Slights Read Online Free Page A

did because cops told each other everything.
      My nurse let me walk around looking at the sick people. She didn't know what I was doing and didn't much care. It was the dying I wanted to see. Those in their rooms waiting for one more breath before the last.

    It seemed astonishing that I had been so close to death. All I could see were the faces of the people in that cold room. Two weeks I spent in hospital, then I sat up in bed and said, "I want to go home."
      Didn't the papers love that, too?
      As I was recovering, the cut on my head scabbed and was so itchy I couldn't resist picking and scratching it. It made the scar worse, but it was good to be marked with something. People were sympathetic; they asked me how close I'd come to death. It was like pregnancy; everyone thought my body belonged to them. When the scar was no longer bright red, people stopped asking. They didn't like to. People won't let me tell the story; they think it will upset me. But it's like when you see a cripple, or an amputee, or a sufferer of elephantiasis. It's far better to have a good stare and smile at them than to look away as if there was nothing to see. Everyone knows there is a story to tell, but they won't ask me the questions. Where were you going? Why was your mother with you? Why did you drive so fast? Was she in pain? Were you in pain? Does it still hurt? Do you feel guilty? What was it like to almost die?
      There's an answer to every one of those questions.

    I put on a pair of wellies which had sat by the back door since Dad died. We never cleared them away.
      I planned to dig up the yard; plant a sea of night blooming jasmine, surround myself again with that saviour scent. I had no idea what I was looking at, weed, vegetable, treasure. Some parts were green, some brown, and there were sprays of bright colour: purple, yellow, red.
      Somewhere out there was a shed which no one had been near in nine years.
      I headed in that direction. The whole area smelt composty and things rustled and slithered at my feet. I was amongst nature and it felt unnatural. I stamped fronds and flowers underfoot, bent to pick up interesting items.
      I found a sock lost long ago from the Hills Hoist near the back door and a plastic, long-hated doll.
      The shed had become a rusty mess. The door had never had a lock. Even though Dad was a cop, he wasn't bothered about security in our home. It was like he thought that his occupation was enough of a deterrent; that somehow thieves would KNOW who lived there and leave us alone.
      The grass had grown up through the hinges and between the door and its frame. I used my bare hands to tug away the weeds from the door and pull it free. Inside smelt of petrol and metal. In the bright sunlight I saw the lawn mower, and Dad's rusty old tools.
      I scythed away the grass first, then mowed it, not with Dad's old mower, which wouldn't start, but with one borrowed from the man next door, who watched me over the fence and waited in his front yard for it when I had finished.
      And so my weekend went. After my hands were scratched and raw, I finally thought to go and buy some gloves. I bought books on gardening, too; about how to turn the soil, that sort of thing, if your soil is good, how to grow your turf. I didn't intend to grow any food. Easier to buy it. I just wanted to see the lawn neat, green. I wanted to be able to sit on it. People wouldn't think I was a weirdo if my garden was neat. I wanted jasmine to scent the house.
      I read in one of the gardening books that manure was very good for soil, so I had a shitload delivered. I'd hardly made a dent in the backyard, but I wanted this stuff to spur me on. It sat there, slowly spreading over the nature strip, the footpath, and spilling onto the road. I quite liked it as a piece of modern sculpture, an ever-changing study symbolising the unknown world. Then I went out and spent an age in the hardware shop. There was even a cafe, so I