The Illustrated Mum Read Online Free Page A

right? There was this video I saw at that sleepover I went to, and there were thesegirls in a house, and they played these real witchy tricks on another girl, so that when she got out of bed she stepped into this great squirmy mass of spiders and slugs and snakes, and she screamed and starting running, and all these
other
snakes dropped on her head and writhed round her neck and down inside her clothes’
    “Shut up, shut up!” I said, shrieking‘and yet it helped. We were suddenly just us playing a scary game and it was almost fun.
    I hadn't ever seen any horror videos but I was quite good at making them up. Star told me this story about a dead man who comes back to kill all these kids and his fingers are like long knives so he can rip people in half.
    “I've got a better ghost, a
real
one. Mr. Rowling!” I said triumphantly.
    Mr. Rowling was the old man who lived upstairs. He had this illness when we first moved in here and he knew he was dying and he said he was going to leave his body to medical science. I'd had to ask Star what that meant and when she told me it had given me nightmares, thinking of medical students cutting up all these little bits of Mr. Rowling.
    “Mr. Rowling couldn't be scary. He was quite a nice old man,” said Star.
    “Yes, he might have been nice when he was alive, but he's really really scary now, because those medicalpeople cut out his eyes so he's just got horrible bleeding sockets and they've sawn off great strips of his skin and torn out his liver and his kidneys and left a big mess of intestines sticking out all smelly and slimey, and all the rest of him is rotting away so that when he walks around little moldery bits of him fall off like big dandruff. He wishes and wishes he hadn't left his body to medical science because it hurts so badly so every night he rises up off the dissecting table and he trails messily back to this house where he liked living and he's maybe upstairs right this minute. Yes, he is, and he's thinking, I like that Star, she was always nice to me, I'm going to go and see how she is, and he's coming, Star, he's slithering along, dripping maggots, getting nearer and nearer. …”
    Something creaked and we both screamed. Then we sat up, ears straining, wondering if it was Marigold back at last. But then we heard the whoosh of the boiler in the kitchen. It was just the hot water system switching itself on.
    “Oh well,” said Star. “We could just go and have a bath in a minute.”
    “Let's have one more look round the flat. She could have crept in while we were cuddled up. We could have gone to sleep without realizing it,” I said.
    We both padded all over the flat though we knew there wasn't a chance Marigold was there. So then we went and had a bath together, because the waterwasn't hot enough for two baths. It was like being little kids again. Star washed my hair for me and then I did hers. I'd always longed to look like Star but I especially envied her beautiful long fair hair. Mine was mouse and it was so fine it straggled once it grew down to my shoulders.
    I suppose Star looked like her father and I looked like mine. Neither of us looked like Marigold, though we both had a hint of her green eyes.
    “Witch's eyes,” Marigold always said.
    Star's eyes were bluey-green, mine more gray-green. Marigold's eyes were emerald, the deepest glittery green, the green of summer meadows and seaweed and secret pools. Sometimes Marigold's eyes glittered so wildly it was as if they were spinning in her head like Catherine wheels, giving off sparks.
    “What if Marigold’ I started.
    “Stop what-iffing,” said Star. “Hey, I thought you fancied yourself as a hairdresser? I've still got heaps of soap in my hair.” She tipped jugfuls of water over her head and then started toweling herself dry.
    I watched her.
    “Quit
staring
,” Star snapped.
    I couldn't help staring at her. It was so strange seeing her with a chest. I peered down at my own but it was still as