When Will There Be Good News? Read Online Free PDF Page A

'It's not as bad as the chicken factory.' Reggie reckoned the chicken factory must have been pretty bad because Mum had had some rubbish jobs in her time. Mum loved meat -bacon sandwiches, mince and tatties, sausage and chips -but Reggie never once saw her eat chicken, even when the Man-WhoCame-Before-Gary used to bring in a KFC bucket and the Man-Who-Came-Before-Gary could get Mum to do just about anything. But not eat chicken.
    Despite the educational aspects -ten top-grade GCSEs -it was really quite a relief when Reggie forged a letter from Mum saying that they were moving to Australia and Reggie wouldn't be coming back to the horrible posh school after the summer vacation.
    Mum had been so proud when Reggie got her scholarship place ('A genius for a child! Me!') but once she was gone there didn't seem much point and it was bad enough leaving for school in the morning with no one to say goodbye to her but coming home to an empty house with no one to say hello was even worse. You would never have thought that two little words could be so important. Ave atque vale.
    Ms MacDonald didn't go to the horrible posh school any more either because she had a tumour growing like a mushroom in her brain.
    Not to be selfish or anything but Reggie hoped that Ms MacDonald would manage to guide her through her A Levels before the tumour finished eating her brain. Our nada who art in nada, Ms MacDonald said. She was really quite bitter. You might expect a person who was dying to be a little bit resentful but Ms MacDonald had always been like that, illness hadn't made her a nicer person, even now she had religion she was hardly full of Christian charity. She could be kind in the particulars but not in the general. Mum had been kind to everybody, it was her saving grace, even when she was being stupid -with the Man-Who-Came-Before-Gary, or indeed Gary himself -she never lost sight of being kind. However, Ms MacDonald had her saving graces too -she was good to Reggie and she loved her little dog and those two things went a long way in Reggie's book.
    Reggie thought Ms MacDonald was lucky that she'd had lots o f time to adjust to the fact that she was dying. Reggie didn't like th e idea that you could be walking along as blithe as could be an d the next moment you simply didn't exist. Walk out of a room, ste p into a taxi. Dive into the cool blue water of a pool and never come back up again. Nada y pues nada.
    'Did you interview a lot of girls for this job?' Reggie asked D r Hunter and she said, 'Loads and loads,' and Reggie said, 'You're a terrible liar, Dr H.,' and Dr Hunter blushed and laughed and said, 'It' s true. I know. I can't even play Cheat. I had a good feeling about yo u though,' she added and Reggie said, 'Well, you should always trus t your feelings, Dr H.' Which wasn't something that Reggie actuall y believed because her mother had been following her feelings whe n she went off on holiday with Gary and look what happened there.
    And Billy's feelings rarely led him to a good place. He might be a runt but he was a vicious runt.
    'Call me Jo,' Dr Hunter said.
    Dr Hunter said that she hadn't wanted to go back to work and tha t ifit was up to her she would never leave the house.
    Reggie wondered why it wasn't up to her. Well, 'Neil's' business had 'hit a sticky patch', Dr Hunter explained. (He'd been 'let down' and 'some things had fallen through'.) Whenever she talked about Mr Hunter's business Dr Hunter screwed up her eyes as if she was trying to make out the details of something a long way off.
    When she was at the surgery Dr Hunter phoned home all the time to make sure the baby was OK. Dr Hunter liked to talk to him and she had long one-sided conversations while, at his end, the baby tried to eat the phone. Reggie could hear Dr Hunter saying, 'Hello, sweet pea, are you having a lovely day?' and 'Mummy will be home soon, be good for Reggie.' Or a lot of the time she recited scraps of poems and nursery rhymes, she seemed to know