The Boy Who Fell to Earth Read Online Free Page A

rearranged. Disorientated, I had to reevaluate my surroundings.
    I tried to make light of it. Against Jeremy’s wishes I’d confided in family and a few close friends, but when other acquaintances, still oblivious to Merlin’s condition, asked why Jeremy was never with us, I explained that he’d enjoyed trying to get me pregnant – ‘He liked trying for that three times a day but contracted morning sickness – the
morning after the baby was born
.’ After they laughed, I’d add, with a practised smile, ‘He’s just taking time to adjust. He’ll get more involved when Merlin is older.’
    When my husband missed appointments with our son’s speech and occupational therapists, I told myself I wasn’t stressed. I told myself that it was normal to add chocolate chips to a cheese omelette. When Jeremy didn’t turn up to the interview for the special needs nursery I’d spent months lobbying, I joked with the headmistress that he’d muddled up the dates. ‘The greatest mystery is how men, who are so universally stupid, got to rule the world. Dan Brown should write a thriller about
that
!’
    When I had to forgo staff meetings because Jeremy was too busy to pick up Merlin from the latest childminder, I commiserated with the other wives by delivering a stagey eye-roll. ‘Ah, how wonderful marriage would be without husbands.’ I jokingly took to wearing my wedding ring on the wrong finger so that I could quip at opportune moments that I’d ‘obviously married the wrong bloke’.
    When Jeremy didn’t make it to Merlin’s third birthday party, I philosophized, glibly, to the small gathering of family members, ‘Do you know the one way to keep a husband at home?’
    ‘Baking?’ suggested my mother.
    ‘Gymnastic sex?’ volunteered Phoebe.
    ‘Let the air out of his tyres,’ I advised caustically.
    My mother and sister exchanged concerned glances. My older sister is just like me, except she has a gentle disposition, an attentive, devoted husband, two normal children, a job she adores and a genuine love of humankind.
    Our mother, although never the type to cut sandwiches into triangles and knit organic muesli, is also very loving. When she found out I was having a baby, Mum crocheted herself into a coma. Packages arrived from all over the world containing baby booties, mittens, beanies, cardigans, bed-spreads, doilies and matinee jackets (one for the mornings and one for the evenings and one for any unaccounted matinee moments in between). Within weeks, my house was covered in crocheted things, as if a lumpy, multicoloured sauce had dripped over every surface.
    After my father had died, naked in the arms of what my mum called ‘a shady lady’, my bookish mother had become a party girl. If there’s a party on across town, she rings to ask if she can speak to herself as she can’t believe she’s not there. She would crochet her own party if she could. To complement her good-time girl image, she traded in her neatly knotted scarves for a feather boa which writhed about her throat like something tropical, exotic and most definitely alive. Mum had been a librarian by trade, which meant that the only excursions she’d experienced were flights of fancy. But then she discovered that my father had over-insured himself, which was amusingly typical of his inflated sense of self-worth and caused us to laugh through our tears at the funeral. Now Mum was always making up for lost time and was either off abseiling an Alp or doing a degree on volcanology somewhere unpronounceable or spending a small fortune saving lemurs. (Individually, I presume, at the price.) Most of my mother’s conversations began with ‘I’m just back from …’, or ‘I’m just off to …’ It might be St Petersburg, or Bhutan or Belize. She was always either shark-diving or Turin-shroud authenticating, nude tap-dancing or off on a little trot around the Hermitage. ‘Sorry, darling, but I don’t have a weekend free till early October,’