Stuck on Me Read Online Free Page A

a handsome nose,’ I said, hoping sarcasm would mask my hurt.
    Mum smiled, wistfully. ‘Oh, but Connor had a lovely nose. A real Roman nose. It was one of the things I first noticed about him. That, and his eyes.’
    ‘Yes, he was a nice-looking fellow,’ said Auntie Julie. ‘That’s one thing we can all say.’
    I flinched. They were talking about him like he was dead. But he isn’t dead. He’s just . . . somewhere else. He left when I was eight and then there were a couple of years of odd
weekend visits and random cards. After that, nothing. I haven’t heard from him for almost five years. We used to get bits of news through Grandma, but since she died: nada.
    ‘Oh, sure, he was a handsome devil,’ said Auntie Karen, winking at Mum. ‘Devil being the operative word.’
    Mum nodded. Then she shook her head, as if she was trying to shake off her memories. ‘Well, it’s all in the past now. No point dwelling on it.’
    She tried to change the subject then, as usual; she doesn’t like talking about Dad. Since he left, Mum has filled the gap – and our flat – with all her weird and wonderful
interests, and the new friends that come with them: animal rights, spirituality, medieval music, saving the planet . . . She claims she’s a free spirit. Who needs a man, when you can do a
thousand and one things with tofu?
    But I didn’t want to drop the subject. ‘He wasn’t a devil, he was my dad,’ I said, quietly. ‘He’s still my dad. Our dad.’ Even if, I
wanted to add, he doesn’t care about me, Ocean or Grass enough to remember our birthdays, or send us Christmas presents. I glanced at my sisters, but they were staring down at their plates,
pretending they weren’t there.
    ‘Of course he is,’ said Mum, ‘but we’re OK without him, aren’t we? Us girls together!’
    I nodded. ‘Sure. I guess.’ As always, I felt strange thinking about Dad. I hate him and I love him and I miss him and I don’t miss him, all at the same time. It’s so
confusing.
    Mum peered at me again, and I couldn’t tell if she was calculating how much I resembled Dad or whether she was just concerned about me. ‘I know you miss him sometimes, Sky. But
you’re better off without him. We all are.’
    ‘Yeah. Probably.’ I grinned broadly, a fake grin. ‘But I shouldn’t moan – at least he gave me something,’ I joked, ‘even if it was his great, big, beaky
nose. Cheers, Dad.’
    Nobody laughed.
    ‘Another slice of cake, girls?’ said Auntie Julie, to break the tension. ‘This spelt cake really is good.’
    I managed to get through the rest of the tea somehow, making small talk with my aunties about how I was doing at school and what GCSEs I’d chosen, but I couldn’t stop thinking about
my dad, and how unfair it was that I was the one to look like him, when he made all of us so unhappy. The minute my aunties left the flat, I went into my bedroom, shut the door tight and fished
around under my bed until I found my old photo albums. Then I leafed through them, hunting for pictures of my dad. I don’t have many, I realised with sadness: just a few old snaps of him
holding me as a baby, and some from one Christmas when I was six or seven. And there were also a couple of photographs of him with Mum when they first met, pictures she was planning to throw out
when she was really upset once, and that I rescued. She doesn’t know I have them.
    I studied the photos, taking each one out and holding it up to my face in the mirror, so that I could compare my features with Dad’s. There was no getting away from it: Mum was right
– I do have Dad’s nose. His is almost exactly the same shape as mine – slightly more crooked, perhaps (I think I remember him telling me that he broke it in an accident, when he
was a kid) and on a larger scale, like the rest of him. But I’ve got the Carter Conk, all right. Funny, I used to want to take Dad’s name, to be Sky Carter, rather than Sky Smith, but
Mum wouldn’t