While My Eyes Were Closed Read Free

know why she went for Peter either. Odd to think that a sister of mine should have such questionable taste. I suppose that’s the one good thing to have come out of all of this. They’ve given up asking me to stay. You can only ask someone so many times, you see. And at least now I don’t have to feel embarrassed about declining. Everyone deals with these things in their own way. That is what Jennifer says.
    Melody miaows again. I let Matthew name her. Even when he was young I could trust him to do things like that. He was always such a sensible child. He chose it because she used to walk along the keys when he was practising the piano. I suppose the name overstates Melody’s musical capabilities somewhat but it does have such a lovely, lyrical tone. It would have been a nice name for a girl. I often used to think that. Melody or Meredith. You don’t hear those names nowadays. They say that all names come round again in time but I have not heard those two. I have several Olivias who come to me for piano lessons, which is nice as it was my mother’s name. And at least two Graces – though I have noticed that those who are called Grace rarely possess the quality themselves. No Melodies or Merediths though. Or Muriels, come to that. I think my name is one which has been consigned to history, never to be brought out again. There was a film about a girl of the same name some years ago. Awful thing it was. Australian. A rather uncouth young woman playing the supposed bride-to-be. I remember sitting through the whole thing and not laughing once while those around me appeared to find it hilarious. I do not go the cinema very often. Perhaps that is why.
    Melody miaows for a third time. That is my cue to get up. I put on my slippers, pull my dressing gown over my nightdress and walk over to the sash window. I draw back the curtains and twist the blinds just enough sothat I can see the world but it can’t see me. I look beyond the rows of terraced houses to the line of trees in the distance. Matthew used to love living so close to the park. It made up for not having a proper garden. Only a paved yard at the back and a small, neat front rose garden, not the sort a child could play out in.
    The park provided open space for him to let off steam. Not that he used to charge around it like so many children do nowadays. But he could play on the grass. We would sit and make daisy chains. Little boys would sit still and do such things in those days. He would wear the crown of daisies on his head for the rest of the day, telling anyone who asked that he was the prince of the fairies. Never the king. Always the prince.
    I sigh and turn away. Sometimes it is too painful to remember him like that. When these empty-nesters complain about missing their offspring once they have gone to university, I don’t think it is the eighteen-year-olds they miss. It is the children they once were.

3

Lisa
    As soon as I pull into Mum’s road I become sixteen again. You would have thought after twenty years I would have broken free of the place. Not so. I hear Alex saying, ‘You can take the girl out of Mixenden . . .’ He never gets any further than that because I always give him a clout. It’s not that I’m embarrassed about where I grew up. Not really. Simply that I like to think I’ve moved on. I’m not known as the ‘chippy girl’ in Warley for a start. We don’t even have a chippy in Warley. Although I smile as I remember Mum saying, ‘Well, what on earth are you going to do for your tea on Friday night?’ when I told her we were moving there.
    Still, there’s something reassuringly familiar about my old road. The cluster of precariously angled Sky dishes, the broken cooker dumped in the front gardenof number 12 that’s been there for as long as I can remember, the kids hanging about on the corner, mouthing off at each other and taking the piss out of whichever one of them hasn’t got the right trainers on.
    I swerve to avoid a pile of