The Year of the Rat Read Online Free PDF

run out, away from Molly and the lurking waiter and the smell of frying bacon, into the rain. But I’ve embarrassed myself
enough for one day. I look out of the window and watch the cars go by.
    ‘Mum used to bring me here when I was a little kid,’ I say, more to myself than to Molly. ‘This really old Italian guy used to run it then. Angelo, I suppose. He was
funny.’
    Mum used to practise her Italian on him. She used to tell him he was mad for moving to London. She said one day we were going to run away to Italy, me and her and Dad, and we’d live in a
crumbling villa and she’d have an artist’s studio surrounded by lemon trees and live on olives and red wine. I remember how worried I was. I was too young then to know that most of
Mum’s grand schemes were just talk. I didn’t want to move and I didn’t like olives or lemons or red wine. Angelo would wink at me and say, ‘You like the
gelato
though, no?’
    I can feel Molly watching me, wondering what I’m thinking. ‘You OK?’ she says tentatively.
    ‘She’d always sit at one of the window tables and tell me to see how many red cars I could count. She told me if I counted thirty she’d buy me an ice cream.’ I almost
smile. ‘Took me ages to realize it was just so she could read a book in peace.’
    There’s a pause.
    ‘Pearl. That day—’ Molly stops and I know from her face which day she means. ‘After we’d been to the cinema . . .’
    ‘What about it?’
    ‘After you got the phone call from your dad . . .’
    I remember again how I listened to my voicemail outside the cinema in the bright sunshine, and how something in Dad’s voice made me stop so sharply in the middle of the pavement that a
woman ran into my ankles with her buggy. The bruise lasted for days after, but at the time I hardly noticed; all I could think of was Dad’s voice. It sounded so – wrong.
Pearl, you
need to get
to the hospital. It’s Mum. Get a taxi. Just be as quick as you can.
He didn’t sound like him. Time slowed down. I just stood there in the busy street full of
Saturday afternoon shoppers with their kids and dogs and cans of Coke, and it was like I was on my own.
    ‘Did you get there in time to see her?’ Molly asks.
    I close my eyes and I’m back, running down those green hospital corridors, lungs bursting . . . I open them again. I watch the cars, but they’re all black and silver and white. No
red ones.
    ‘Yes,’ I say to Molly eventually. ‘I did.’
    ‘Did you speak to her?’
    ‘Yes. She gave me a hug and told me she loved me.’ I feel like I’m listening to someone else saying it. ‘And then it was like she just fell asleep. Peaceful. She was even
smiling.’
    ‘Oh, Pearl.’ Her tears flow again.
    The besotted waiter looks over, maybe hoping to offer his shoulder to cry on.
    ‘Can we pay?’ I say. I feel faint suddenly. My stomach is empty and the coffee is making my brain buzz. ‘I need to go.’
    The rain has stopped at last. We stand awkwardly outside the cafe, neither of us knowing what to say.
    ‘I’m going to meet Ravi,’ Molly says. ‘But I can walk back with you first if you like?’
    ‘Ravi?’ I say, surprised. ‘You’re not still seeing him, are you?’ Molly had met him at a party we’d been to just before Mum died. I’d assumed she
wouldn’t see him again. Molly could have her pick of anyone. Ravi looks like his ambition is to be the youngest ever Chancellor of the Exchequer.
    ‘I am actually,’ Molly says shyly. ‘It’s been more than a month now. It’s going really well.’
    ‘Oh.’ Strange to think of life going on without me.
    ‘You don’t like him, do you?’ Molly says.
    ‘It’s not that,’ I say. ‘I don’t know him. I only met him that one time at Chloe’s party. He seemed a bit . . .’ I try to think of a polite way of
saying ‘dull’, ‘. . . serious.’
    ‘You’ll like him when you get to know him,’ Molly says. ‘I know you will.’
    We walk along in silence, the