Rocks in the Belly Read Online Free Page B

rattling, down by my side because I can see Mum now, in among all that deterioration. There she is.
    We’re standing here and I’m looking at her, a breeze shuffling what there is of her hair.
    Maybe she recognises the change in me too, or rediscovers who I am, because she turns and faces the way I’m facing and I hold out my elbow for her and she smiles, her wet eyelashes half black and half mousy-blonde from where she last had them tinted. We link arms and she drops her head gently onto my shoulder for a second and we make our way back down Hawke Street Hill together, towards our house and Dad’s out-of-control hedges sticking up over the neighbour’s fence.
    â€˜You have to take the tablets, Mum. Please?’ She’s looking down at her feet as she walks, confused suddenly at the distinction betweenher shoed and shoeless foot. She stops and looks up the road.
    â€˜Your shoe’s in the garden, Mum. Don’t worry, I’ll get it for you.’
    We turn in through the gate but she halts me when we get to her shoe sitting on the spot where Robert came undone. She gazes at it and sighs a ten-ton sigh, turning to me with that familiar look on her face. Her eyes flicking from one of mine to the other. Searching me.
    â€˜Let’s get you inside,’ I say trying to tug her away.
    â€˜No.’ Her body stiffens against my tugging so I leave her there and walk in, conscious of my walk, conscious of those eyes looking at me as I go. Her discarded shoe marking the spot. Her face marking the question.
    There was always that question.

4
    â€˜Elbows off the table. And we don’t want to see what you’re chewing, thank you.’ Mum is a manners Nazi. Dad said so. She puts her knife and fork down while she chews. ‘More meat, Robert? A piece of fruit after? Perhaps something sweet, eh?’ She’s got her best foster child voice on tonight, and her war paint. ‘We can watch a video after, if you’d like?’
    â€˜Dumbo, Dumbo!’
    â€˜Robert’s too grown up for Dumbo. Aren’t you, Robert.’
    After dinner she sends me upstairs early as if I’ve been bad, but I can play in my room and go to sleep when I like as if I’ve been good.
    I think Dumbo is lonely. I wrote a poem at school once called Alonely Only Child. Miss Marshall said it was perfect, especially as I’d made up a brand new word. But when I showed Mum she got really funny and screwed it up and threw it in the bin. I was already in bed when Dad got home that night but next morning my poem was all creased up on the fridge under a magnet.
    I don’t want to go to bed and leave Robert with them but I’m being as good as possible so I decide not to argue. I creep past the big vase which is never full of flowers but always has my grandad’s homemade walking sticks poking up.
    Grandma died of cancer and Dad had to clean up all her blood in our bathroom when she collapsed dead in the night. He did it for Mum before he woke her up so she wouldn’t have to see what came out.
    They know Grandma was dead before she hit the ground cos she didn’t use her arms to protect her face. And I know that because I spied a conversation Dad had once. He had to pick her teeth out of the blood.
    Nobody knows but there’s still a spot of Grandma’s blood on the back of the loop the loop pipe behind the toilet. I look at that spot of dead Grandma’s dying blood almost every time I pee or poo. Sometimes it makes my doodle go all strong, just from looking at it.
    The foster children are normally really naughty but Robert is quiet and good which means I’m having to try extra hard. I run my toothbrush under the tap and put some toothpaste in my mouth, then get into my jimjams and climb inside my secret lion’s den which is actually my sleeping bag but I go inside it head first. I like it in here and I’ve got my torch and my Transformer which turns from a green and