Escape Read Online Free

if I were in church.
    I try to keep my eyes fixed on the window, and not look at the mess
of underwear and jeans and oh my god, a balled-up black silk dress
lying like a crumpled funnel-web on the floor. Doesn't she know she'll
never get the creases out? No , says the voice, because you've always done
her ironing for her. I feel the familiar rising panic. She has only an hour
before her grandparents arrive and then at dawn practically we'll have
to get in the car and drive to the airport. How's she going to have time
to prepare for a whole year? The floor is the sea after a shipwreck, odd
bits of clothing floating about like severed limbs. The arms of a jumper
wrap around an upturned shoe lying on top of a long matt ed woollen
cardigan she bought at St Vincent de Paul's at fifteen. God, she's not
going to take that horrible old thing? What will the elegant Italians in
their velvet smoking jackets think of her?
    The Doors are playing on the ghetto-blaster. How she can think
with all that screaming, I can't imagine. It's always been like this,
homework set to the pace of rock songs. I wouldn't allow it for years
but the fights became too wearying, and anyway, by the time kids are
in senior school, you're supposed to 'give them their heads', aren't you?
What a strange, uneasy expression that is.
    'You can't live their lives for them,' says Doreen, wagging her finger
at me. 'Overfunctioning mother, underfunctioning daughter.'
    And just look at the ironing , says the voice.
    I try to find a space on the bed without moving things around
too conspicuously. The suitcase lies open at my feet, almost empty. I
bump it sideways, just a little, with my foot. On the bed I lay out the
things I bought: lip balm and 30+ suncream, she's going into spring
and summer there, antibiotic cream for the impetigo she'd had in
kindergarten, a lovely jade silk camisole that will bring out her green
eyes, a good thick toothbrush, vitamin C.
    'Can I help you with anything?' I keep the same light tone.
    'No, everything's fine,' Clara says, surveying the devastation of her
room. 'See, I'm almost done.'
    We stare at each other but then I register the corner of her mouth
twisting sideways as she bends to pick up the funnel-web. This is one
of those times when I realise that I don't know my daughter – I just
don't understand her sense of humour. She can laugh about the most
serious, anxiety-making things. Joke . I don't joke very much. Recently
I dreamt that I'd lost my sense of humour, which had been wrapped
in a small brown paper package. My mother told me she had seen it
in a tree and I went to look where she pointed but the package was
too high up to fetch. As the parcel had no label, I couldn't tell if it was
really mine, so I went home empty-handed.
    'I just thought you might want something to read on the plane,
sweetheart,' I say. 'Something from home, a familiar face in all that
unknown!' I hear a snort from under the bed where she's trying to
retrieve a shoe. 'It's a really interesting book, Clara. Gives you such a
good picture of Harry when he was your age and just getting started
on his career. Actually, I suppose you wouldn't call it getting started,
he was well on his way by your time of life.'
    'Yeah, and I'm still fluffing around, is that what you want to say?'
    'No, no, of course not.' God . I smile brightly. But all I can think
of is Clara's short jabs at careers. She did a year of psychology
at university, and pranced around the house with her repressed
memory theories and Freudian interpretations. She said we should
all loosen up, say what was on our minds. She'd never had a problem
with that, I thought privately. When I told her my dream about the
cut in the sole of my foot, and how millions of tiny worms were
multiplying in there, she made me a cup of tea and patted my knee.
'Freud would say you were really dreaming about your soul,' she said,
'you know, your spirit. He says we disguise our real fears in different
ways because they're too