The Truth About Melody Browne Read Online Free PDF

she didn’t. She just stood there in her spotty dress, looking curious.
    ‘The baby wasn’t very well when it came out. The doctors tried to make the baby better, but nothing they tried to do worked. And the baby tried really hard too. But she was too small and too unwell and she stopped breathing. Do you know what happens when you stop breathing?’
    Melody did know what happened when you stopped breathing, so she nodded. ‘You get dead,’ she said.
    ‘Yes,’ said Maggie, ‘you get dead. And I’m so sorry my precious girl, but that’s what happened to your baby sister. She stopped breathing. And your mummy and daddy are very, very sad. And you know what they said, they said, the only thing that will make them feel better will be to see their big, brave girl. So shall we get ready? Shall we get you dressed and take you home to see your mummy and daddy?’
    Melody considered this. If she stayed here she could stare at the Spanish girl a little longer and see if she might somehow show her a way to reverse the last two minutes of her life. Then she could go downstairs and have sugary cereal with her big cousins and walk with them to school and then go for a slice of cake with Maggie and then go home to a nice happy place with a new baby sister in it.
    ‘I’m very hungry,’ she said, eventually. ‘Can we have breakfast first?’
    Maggie gave her Sugar Puffs with a strange-shaped plastic spoon and Melody tried her hardest not to spill them down her T-shirt, but a couple landed in her lap and Maggie cleared them off for her with a damp cloth. Nicola and Claire ate toast in their grey school uniforms and were not as noisy as they usually were.
    After she’d dropped the girls off at school, Maggie drove Melody back to Lambeth and stood with her in the little creaky lift as it made its way up to the second floor. Melody reached out and held her hand as they approached the front door of her flat, feeling suddenly shy and nervous. Her dad came to the door. His chin was all furry and his eyes were all red and his T-shirt looked sort of tired and floppy, like an old person’s skin. ‘Hello, sweetpea.’ He leaned down and scooped her up and squeezed her. He smelled like an old tea-towel, but she squeezed him back anyway, because she knew he wanted her to.
    ‘Where’s Mummy?’ she said.
    ‘She’s in bed. Do you want to see her?’
    Melody nodded and he put her down and took her by the hand. ‘Mummy’s very tired,’ he said, ‘and very sad.’
    She nodded again.
    At her parents’ bedroom door she stopped for a moment, because even though she was only four, in some unfathomable way she knew that on this side of the door lay her past and on the other side of that door lay her future and that this was the very last moment she would ever spend in the old order.
    As the door opened and she approached her mother in bed, and saw her funny square hair all squashed flat against her head and her T-shirt all creased and grimy, smiling blankly at her like she’d forgotten who she was, Melody knew she was right.
    She was in a different place now. A different place altogether.

Chapter 4
Now
     
    The strange feeling was there the moment Melody opened her eyes the next day.
    She didn’t mention it to Ed as she couldn’t think of a good enough way to explain it, and it was so fleeting and peripheral that the moment her thoughts turned to anything even slightly distracting she forgot all about it. It was as though someone had opened her up, made a mess in her head and then tidied it all away again before sealing her closed. But they hadn’t quite put everything back in the right place and Melody felt strangely disordered.
    Objects seemed to carry an extra resonance. She stared at her toothbrush for a while before putting it in her mouth that morning, feeling oddly as if it wasn’t hers, but at the same time feeling almost as if she’d only brushed her teeth a moment earlier. Her coffee tasted strange, as though she were