The Girls Read Free Page A

trees! Staring at them!
So we went inside then because I felt too shy to stay out there on my own. It’s raining today so the garden’s empty. Is it raining where you are? Do you have a garden? Are you allowed out of bed? Are you even in a bed? I wish I knew more. I wish I could understand why you’re there and what they’re doing to you and how you’re feeling. I wish we could come and see you. Are you lonely? Do you remember? Do you remember anything? I’ve drawn you a picture of me in case you can’t remember my face any more.

And if you can’t remember what Grace looks like, it’s basically the same as me except her lips are fuller and her hair is two shades darker. And she’s got a little freckle by her eye that looks like a teardrop.
I love you, Daddy. Get well soon.
xxxxx
    ‘OK, girls.’ Adele put out her hands to gather up the exercise books handed to her by her children. ‘Lunchtime.’
    ‘What are we having?’ asked Fern, uncurling herself from her usual position on the blue armchair, scratching at the stubble of her shaved temples.
    ‘Soup,’ said Adele.
    ‘What sort?’ asked Willow, uncrossing her legs and getting to her feet.
    ‘Chicken noodle.’
    ‘Can I go to the shops and get myself a sandwich?’ asked Catkin, her hands folded into the cuffs of her jumper and held to her mouth, pensively.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Please. I can buy it with my own money.’ Her blue eyes were wide and beseeching.
    ‘No. I don’t want you going anywhere. We won’t see you again.’
    ‘Oh, come on, where the hell am I going to go in the middle of the day?’
    ‘I have no idea, Catkin. You are an eternal mystery to me. But I’m not letting you go to the shops. And you should be saving your money for things you actually need rather than wasting it on expensive sandwiches.’
    ‘It’s my money.’
    ‘Yes. I know. And it’s good for you to learn to budget and prioritise. And while there’s a huge pan of perfectly good soup on the other side of that door, it is crazy for you to waste your money on crappy shop-bought sandwiches full of additives.’
    Catkin rolled her eyes and dropped her baby-animal stance, her arms falling angrily to her sides. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Bring on the fucking soup.’
    Adele and her girls had their lunch in the kitchen, loosely arranged around the big farmhouse table that was one of the few things left behind from her in-laws’ inhabitation.
    It was the same table that Leo and his brothers had sat around as boys and it still bore scars and marks left there forty or more years ago, added to now by Leo’s own children.
    Catkin sat with her long legs stretched out along the bench, her back a C-shaped hump, causing her to turn her head forty-five degrees in order to reach her soup bowl. Fern sat straight-backed as always, rhythmically spooning the soup into her mouth, her body language giving nothing away, her ears taking in every last thing. Willow, meanwhile, kept up a running commentary, her soup getting cold in front of her, a habit she’d had since toddlerhood. In fact, until she was about nine years old Adele had spoon-fed her, slipping the spoon between her lips every time she paused for breath just to get the blessed food into her.
    ‘What’s for pudding?’ she asked now.
    ‘Pudding?’ said Adele. ‘You haven’t started your soup yet.’
    ‘Yes, but the thought of pudding will incentivise me to eat my soup.’
    ‘No, stopping talking for more than thirty seconds is what you need to do. And anyway, there is no pudding.’
    Willow gasped and put her hand dramatically against her heart. ‘Are you serious?’
    ‘Well, there’s crumble but you won’t eat crumble, so …’
    ‘Not even any biscuits?’
    ‘Just those oaty ones you don’t like.’
    ‘I’ll eat an oaty biscuit,’ she said. ‘If that’s all there is.’
    ‘That’s all there is.’
    ‘Right then.’ She picked up her spoon and started shovelling soup into her mouth.
    Fern looked at her in