Weathering Read Online Free Page B

boiled.
    ‘Why can’t I?’ Pepper said. Then tipped back again in her chair. Who cared anyway, they wouldn’t be here very long.
    Her mother spooned coffee into a mug and it came out in fat lumps. She drank two huge gulps while it was still steaming. She made Pepper a cup, weak and with lots of sugar. It tasted dusty and of burnt meat but it warmed her insides. The windows fogged up. Pepper leaned her head against the table and when she woke up the kitchen smelled of familiar cooking smells and there were butter beans in tomato sauce, soft biscuits to dip in and a bowl of tinned peaches. Her mother could make a feast out of anything. When she cracked eggs there were sometimes two yolks inside.
    ‘Finish these,’ her mother said, pushing her bowl over.
    Pepper shook her head. ‘You eat them,’ she said. ‘You haven’t eaten very much yet.’ Although her stomach growled. Her mother left the bowl right there in front of her, so in the end there was nothing to do but eat the rest of the peaches. Her mother was watching her very closely; sometimes she did that and Pepper hated it, so she tilted her face up and dropped the peaches into her mouth one by one, like a bird eating orange fish. The windows shook and wind shrieked through the gaps. A drop of water splashed onto the table. They both looked up and saw a dark patch spreading. The lights flickered.
    ‘I forgot what it was like,’ her mother said quietly.
    There were crumbs and a bean on the front of Pepper’s shirt. Her head drifted down onto the dusty table and she sneezed, her nose dripped and she wiped it with the blanket. The lights flickered again and rain hurled itself against the windows as if it was trying to get in. She had to stay awake, there was something she needed to ask, but the blanket warmed to a fug of breath and body heat. She found the butter bean and ate it.
     
    She hardly remembered being carried upstairs and put in bed. More blankets heaped on top. Drifting in and out of sleep, she swam up from a dream where everything kept moving, nothing would stay still, a tree turned into a cat snarling. Her feet were cold from sticking out of rucked sheets. It was completely dark, as if the whole world had disappeared. No fuzzy orange glow, no car lights sweeping across the walls. She must have called out because her mother came in, still dressed, and rubbed her arms and talked to her.
    ‘I couldn’t find the key,’ Pepper told her.
    When she woke again she was alone and it was still dark. She sat up and looked around the room, could just make out a small chair, a mirror, bare walls – where was the picture of the silver mountain, where was the yellow clock? Then she remembered. No white birds cooing softly downstairs. Only a branch thumping against the roof. Blue covers with gold stars on. She turned over and tucked herself back under. The bedsprings crunched. A lump in the mattress where her shoulder needed to be. She kicked and turned. Back through the hall, there came a sharp, sweet smell, very faint, moving through the rooms.

Chapter 5
    Gas. The whole place stank of gas. Ada checked the hob, paced down the hall, then back into the kitchen again. Draughts kept the gas moving, so that at first it was stronger in the kitchen, then by the front door. Too tired even to yawn, head numb as if stuffed with reels of wool. The gas moved again. She followed it through the kitchen and into the larder with its empty shelves and slate floor. Squat orange bottles lined up against the wall. A faint hissing sound.
    ‘Don’t do that,’ she said. She shut the door. After a moment realised she’d shut herself into a tiny room full of gas. Opened the door again, and the small window as wide as it would go.
    The connector tube from the oven was crumbling, attached to one of the bottles with an elastic band. She turned the gas off, took off the tube and worked out the kinks. But when she went to reattach it, she saw there were two taps that looked exactly the