Split Second Read Free Page A

time and not losing mobile phones and remembering when someone’s told
you ten times already they need new shoes for school.
    Mum had been great at all that stuff.
    Not that I’d ever appreciated it.
    An image of her unhappy face, just before she’d turned away from me in the market, flashed into my head. I hadn’t even really wanted that stupid tattoo we’d been arguing
over.
    A miserable fury filled me again.
    ‘Charlie?’
    ‘I just didn’t want to join in earlier,’ I said, struggling to keep my temper. I knew that the rage I felt was out of all proportion. Karen had only been trying to be nice.
But, again, I couldn’t stop myself. ‘They’re your friends, not mine.’
    Karen gazed at me and, though she doesn’t look anything like Mum, for a moment I saw Mum’s sorrowful expression in her eyes.
    It hurt too much to look at her.
    ‘Go away,’ I said. And I slammed the door in her face.
    The next day was Saturday. I spent the whole morning asleep then the whole afternoon reading in my room, only coming out for some toast and a cup of tea. The kitchen was a mess
as usual: a huge splodge of trifle still lay on the floor, dirty plates from last night were stacked in the sink and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette stubs sat on the table. It was funny, I
thought as I wiped up the trifle, how Karen was always complaining about being poor, yet spent masses of money every week on her ‘cigs’, as she called them. I expected her to come in
and talk to me again at some point during the afternoon but she didn’t appear until the evening. I was truly bored by then, with another whole day stretching ahead of me before school on
Monday morning – and nothing to do.
    I was just poring over my bookshelves, trying to pick another book to reread. I used to have an e-reader with loads of more grown-up novels on it but Mum had pawned it just before she died
– so I was left with just the childhood books I’d loved from years ago. Right now I was rereading
The Suitcase Kid
by Jacqueline Wilson.
    I heard the doorbell, then voices. A minute later Karen knocked on my bedroom door. She didn’t smile as she asked me to come with her into the living room.
    ‘There are some people here to see you,’ she said.
    ‘What?’ Who on earth could be here to see me? I felt like refusing, but Karen was already heading for the living room. Anyway, I was curious.
    A man and a woman were sitting on the sofa. They stood up as I walked in. The man looked vaguely familiar, the woman less so, but I couldn’t place either of them. They smiled at me. I
glared back and the woman looked down at the threadbare carpet. Karen cleared her throat.
    ‘This is Brian and Gail,’ she said. ‘Your uncle and his wife.’
    My mouth fell open. Dad was a soldier who died in action when I was a baby and I’d only met his brother, my uncle, once or twice when I was younger. Brian looked different from how I
remembered him, more fleshy in the face with a definite paunch under his smart suit. I glanced at Gail. She was thin with a timid smile. I couldn’t remember her at all. Brian had gone to work
abroad when I was still very little. Mum had told me that he and my dad disliked each other and had hardly seen each other in years.
    ‘Hello, Charlotte.’ Brian strode towards me and gripped my hand. He pumped it up and down. ‘It’s a pleasure to see you again.’
    ‘Is it?’ I withdrew my hand. ‘If it’s such a pleasure, how come I haven’t seen you for, like, a million years?’
    Beside me, Karen gasped. Across the room Gail’s eyes widened. She looked horrified. I folded my arms, filling up with anger. How dare she act so shocked? She and Brian hadn’t even
come to Mum’s funeral.
    And then Brian laughed. A big, belly laugh. It transformed his face, softening all his features. I’d heard that laugh before. It sounded just like my dad’s in the films Mum used to
play of him. Of them together. When they always seemed to be