Sarah Lean - 3 Book Collection. Sarah Lean

Чтение книги онлайн.

      Granddad Fisher said, “Now, now, Cally, it’s neither the time nor place for silly games.”

      Then Grandpa Hamblin looked at the sky, at the distant grey clouds. “Rain’s on its way,” he muttered.

      Dad looked at the silent earth.

      “Dad?” I said. “I can see her. I know she’s dead, but she’s here.”

      And right then, when I looked across and Mum’s eyes shone as bright as a whole sky full of sunshine, I felt that her and me were the only ones truly alive. My heart thumped, my lungs filled and I wanted to shout, “Mum, sing a song, then they’ll hear you. Make the birds wonder, just like you used to.”

      “Cally, love,” Aunty Sue said, “sometimes our imaginations play tricks on us.” She reached round and rested her hand on Dad’s shoulder. “Sometimes, when you really want to believe something, you can make it seem true.”

      Tears smudged her mascara. Grandma blew into her tissue.

      I thought I heard something, like when the carnival starts and you’re miles away down the other end of town, but you know it’s coming. Mum made a funnel of her hands, like a loudspeaker.

      “Dad, she wants to tell us something,” I said.

      I saw into his eyes before he looked away, like all the words waiting there were too big to pronounce, too hard to say properly. He hunched his shoulders, rubbed his face.

      “Enough, Cally,” he said, “you’re upsetting people.”

      I whispered, “Can’t you see her?”

      She’d stopped smiling. She searched her pocket as if she was trying to find something. I wondered why she had a coat and hat on when it was such a warm summer day.

      “Dad,” I pointed, “you can see her, can’t you?”

      “No,” he growled, “and neither can you. And I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

      3.

      “GET INTO GROUPS OF TWO OR THREE. EACH group will represent a planet,” said Miss Steadman in science. “As it’s stopped raining, we’re going out to the playground to map out the solar system.”

      I said to Mia Johnson, who was my best friend, “Let’s us two be Earth.”

      Then Daisy Bouvier came over, chewing her nails. She hung around us like she’d been doing a lot lately since she fell out with Florence Green at a sleepover. Mia looked at me funny and said, “Daisy, you’re in my group too.”

      Miss Steadman started talking about planets being millions of miles away and that we had to pretend the playground was the whole solar system. I nudged Mia and tried to whisper about what us two could do at break-time, not including Daisy. But I couldn’t tell her because Miss Steadman said, “Shush, Cally. Let’s try very hard today not to talk when I’m speaking. Otherwise you won’t learn anything.”

      She marked our place with a blue chalk circle and set off to Mars with another group and some red chalk.

      Doing space reminded me of the day when our family had gone to Wells. Inside the enormous yellow cathedral was one of the oldest clocks in the world. The earth was painted in the middle of the clock and the ancient sun circled round the outside on the long hand.

      Mum had said, “Sometimes people get things the wrong way round.”

      Because it was hundreds of years old the people who painted it didn’t know what the universe was like. Now everyone knows we are the ones spinning on our tiny planet through space, circling round the sun. It’s funny how that happens and we can’t even feel it.

      “Look,” I said to Mia and Daisy, “this is how our planet spins.”

      With my arms out, I went round and round. It made my hands go heavy and my eyes go giddy.

      “Stop it,” said Mia, “we’re supposed to be listening not talking and spinning.”

      “You could be the moon,” I said to Daisy.

      “Miss Steadman didn’t say to be a moon,” she said. “And I wanted to be Mercury.”

      “But СКАЧАТЬ