This Holey Life Read Online Free

rosy-cheeked, sitting down at the kitchen table, cracking open a can of Coke. (Several of these death traps have appeared in
our fridge despite being a zero tolerance house. Thank you very much, Martin.)
    ‘Can I have a packet of crisps please, Auntie Vicky? I’m starving.’
    What I should do is refuse his request; tea’s nearly ready and if Rachel or Olivia catch a whiff of the possibility of heavy salt intake they’ll be clamouring for crisps too. But I
feel a whoosh of sympathy for Jeremy, motherless at this point in time and space. And at the mercy of his father.
    ‘Help yourself,’ I tell him. ‘They’re in the pantry. Only do you mind eating them outside? You can go in the shed, if you get cold.’
    He gives me a look. A familiar look that says, ‘Even though you are related to me I don’t know what planet you’re from’. But he does as he’s told, putting on his
coat, crisps hidden in his pocket, and hops his way across the stepping stones to the shed at the bottom of the garden, looking younger and younger the more he shrinks into the distance.
    It is then that I hear heavy breathing in the room. A smoker’s rasp.
    ‘Stepping stones? Dad would be proud of you but where will this end, Vicky-Love? Gnomes? Budgies? The WI?’
    The story according to Steve:
    This was always going to happen. They have that kind of relationship. Tempestuous. Her Elizabeth Taylor to his Richard Burton. It’ll blow over in a few days, just you
see. Don’t worry. You worry too much. Take a deep breath and enjoy your bath.
    Steve tells me this while having a whizz while I am trying to enjoy my bath. You’d think he’d have more decorum now he is a man of the cloth, but no.
    The story according to Claudia:
    He’s been having it away with one of his students. Why didn’t I listen to you when you warned me not to marry him?
    Claudia tells me this on the phone, on the one and only occasion I get through to her mobile. Otherwise she is unreachable. She has gone away. She doesn’t even ask about Jeremy, she is so
angry. Not so much as a thank you for taking in her family. On Boxing Day. All she says is, ‘Make sure Jeremy practises his cello.’
    Yes, I did warn Claudia not to marry Martin. She should’ve listened. Steve says marriage is a sacred institution, a gift from God, but what sane person would enter into such a contract
with my brother, the prince of darkness?
    I wish I could go away. I wish I was unreachable. But I can’t and I’m not. I am a breastfeeding mother. I have a baby, a girl of three – then a gap, a big black hole of a gap
– and another one of nine. I have a good husband who loves me and my girls. Unfortunately, he also loves his parish and lives in hope that I will do likewise. Tonight – despite
supposedly having a few days off – he has gone to the church hall to show his love to the Ladies Fellowship by speaking to them on the topic: ‘Identifying Your Gifts’.
    Come with me, Steve said. Martin can babysit. We should make the most of this situation.
    But I could not leave my children with Martin. Not because I don’t trust my brother – which of course I don’t – but because Martin chose that moment to sneak out the
house. We heard the front door close and looked at each other.
    He’s gone to the pub, Jeremy informed us, eyes fixed on the telly, grimy hand gripping the remote. He could be gone for some time.
    So Steve went to the cold church hall to drink tea with the women of the parish and I stayed in and baby-sat for four children, drinking Horlicks with Jeremy on our new leather sofa, watching Emmerdale. I never knew so much went on in Yorkshire.
    It’s been raining but, thanks to the stepping stones and some very faint solar lighting, I can pick my way in the dark across the sodden grass without sinking. I wish I
could call the sodden grass a ‘lawn’ and make Dad proud of me but that claim would be reckless. We have a typical South London garden, a long, thin strip