Solace of the Road Read Online Free

skinny I nearly didn’t bother looking inside. But I dipped my hand in for a mystery feel and touched thin strands, all scrunched and soft. So I had to look in. It was pretend hair, some almost grey, some gold, but overall blonde, with muted highlights. I took it out and fingered its layers and fringes. Inside, a net with a brown tape for keeping it on. When you held it over your fist, the white of your own skin shone through where the parting was, like scalp.
    A wig, ash-blonde, drop-dead gorgeous.
    ‘Holly!’ came Fiona’s voice from downstairs. ‘Holly – lunch!’
    I stuffed the wig back and shut the drawer. I promised myself when Fiona left the house to go shopping that afternoon, I’d try it on.
    Downstairs, Fiona was looking like the last whale had been harpooned. It was Saturday and Ray’d gone to work, which he shouldn’t have. I sat down at the kitchen table and picked at my food, but I wasn’t hungry. That wig had really got to me. I tapped my toes on the floor. Then Fiona and I had our first row, a real wang-dammer.
    When I got wound up in the Home and it got to be too much, it was like Miko said, a nail bomb went off. Anything near me went on a real hard flying lesson. Cushions. Chairs. Trainers. And Miko wouldcome and clamp me down and my arms would be windmills and I’d swear and kick and it felt good. Then he’d say, ‘Do the mattress trick, Holly.’ I’d run from the room, go upstairs, yank my mattress off the bed, and kick it as hard as I could. He said to do it every morning and evening, even when I wasn’t angry. I’d hammer the springs with my trainer soles and then collapse, sweat pouring. And the others couldn’t wind me up so easily.
    But that lunch with Fiona, I forgot the mattress trick. And anyway, my bed on Mercutia Road had a mattress too thick for lifting unless you were King Kong. I just wanted Fiona to hurry up and go out, so I could try the wig on.
    ‘Sure you don’t want to come shopping?’ she was going. ‘You could choose your pizzas.’
    ‘Nah. Rather stay here. Honest.’
    ‘Sure?’
    ‘Yeah. It’s wet.’
    ‘There are such things as umbrellas, you know. You haven’t been out in two days.’
    I pushed a tomato slice across the plate. ‘It’s cold.’
    ‘You don’t like the cold?’
    ‘Nah.’
    ‘D’you prefer the summer?’
    See what I mean about the questions? ‘Yeah. S’pose.’
    Fiona reached over to the bread board for another slice. ‘Call me odd, but I love the winter. January’s my favourite month.’
    Would she never go?
    ‘Wish you’d try my bread, Holly, love.’
    Now I can’t stand it when people call you ‘love’ when they hardly know you. For me that’s a wind-up to end all wind-ups.
    ‘It’s home made,’ she said. ‘Honest-to-God flour. Wholemeal.’
    I put a finger down my mouth. ‘Ick.’
    ‘Don’t do that, Holly, please.’
    I did it again.
    ‘Don’t! I make all this food, but you just eat rubbish, pure rubbish, instead. It’s a wonder your insides haven’t seized up with all that refined artificial stuff you put down yourself.’
    ‘With all that refeened arty-farty stuff you put down yourself,’ I said, and pretended to throw up over the loaf.
    Fiona snatched it away, leaving the bread knife behind, and went over to the kitchen worktop. She rattled at the bread bin.
    ‘Refeened, arty-farty,’ I said, wagging a finger at where the loaf had been.
    ‘Come on, Holly. Leave off. I’ve a good mind to call Rachel. Perhaps we need a talk.’
    The nail bomb burst. I picked up the bread knife and hurled it at the kitchen window. It missed and clattered into the sink. So I stood up, grabbed my chair and slammed the far leg into a kitchen cupboard.
    ‘Fucking bread, fucking kitchen,’ I screamed. ‘Go on, say it. You want me gone, Ray wants me gone, you hate the sight of me. And I hate your fucking fancybread and I hate you too. I’m not your child. I don’t want to be your child. I’m Mammy’s child, not