Boy in the Tower Read Online Free

‘I’m home. I’m home.’
    There was a stale smell in Mum’s bedroom. It wasn’t unpleasant exactly, but neither was it clean or fresh. An image of Mum, ready for work, appeared in my mind. Her clothes were neat and they smelled nice, like flowers, and what I think clouds might smell like.
    ‘Ade,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Be a good boy and go and play in the sitting room, will you? I’m so, so tired. I’ve got to sleep some more. Then I’ll come out, OK?’
    ‘You’re always tired all the time,’ I said. ‘Mum, do you think you should go and see someone?’
    ‘Someone? What do you mean?’ Mum’s voice sounded sharp, like the screech of a violin.
    ‘Someone . . . like a doctor,’ I said.
    ‘I’m just tired, Ade. I have to sleep,’ she said. ‘That will make me feel better. A doctor can’t help me.’ Just saying those few words seemed to make her more tired.
    ‘They might, Mum.’
    In answer, Mum rolled away from me. I walked round to the side of the bed she was facing. She wasn’t even asleep. She was just staring at the wall. Maybe all this time I’d thought she was sleeping when she wasn’t. She was just staring at the walls, unmoving.
    ‘Mum,’ I said, but her face remained expressionless. ‘Mum!’ I insisted, but she didn’t even flinch. ‘Get up. You have to! You have to go to work!’ Again I thought of Mum dressed up all nicely, like she used to be.
    At first I thought she hadn’t heard me but then I saw round, swollen tears roll down her cheeks.
    ‘I can’t, Ade. I can’t go out there.’
    ‘But what about your job?’
    ‘I told them I’m not going back. It happened . . . it happened . . .’ Mum’s breathing was quickening as though she couldn’t get enough air. ‘It happened just by the shop.’
    ‘What did, Mum?’ I said. ‘What happened?’ I’d not dared to ask her that again since the night I’d come home to find her bleeding and injured.
    ‘They were there,’ she said simply, and she rolled over, away from me, and her shoulders shook with her sobs. I put my hand on her and felt the vibrations up my arm, all her pain racking her body. After a long time she was still and I trod softly out of the room and left her to sleep.
    Before she started crying, I’d felt cross with her and I hated it. Part of me knew she couldn’t help it but another voice had whispered into my ear:
Is she trying to get better? Why won’t she try to get up?
    But now, I only felt achingly sad and alone.
    I switched the television on and turned the volume up high so Mum would hear it through the walls. We used to watch television together all the time. She’d watch my programmes and I’d watch some of hers too. She used to really like cookery shows so I flicked through the channels to see if I could find one. If she couldn’t see it, she could at least hear what they were cooking.
    There was nothing like that on, though, so I put on the news. They were talking about an old abandoned pub that had fallen down. I recognized the pub straight away. It was right by my tower. I walked right past it to go to one of the bigger shops. It was one of those tall, old-fashioned pubs but it had been empty for a while and its windows had been boarded up. Last time I’d walked past I’d noticed that plants had started growing out from in between the bricks. They had grey-green leaves and purple flowers that clumped together to look a bit like an ice-cream cone.
    It was reported as just one of those strange, bizarre happenings that no one could explain. Someone or other was cross because they had just bought it and had big plans for it. And now it was just a pile of rubble.
    Then the newsreaders started talking about something different and I realized how loud the voices from the television were and I felt bad that I had turned up the volume so high in the first place. I pressed the
down
button on the remote control and made the voices get quieter and quieter until they disappeared