The Tower Mill Read Online Free

me home soon. It was then she leaned across the table, confiding in me in a way that suddenly made me realise this was my mother and she felt there was something vital I should know.
    ‘I learned more in this refec than I ever did at lectures,’ she said, happy at last. ‘It’s still the same. When you get out here yourself, remember that. And don’t do a bloody business degree, either. You do want to come here, don’t you, Tom?’
    Hearing my name on her lips was a shock, especially as it was said with tenderness this time. She wanted something for me and I felt ludicrously grateful. ‘I haven’t thought about it,’ I answered truthfully, wanting to be convinced.
    ‘Well think about it now. This is the place. Even with yuppies fouling up the footpaths, I can still feel it. Can you feel it, Tom?’
    Again she’d left me floundering. ‘Feel what?’
    ‘The atmosphere,’ she insisted, lifting her open hands level with her shoulders for a second. ‘This place was hopping when I came here for my degree. No teachers, certainly no nuns, just lecturers more radical than the students. We were all aping the Americans, of course, but Christ, it was the end of the ’60s and we were changing the world!’
    This meant nothing to me, praise for a time before I was born, though it somehow brought her closer to Dad in my mind because he raved about the ’60s, too, dragging out old photos of him in shirts that looked vaguely Indian and with some friend of his flashing the peace sign in the background. It was a joke, and an embarrassment, but it was Dad all over and now my mother was waving at me from the same frame.
    I think she felt the distance between us then, because she backed off, watching me. I wondered suddenly what she was thinking and decided she was trying to love me, this son of hers in a school uniform she seemed to despise. It was as though she knew she had to love me, but didn’t have the first clue how to go about it.
    She was on her feet quickly and I moved to join her but she waved me down again. ‘No, stay there. I’ll be back in a minute. You want anything?’ she said, as an afterthought.
    ‘Yeah, another Coke, please.’
    She was back quickly, my Coke and another coffee on a tray, and there was something else besides – a packet of cigarettes. I hadn’t managed the first mouthful from the Coke before she had the packet open and offered me one.
    ‘I’m only fifteen, Mu—’ Just caught myself. We had agreed I would call her Susan. It worried me that I could slip up so easily.
    ‘Come on, Tom, all schoolboys smoke. It’s like wanking.’
    I didn’t want to go there, so I took a cigarette from the packet and sat with it between my fingers, waiting for a light. But this frank embarrassment struck me as deliberate and I began to suspect the Benson & Hedges served the same purpose. She wedged a cigarette between her own lips then struck a match, leaning across with hands cupped to light first mine, then hers. I took a shallow puff and let the smoke out quickly, looking timidly around the refec.
    ‘What are you looking for?’ she said, challenging. She knew, but I told her anyway.
    ‘I’m in my school uniform. I could get expelled.’
    She laughed; it was hardly the considerate act of a loving mother. I still didn’t realise what she was trying to do. With my free hand, I started to work at the knot of my tie.
    ‘No, leave it,’ she said, and laughed again, with an elbow propped on the arm of her chair and hand cocked to let the smoke trail away over her shoulder in a mockery of pretentious elegance. ‘Take a risk, Tom,’ she said. ‘You spend all your time living by the rules, don’t you? I’ll bet you try every day to make your teachers happy and your football coach and most of all Mike Riley. You don’t have to, you know. Has that ever occurred to you?’
    What was she on about? I wanted to go home, but the way she looked at me, waiting silently across the table stirred me as much as