Boy Underwater. Adam Baron

Чтение книги онлайн.

      ‘Hello,’ I said when I got home later. I was talking on the phone to a man from British Airways. ‘May I book two tickets to Australia, please?’

      ‘Er, yes,’ the man said, possibly taken aback by my young-sounding voice. ‘When would you like to travel, sir?’

      ‘Today, please.’

      ‘Oh. Right. And which city do you want to go to in Australia?’

      ‘Which …?’

      ‘Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne or Perth?’

      I hadn’t thought about that. ‘Which one is the furthest away from St Saviour’s School, Blackheath, Lewisham?’

      ‘I don’t know, sir. It’s not a question I’ve ever been asked before.’

      ‘Oh. Okay then, how about this? Which of them, do you think, is the least likely to EVER be visited by someone from St Saviour’s School, Blackheath, Lewisham? I mean, like, NEVER?’

      I never heard the man’s answer, so I can’t tell you what it was. My mum came in and saw me with her bank card in my hand. I thought she’d be mad but she just gave me a soft smile and pressed the red button on the phone before putting it down on the kitchen table. Then she interfered with my hair.

      ‘Australia, hey? A holiday?’

      I looked at her. ‘No. We’re going to live there.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘Yes, though I thought about France first.’

      ‘France?’

      ‘Because of the chocolate croissants. But it’s too near. Rachel Jones went there on holiday last summer. She still bangs on about it. She might see me.’

      ‘And you don’t speak French.’

      ‘I know. So that’s why I thought of Australia. It’s the furthest country from us for one thing, but I saw an Australian cricketer on the telly last week. He was speaking English. Sort of.’

      ‘Right,’ Mum said, and I thought she was going to laugh for some reason. But the trembling of her lips didn’t turn into laughter. She was staring at me, hard, and then she reached out to take my hand. She was wearing her red jumper, the really itchy one, and the sleeve scratched against my wrist. She tried to mouth some words.

      ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Cymbeline, I’m sorry I never took you swimming. I really am. I’m so, so sorry.’

      And so she should have been! And I nearly said that. But what she did then stopped me. I’ve told you about her crying, haven’t I? But she’d never cried like this before. I thought crying was done with your eyes mostly, and your mouth a bit. But when Mum started to cry it was with all of her. Her shoulders moved up and down and her throat made this weird croaking noise. Soon her whole body was shaking, like the washing machine when it’s nearly finished, and all I could do was watch her. She kept saying sorry, sorry, over and over, or at least she tried to because she couldn’t get the word out properly. She clutched her stomach and shook, my wrist really itching now, but unlike the washing machine she didn’t slow down and go quiet again. She carried on, and on, and on, trying to say sorry, and I heard myself say it’s okay, it’s okay, it was nothing really, just the whole class seeing my willy after the best girl in the entire world had seen me floundering around and dragged me out of the swimming pool. Don’t worry about it. But Mum didn’t seem to be able to hear me. It was like – and this may sound weird – she wasn’t saying sorry to me at all. But someone else. It was like there was someone else there, with us in the kitchen.

      Mum shook, and she shook, and I couldn’t make her hear me. There was nothing I could do, so eventually I took my hand back and went upstairs to my bedroom. It was quiet in there. Everything was really still. I took a Lego model to bits and put it back together again, though it didn’t look quite the same. I got an Asterix from the shelf, but for the first time ever nothing inside it made me laugh. Not even Obelix. So I just sat there, snizzling Mr Fluffy, until I heard footsteps on the stairs. But СКАЧАТЬ