Weathering Read Online Free Page A

steps going down to another room. Inside, there were thick orange curtains and shelves full of books and boxes. A row of glass birds. A toolbox with the lid open: a hammer and screwdrivers and broken watches inside. Jars and jars of silver pins on the desk. More photographs on the walls. One of the windows had swung open and rain was blowing in. She crossed the room to close it, then heard the scrabbling right behind her. She turned round. The window banged. Nothing for a long minute. Then the noise again. Her legs tingled. She needed to pee, urgently. The sound came again and she licked her tooth. The window rattled, banged shut, then creaked open. Something moved behind the chair. She stayed very still. Then a grey shape hurtled past her legs, skidded and ran out of the door. Hoarse grunts and a faint hiss. Its tail bent at an angle. A squashed, startled face.
    Pepper ran after it; back down the hall where the cat had scrabbled under the kitchen table. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Come here.’
    The cat turned to look at her. There was a bit missing out of one ear. Ribs showing above a droopy belly. Big paws. Matted grey fur like a threadbare carpet. It hissed again. Pepper stepped backwards and the cat galloped past her, back down into the low room and jumped out of the window.
    It was too dark to see where it went. Something roared and thumped. The river. It sounded like it was in the room. She closed the window, then knelt on the deep ledge and looked out. Dark humps of grass, the mass of all those trees. One tiny light in the distance. Her breath steamed on the cold glass. There was a quivering wail from outside. Was that what an owl sounded like? She had never heard one before. A shape moved down by the river – her mother. But then the lights clicked on and she heard her mother close the front door, take off her coat and stamp her shoes, saying: Where are you? The lights are working now.
     
    In the kitchen, her mother opened cupboards and drawers. ‘There’s got to be something we can eat,’ she said.
    Pepper sat at the table wrapped in a blanket, which smelled like someone else’s soap and biscuits. Outside, the sky was very dark and there was a single star among all the murky clouds, like a peephole that looked out into space. If she tipped back and concentrated on the star, it felt like she was getting sucked right out there. She tipped further and further. ‘What doesn’t make sense,’ she said, ‘is how space is supposed to go on for ever and ever,’ and her voice sounded higher and different to usual.
    The fan heater they’d found rattled loudly. The fridge was back on and there was a sour smell coming from it. Her mother didn’t go near it. She didn’t look over when it shuddered, stopped, then started up again. She didn’t look at anything; not the papers, or the bits of plastic and wires, or the notes stuck all over the walls. She kept her coat on and stared into the cupboard.
    Usually they would have unpacked by now. Her mother would be running the bath, the bathroom filling with steam and lavender. She would be saying things like: this is exactly right, I’ve got a feeling about this place, I think it’s going to work out. Pepper would have laid out her precious things in the room she was going to sleep in.
    Her mother crouched down and opened a drawer. ‘Nothing but bags of bird seed in here,’ she said.
    ‘I saw a cat,’ Pepper said. There was still rain in her mother’s hair, which made it look very dark.
    ‘There must be about seven bags,’ her mother said.
    ‘In a room with thousands of books and pictures.’
    Her mother stood up, then reached into the highest cupboard. She brought down a tin and a lot of dust. ‘Don’t go in that room at the moment, OK?’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘God knows how old these things are,’ her mother said. She found the tin opener and opened the tin and poured it into a pan, then clicked something and a bright blue flame roared up. The kettle shook as it