V for Violet Read Online Free Page B

world, like I wanted me and Jackie to conquer the world. But Baba isn’t true and loyal and neither, I realise, is Jackie.
    Mum pokes her head around my bedroom door. ‘You all right, Violet? Me and your dad are off to bed now.’
    I’ve got the blankets pulled up to my chin, so it’s easy to pretend to be asleep. I just keep still and make sure my breathing is deep and regular. I can feel Mum hovering for a moment, probably trying to work out if she should come and stick her hand on my forehead to check if I’m properly ill or not. She obviously decides against it, because I hear the door close and a short while later the water pipes banging as she begins the nightly rinse out of her stockings.
    I close my eyes and try to ignore the knot that’s growing tighter and tighter in my tummy. I wonder what Jackie is doing right this minute. Is she out at another dance without me? Why didn’t she ask me if
I’d
like to go to the cinema tomorrow? Have I even crossed her mind at all tonight? The noise of Dad thumping up the stairs interrupts my thoughts. There’s the creak of bedsprings as he sits down to take off his boots. Mum says something to him and he grunts in reply. There’s the chink of Mum’s pot of cold cream as she puts it back on her dressing table. Then the usual groans and murmurs as they settle themselves down to sleep. It’s the same sounds every night. Nothing ever changes. They’re the sounds which have always comforted me and sent me to sleep. But they don’t help tonight.
    Instead, after it’s all gone quiet, I’m filled with a horrible empty feeling. I think of the room next to Mum and Dad’s. The room which used to be Joseph’s. It’s horrible and empty in there too, even though it’s still full of his stuff. Mum’s never been able to bring herself to change a thing in there. His bed is still made up, the blankets smoothed and pulled tight. His old feather pillow is still dented in the middle where his head used to rest. I bet if I could bring myself to look, there’d even be a stray hair or two. There’s a small wardrobe in the corner of the room, and all his clothes are still inside; there’s woollens folded on the shelves and some shirts and a couple of pairs of trousers hanging, all neat and pressed. It’s stupid and ghoulish and a waste of a room. Even Mum only goes in there to dust these days.
    I used to sneak in when I was younger, just out of curiosity. I’d rearrange the tin soldiers on the windowsill and look through the pile of dusty comics under the bed. There was a razor and a piece of mirror on top of his chest of drawers. And inside the drawers there were a few yellowed vests and a couple of balls of socks. I suppose he must have taken all his pants to war with him, cos there’s none in there. The room smells funny too, like sweaty feet and mothballs. And I always felt like I had to be quiet, in case I woke someone up. I took Jackie in there once, after she’d nagged me for an age.
    ‘Oh, Violet,’ she whispered. ‘I can feel him, can’t you?’ She walked slowly around the room with her head cocked to one side. She ran her hands across the bed. ‘I think he’s watching us, Vi,’ she said. She picked up the razor from the chest of drawers and turned it around in her fingers. When she put it down I had to move it slightly, back to exactly where it had been before she touched it. I remember feeling irritated with her, but I didn’t know why. Then she walked up to the wardrobe. ‘Shush,’ she said. ‘He’s trying to tell us something. Can you hear?’
    Even though I knew she was only mucking about, the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. She reached out her hand towards the wardrobe door. ‘Shush,’ she said, again. And for some reason we both held our breaths. I could hear the clock ticking, from all the way down in the front room. And suddenly, I felt my brother. Like
really
felt him. He was in the room with us. He was watching us, making sure we didn’t