In the Heart of the City Read Online Free

It was snowing. Maybe they’d have a white Christmas.
    ‘I don’t know why you bother.’ Ruby came into the kitchen.
    Louise didn’t reply. She switched the kettle on. ‘When we get the tree up, you’ll have to practise upstairs.’
    ‘My room’s too small.’
    ‘Use mine, then.’
    ‘Cool. When are we getting it?’
    ‘Tomorrow,’ Louise said. ‘Carl’s bringing one down.’
    ‘Is it big?’
    ‘Big enough.’ She got the drinking chocolate out.
    ‘That means it’s titchy.’
    ‘Wait and see.’ Louise smiled. She’d paid for a six-footer. It would look great. And she was off Christmas Day.
    Carl was at the agency with her, home help, social care. Closest thing she had to a boyfriend, but she kept it casual. She liked the company, someone to share a meal or a laugh or a bed with, but nothing more serious. He was a nice bloke, a bit dim, but well-meaning, sociable. Polish. The agency work was crap money really, but for Carl it was way more than he could make back home. The job itself was okay: cleaning, shopping, feeding, changing, a lot of listening. Some of the people Louise had been calling on for years, knew more about them than their own families did. But the agency was always trying to screw as much as they could from you.
    Louise looked back out at the garden. Some of the snow had settled, on the grass and the shed roof, but the path was gleaming wet. Be nice if it did stay. Course, it caused problems, people falling and fractures and buses not running, but it looked lovely.
    ‘Or a wig?’ Ruby said. ‘Like a dead bright colour, yeah? Red, like my shoes.’
Andrew
    He thought he heard something over the noise of the shower. Banging? Perhaps Jason had forgotten his key. More than likely. Andrew tipped his head back, let the water play on his face. In fact it was unusual for Jason to remember his key. A dreamer. It drove Val round the bend, her son’s lack of focus, his apparent ineptitude.
    ‘Is it a boy thing?’ she’d demanded of Andrew one day when Jason was about six. Still struggling to tie his shoelaces, still forgetting his book bag, his games kit, his permission slip, to brush his teeth, to turn the television off.
    ‘He’s just made like that, I guess,’ Andrew said.
    ‘All I do is nag,’ she complained. ‘And if I don’t, nothing happens.’
    ‘He’s only little.’ Andrew pulled her to him, kissed her. ‘D’you want me to nag?’
    She shook her head, still exasperated.
    ‘Maybe he’ll never be the world’s most organized person, but he’s bound to get a bit better.’
    ‘You think?’
    ‘I hope.’
    But Jason’s absent-mindedness had persisted; his relationship to the practical, physical world had never become one of mastery or precision, though he was skilled in other areas. He could play any instrument he picked up, despite never having had a lesson in his life; he’d overcome his moderate dyslexia to get four A levels and a place to study geography at Durham.
    ‘Geography!’ Val had exclaimed when Andrew told her Jason had been talking about it. ‘He can barely find his way home from school without a sat nav. He’s no sense of direction – in either sense of the word.’
    ‘He loves geography, though,’ Andrew had said. ‘Remember all those maps we used to make?’ Pieces of lining paper scrawled on with felt pens: islands littered with treasure troves and hazards; sharks and sinking sands, whirlpools and stingrays. Staining the paper with used tea bags, singeing the edges with the kitchen matches and setting the smoke alarm off, rolling them into scrolls, tied with broken shoelaces.
    ‘He liked maps because you did,’ Val said.
    ‘Maybe. Does it matter? It’s good to know there’s something he wants to do – and his marks have been great.’
    ‘Yes.’ She softened, gave a rueful smile. ‘I just worry about him, that’s all,’ apologizing, acknowledging the tension she brought to the discussion, that for all his charms, her child’s flaws