Weathering Read Online Free

her finger over the side.
    ‘It’s just flowers,’ Ada told her.
    ‘It says something,’ Pepper said. She squinted at the box and turned it upside down.
    ‘Let me have a look.’ It was probably just the date or something. Ada held the box up and tried to see in the dim hall. A Beloved Pet . She read it again. Her mother had been tiny – probably tinier at the end. But a pet box. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. So did neither.

Chapter 4
    The first cloud of dust hit Pepper and she sneezed, then her mother sneezed too, loud and sharp like she always did, so that it rang out twice in the empty hallway. Once, she had sneezed so loudly it had made a woman in a shop drop a bottle of milk. By the door, there were boots and umbrellas and a lot of knotty sticks. A long coat hanging down, like a person standing there waiting. Further up, sheets of wallpaper were peeling off and bending backwards in big arcs. A bony leaf rattled around their feet.
    ‘Hellooooo,’ Pepper said. To show she wasn’t scared.
    ‘The light switch is behind you,’ her mother said. ‘Can you see it?’
    Pepper felt along the wall by the coats. Her fingers brushed against cobwebs. She looked for the spider but couldn’t see one. She found the switch and clicked it but no lights came on. She tried it again, click, click, click, until her mother told her to stop. Then she said something about staying by the door, don’t go anywhere, looked like there might be loose boards, the ceiling could be about to cave in. She opened the door, wind rushed in and billowed the wallpaper, and then the door shut and she was gone.
    The house creaked in the wind. At first, all Pepper could see was the pale wall up ahead, but then it was easier to see other things: an open door further down the hall, a lampshade rocking in the draught. There were rows of photographs in frames along the wall and she stood on tiptoe to look at them. They were all birds and their small eyes were dark and bright as oil. Some of the pictures were brown, like tea had spilled on them, some were black and white, some were faded blues and greens. She followed them down the hall – there was a small bird on a branch, a blurred shape between trees, and then there was a tink tink sound, and on the floor a saucepan catching water dripping from the ceiling. Reminding her of her own full bladder.
    She turned and went through the open door and found herself in the kitchen. Tried the light switch but no light came on. The floor was brown and sticky. There was a table with a chair pulled out as if someone had just got up and left. Speckled grey tiles, dirty mugs and plates in the sink. The sink was full of brown water with leaves floating in it and a greasy sheen. Pepper put her finger in the water and the plates bobbed and looked like lonely faces that had been left behind. Everything had been left behind and it was like intruding. She jabbed the plates so that they clacked together.
    There was a rustling noise and she turned, expecting to see her mother, but there was no one there. The kitchen was quiet except for a clock ticking and the wind pressing against the window. There were notes stuck to the fridge. She squinted at the one closest to her. Blue with orange, blue with orange. What did it say? She knew it started with a ‘b’ at least. But words were devious; they twisted and played tricks so that you ended up writing, ‘I have brown hare’ and everyone laughing. What you had to do was look at them out of the corner of your eye until they turned blurry and almost disappeared, and then you didn’t have to worry about them any more. It was the same with cracks in pavements and clocks with heavy, swinging pendulums.
    The noise started up again, a sort of rustling somewhere in the house. She followed it past a closed door, past the stairs, making sure she stood on the carpet’s big flowers rather than the gaps in between them. The hall curved and at the end of it there were stone