Paradise Read Online Free Page B

concealing a secret pattern. And beyond that, carpet takes over, not the rough burlap mats that mark your knees and wear holes in your socks, but actual soft, sage-green carpet.
    “Don’t just stand there all night,” says Mum. “Come on.”
    I turn to look at her. Trying to read her. But all I can make out is impatience and cold.
    “I’m hungry,” says Finn, and he instinctively stoops to scoop up the mail. “Can we have pizza?”
    “It’s too late,” Mum says, laughing. “And I don’t even think they deliver food here. It’s not like London. People cook.”
    Finn shrugs and heads down the hall. To check the fridge, I assume. I turn back to Mum, still framed in the doorway, her hair a halo, the wind and rain a
Wuthering Heights
backdrop to the wild Cathy standing before me. I hesitate. But I need to know.
    “Are you OK?” I ask.
    Mum tips her head to one side. As if she might tell me a secret. But instead, she rolls her eyes. “I’m knackered,” she says. “And this wind is hideous.” She slams the door behind her and follows Finn.
    The fridge is empty, but Mum starts rooting in cupboards. “Pasta?” she says, holding up a half-full packet of penne.
    “With what?” asks Finn.
    She looks again and finds a bottle of ketchup and a tin of tuna. Finn makes a face. But she kisses it away. “It’ll be lovely,” she says. “We ate it all the time when I was a student.” And she opens the packet and pours it, clattering, into an expensive-looking saucepan from an overhead rack.
    “Can I look around?” asks Finn.
    Mum nods, dropping the packet without thought into the bin under the sink. Finn disappears into the house, his feet a soft thud on the carpet, fading up the stairs.
    Mum looks at me. “Go on,” she says. “You can go, too, if you want.”
    So I do.
    Finn finds it first. I hear him call, “Dibs,” and I know he’s claiming the best bedroom. The biggest one. Or the one with the sea view. Or the secret passage.
    But the secret’s bigger than that.
    The walls are covered with certificates. Awards for swimming, for rugby, for rowing. Silver trophies glint and wink on polished shelves. And by the bed a stack of comics sits waiting to be read.
    But not by Finn. By Will.
    The room looks like it hasn’t changed since the day he died. The bed made. The curtains drawn. His shoes lined up neatly in a row against the wall. A shrine to a boy who went before I was even born. And I realize she lived like this for sixteen years. Eleanor. My grandmother. One child gone away. And one dead. Nothing more than ghosts.
    But ghosts haunt you. And I think of Mum downstairs. And I run.
    “Mum,” I blurt.
    “What?” Mum looks up. But her face is serene. She’s seen nothing.
    “I . . . It doesn’t matter.”
    Mum shrugs and lights the gas stove. And I watch her moving around this kitchen, like she’s never been away. Like it’s hers. Yet it’s so clearly not. The surfaces are uncluttered, the painted oak cupboards free of tacked-up photos, the countertops clean, no knife tracking its surface because someone can’t be bothered to find a chopping board. I wonder about the last time she was in here. And I wonder where she’s put the memories. If she’s boxed them away. Or left them behind like so much unwanted furniture.
    Finn comes back full of things he’s found, the elephant’s tusk and the stuffed bird, and
can he have the bedroom at the back?
Mum smiles, says he can have anything he wants. And as we sit down to eat, she calls it our banquet, a feast fit for a king. And I smile and think,
This is OK; this is good.
She’s good.
    It’s gone eleven when we’re done, plates piled unwashed on the drainer, ketchup trailing a syrupy drip down the glass bottle onto the table, water puddle on the floor where I turned the tap on too far. Already we’re making our mark.
    “So, bed,” announces Mum.
    “No,” protests Finn. “I want to see the garden.”
    Mum laughs. “It’s too dark, and you’re