Two Weeks with the Queen Read Online Free PDF

a busy evening.
    While Mum packed her bag for Sydney, Colin told her about a documentary he’d seen on TV where a man whose heart had gone bung had someone else’s heart fitted into his chest. And another bloke who’d chopped his foot off with the lawnmower had it sewn back on. And a kid who’d swallowed several bits of her dad’s record player had her tummy cut open and inside they found all the bits and a torch key-ring.
    Then he heard Mr O’Brien’s dog in the porch chewing the front door mat and he went out and threw some lumps of wood at it, just like Dad did most nights, and stood with his hands on his hips watching it run across the street to rub its bottom on Mrs Widdup’s chook-wire fence.
    Best of all was when Mum jammed her finger in the zipper of her suitcase. Colin put some Dettol on it and a Band-aid.
    â€˜It’ll sting for a bit,’ he told her.
    â€˜It already is,’ she said.
    â€˜I like the smell of Dettol,’ he said, to take her mind off it.
    â€˜Me included,’ she said.
    She let him stay up with her to watch the late news.
    There was a story from England about two little kids born joined together who’d just been separated in a successful operation which, Colin thought, must have been a great relief for both of them.
    Then he did his packing, just a couple of things in his cricket bag because they’d all be coming home on the train in a few days. Unless Luke had a very rare type of gastric which Channel Nine wanted to make a TV show about and Luke had to stay in Sydney for a couple of years.
    Colin went to sleep thinking about that and slept soundly except for a couple of times when the phone rang outside his room and he could vaguely hear shouting, which might have been Mum or it might have been a TV producer telling Luke to relax and act natural.
    He opened his eyes and it was still dark.
    Somebody was squeezing into bed next to him. For a second he thought it was Luke, sneaking in with wet pyjama pants like he did last year after he’d turned his own bed into a one-boy irrigation area.
    Then he realised it was Mum.
    She pressed against him and she was wet too, on her cheek.
    â€˜Mum?’ he whispered.
    â€˜Do you mind?’ she said.
    â€˜Course not,’ he replied.
    Must be her finger, he thought. They can hurt a lot at night, fingers.
    When he opened his eyes again it was morning and the big holiday suitcase was open on his bedroom floor.
    The holiday suitcase?
    Then he saw that inside it were just about all of his clothes.
    He sat up.
    Mum was sitting on the end of the bed looking at him.
    â€˜Colin,’ she said softly, in a voice he’d never heard her use before, ‘me and Dad’d like you to go and stay with Uncle Bob and Aunty Iris in England.’
    Colin stared at her.
    â€˜We’re not going to make you go,’ she continued, ‘but we’d like you to go. For you and for us.’
    Words and questions and panic flew around in Colin’s head but all he could say was . . .
    â€˜Why.’
    Mum looked away. ‘You’ll have a great time over there. Uncle Bob and Aunty Iris live near the zoo and Uncle Bob goes to the cricket all the time. And your cousin Alistair’s virtually your age.’
    Colin’s chest was pounding like a bore-pump.
    They were sending him away.
    They didn’t want him any more.
    â€˜I can’t go,’ he said. ‘I’m in the middle of a science project. Cricket practice starts next week . . .’
    Mum moved up the bed and hugged him to her and he could feel sobs booming around inside her chest. She took several deep breaths.
    â€˜The doctors say Luke isn’t going to get better,’ she said. ‘They showed Dad the X-rays.’
    X-rays? For gastric?
    â€˜I can help you,’ he shouted. ‘Make tea so you and Dad can look after him, bring his homework home from school. You don’t have to send me