How I Live Now Read Free

the Diabolical and Damian the devil's spawn and they laughed but you could tell they felt kind of sorry for me, and Aunt Penn said Well Their Loss is Our Gain, which was nice even if she was just being polite.
    I tried to study her without being too obvious because I was hoping to get some kind of clue from the way she looked and acted about the mother I barely ever got a chance to meet. She made a point of asking me lots of questions about my life and listened very carefully to the answers like she was trying to figure something out about me but not in the way most adults do, pretending to listen while thinking about something else.
    She asked how my father was and said she hadn't seen him in many years and I told her he was fine except for his taste in girlfriends which was totally un-fine, but he was probably feeling lots better now that I wasn't around reminding him about it day and night.
    She smiled a funny kind of smile just then like she was trying to keep from laughing or maybe crying, and when I looked at her eyes I could see she was on my side which as far as I'm concerned made a nice change and I guess had something to do with my mother being her younger sister who died.
    There was a fair amount of arguing and talking at lunch and except for talking to me she didn't get too involved but kind of observed, and overall I'd have to say that the main feeling you got from her was that she was a little distracted, I suppose because of the work she was doing.
    A little later when all the others were talking she put her hand on my arm and said in a low voice just to me that she wished my mother were here to see how I'd turned into such a vivid person and I thought Vivid? that's a pretty strange word to choose, and I wondered if what she actually meant to say was Screwed Up. But then again maybe not because she didn't seem like the type to sit around thinking up ways to be bitchy, unlike some people I know.
    After looking at me for a few seconds more she put her hand up very gently and pushed the hair off my face in a way that for some reason made me feel incredibly sad and then she said in a regretful grave voice that she was sorry but she had to give a lecture in Oslo at the end of the week on the Imminent Threat of War and had work to do so would I please excuse her? She would only be gone a few days in Oslo and the children would take good care of me. And I thought There's that old war again, popping up like a bad penny.
    I didn't spend much time thinking about the war because I was bored with everyone jabbering on for about the last five years about Would There Be One or Wouldn't There and I happen to know there wasn't anything we could do about it anyway so why even bring the subject up.
    It was when I was thinking things like this that I sometimes noticed Edmond looking at me in his odd, listening kind of way and sometimes I looked back at him doing the same expression myself just to see what he'd say. But mostly he just smiled and half closed his eyes and looked more like Wise Dog than ever and I thought to myself If this kid turns out to be thirty-five I won't be a bit surprised.
    So that was pretty much all that happened on my first conscious day in England, and so far I was finding Life With My Cousins more than OK and a huge improvement over my so-called life at home on Eighty-sixth Street.
    Late that night I heard the phone ring somewhere in the house and I wondered if it was my father calling to say Hey I made a mistake sending my only daughter away to another country because of some scheming harpy's ruthless whims, but by that time I was too sleepy to bother getting up and wandering around looking for a keyhole to listen at. So as you can see, that old country air must be doing me tons of good already.

5
    E arly the next morning I was strolling around as usual in my unpleasantly populated subconscious when I heard Edmond's voice very close to my ear saying Daisy Wake Up! And there was his face right near mine