called Marceline came a little while later and sat in the bathroom with her mum and for a while everyone was really excited and Melody was allowed to stay up even though it was, as her dad kept telling her, the middle of the night. Eventually Melody fell asleep on the sofa and someone put her blanket over her and when she woke up again it was the morning and her mum was still having the baby. Nobody said anything about going to nursery or eating cereal or getting dressed, so Melody just sat at her little wooden table in the corner of the living room and did colouring-in with her big box of crayons.
    A few minutes later, her aunt Maggie arrived with Claire and Nicola, her big cousins. Maggie was her mum’s sister and they looked exactly the same usually, but not any more because of her mum’s new haircut and new shape. They stayed until the ambulance came and then they took Melody back to their house in Fulham. Melody waved at her mum as they wheeled her into the ambulance and her mum waved back and looked a bit like she might start crying.
    ‘Be good for your auntie,’ she said, ‘and I’ll see you later, when you’re a sister!’
    Melody stayed at Aunt Maggie’s for two whole days and two whole nights. Nobody really explained why she wasn’t at home, sitting on her mum’s bed, staring at the new baby and wondering what she thought about it.
    On her third morning she awoke to find Maggie’s cat, Boots, rubbing her face with his fishy whiskers. He then lay down on her chest which she found vaguely alarming.
    ‘Off, Boots,’ she said in a loud whisper, not wanting to wake her cousin. ‘Off, Boots.’
    In the distance, she could hear the phone ringing. She pushed the cat off her chest and sat up. She could hear Maggie’s voice, muted, sleepy, through the wall of Nicola’s bedroom. There was a painting of a Spanish girl on the wall. She had black hair and dark blue eyes and a rose tucked behind her ear. Her lips were all red, like she’d been eating blackberries straight from a bush, and her dress was covered in white spots, like it had been snowing. Melody stared at the picture as she listened to Maggie through the wall, heard her voice turn from sleepy to confused to urgent, from quiet to loud and then to a slow, heavy incantation of the word ‘no’.
    The Spanish girl seemed to peer at Melody curiously, as if she too were wondering what the phone call could be about. Melody smiled at the Spanish girl, a hopeful smile, as if to reassure her that everything would be all right.
    A few minutes later Maggie came into Nicola’s bedroom. She was wearing a blue dressing gown with birds embroidered on it and her long hair was in a plait. Her eye makeup, which was usually quite neat, was smudged all under her eyes, like she’d been rubbing them and she didn’t look as pretty as she did normally, during the day.
    ‘Oh,’ she said, smiling, ‘you’re awake.’
    ‘Yes,’ Melody said, ‘I heard the phone ringing.’
    Maggie nodded. ‘That was your dad.’
    ‘Is the baby coming home now?’
    ‘No,’ said Maggie, stroking Melody’s cheek with her thumb. ‘No, the baby’s not coming home …’
    Melody glanced away from Maggie and up at the Spanish girl, hoping that she would do something dramatic to make this horrible feeling go away. But