Daniel Isn't Talking Read Online Free Page B

newspaper and flung it on to the kitchen table, which was being used as a Play-Doh factory, covering up all our good monsters with the Independent .
    â€˜Hey, don’t wreck our stuff,’ I said.
    â€˜Your stuff,’ he laughed.
    â€˜Well, Emily’s stuff, I mean.’
    â€˜Have a look at this,’ he said, pointing at the article.
    The googly eyes came off one of the monsters and I stuck them back on. I glanced at the headline on the newspaper and nodded, then found another monster to adjust.
    â€˜Read,’ Stephen said, and went upstairs to change.
    Later, when Emily and Daniel were asleep, he told me he’d made appointments with three different schools and that we were going to visit these schools, ask the appropriate questions and get Emily’s name down on at least one of the registers.
    â€˜She will perform better if we start now,’ he emphasised.
    â€˜You make her sound like a trained seal,’ I said. ‘Anyway, what do school kids learn that make them “perform” better? Certainly they do not know how to use fax machines or make a chair out of papier mâché.’
    That was one of our rainy-day projects, the chair. Emily and I made it out of a broken broom handle and chicken wire left over after that rather dangerous – I thought – pond in our garden was covered. We layered the chair with runny glue and newsprint, then painted it pink and yellow. It’s lopsided; it smells a little; it might be a health hazard. But I feel it indicates our daughter’s creative genius, so, even though it attracts a persistent insect I cannot find in my British flora and fauna book, it stays.
    â€˜They learn to read and write,’ answered Stephen.
    â€˜Not at four.’
    â€˜They play with other children.’
    â€˜Emily plays with other children.’
    I didn’t tell him that the previous afternoon at the parkshe kicked a boy in the head because he was rushing her as she climbed the ladder for the slide. Apparently, she stood on his hand, too, which may or may not have been deliberate. The kicked child’s nanny was nowhere to be found and I had to carry him around the playground as he cried, searching for the nanny, which meant I left Daniel in the swing seat on his own. When I returned I found an older child swinging Daniel too hard, as he screamed hysterically. That would have been worth a pill or two, but I wasn’t taking them then.
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    Now Stephen holds my head in his hands, massaging my temples, squeezing together the lobes on either side of my skull, tracing my hairline with his fingernails.
    â€˜Tell me what hurts you so much,’ he says to me.
    â€˜Those fucking drugs you gave me,’ I say. ‘God, how does anyone in your office work on those?’
    I can hear his laugh above me. ‘I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.’
    â€˜I’m so worried,’ I say. ‘Worried about the children.’
    â€˜You just need some help. More than that useless cleaner.’
    â€˜Veena. She’s not useless. She’s my friend.’ Veena is a philosophy Ph.D. candidate. She is terrifically smart, and good company, but is in fact terrible at cleaning a house.
    â€˜Well, the last time I saw her she scrubbed the skirting boards until you could eat off them but left the kitchen sink full of dishes.’
    â€˜Yeah, well,’ I said. ‘Veena doesn’t like dust.’
    To be honest, Veena is a little weird about dust. She runs a damp cloth along the tops of doors and the back of chests of drawers. She has a special duster she uses for radiators, one she made herself and which she says sheshould get a patent for. ‘Such a lot of terrible dust you have,’ she says. If she manages to get beyond polishing the picture frames, she might actually run a vacuum cleaner. ‘You are having need of tile floors and shutters, not all these thick carpets and flouncy fabrics gathering