Free The Year of the Rat by Clare Furniss Page A

bath.’
    I think she’s going to try and stop me, that she’s guessed I’m just avoiding talking about Dad and The Rat. But instead she snaps the lighter shut and leans over to give me a
kiss.
    ‘You’ve earned a rest. Goodnight, love.’
    I look back at her as I leave the room. ‘Night, Mum.’
    She smiles at me through the shadows.
    But as I squeeze past the stupid pram and make my way up the stairs I can feel the panic rising. I can’t just walk off and leave her. I hurry back to the kitchen. ‘You will come back
soon, won’t you?’
    But I’m talking to the shadows. Mum’s gone.
    As I make my way downstairs after my bath, just to check Mum hasn’t come back while I was away, Dad arrives home, crashing the front door into the pram again.
    ‘You got a pram then,’ I say to him. ‘You sure it’s big enough?’
    ‘Ah,’ he says uncomfortably. ‘Yes, it arrived this morning. It is quite big, isn’t it? We might need to rearrange the hall a bit.’
    ‘Quite big? We could practically move into it. Why didn’t you just get a normal buggy like everyone else has?’
    ‘Actually, I didn’t buy it.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘It was . . . a gift.’
    ‘A gift? From who?’
    He hesitates. ‘From Granny.’
    ‘Granny?’
    ‘Yes.’
    I stare at him, imagining Mum’s reaction. ‘Well, you’ll have to send it back.’
    ‘Of course I’m not going to send it back. We need a pram.’
    ‘But Mum wouldn’t want
her
to buy us a pram.’
    ‘Rose is her granddaughter, Pearl. I know Mum and Granny had their differences, but Granny cares about us. She knows things are hard for us and she wants to help, that’s all. Mum
would appreciate that, I’m sure.’
    ‘No she wouldn’t. She’d think it was a betrayal. She wouldn’t want you to have anything to do with her.’
    He shakes his head. ‘She’s my mother, Pearl.’
    ‘Yes. And she hated mine.’
    ‘That’s not true. I know they didn’t see eye to eye, but Granny didn’t hate Mum at all.’
    ‘Yes she did,’ I shout. ‘You needn’t bother trying to cover it up. Mum told me all about it. Granny thought Mum wasn’t good enough for you and she was always
putting Mum down. She hoped that you’d split up. That’s why they fell out all those years ago.’
    ‘That’s not quite how it was.’
    ‘Oh really? Are you saying Mum was a liar now?’
    ‘No,’ he says. ‘Of course not.’
    ‘Well, that’s what it sounds like to me.’
    ‘Look, you’re upset. Can we talk about this later?’
    ‘Why?’ I turn away from him and stamp up the stairs. ‘There’s nothing more to say.’
    ‘This is it,’ Dad says as we walk through the hospital car park. He’s carrying the empty baby seat as proudly and carefully as if it already had a baby in it.
‘Can you believe it’s finally happening?’
    ‘No.’ I’m trailing behind, and he looks round at me to try and read my expression, but the sun is shining directly in his eyes. He waits for me to catch up.
    ‘I know this is strange for you,’ he says as we draw close to the huge revolving doors of the foyer. ‘I know you must be feeling anxious. I’m a bit apprehensive myself to
tell the truth. But honestly, love, once she’s home and you get to know her, you’ll feel differently.’
    I have no intention of getting to know The Rat, but I can’t be bothered to have another argument and the sharpness of Mum’s voice when we talked about The Rat is still fresh in my
mind. So I just let Dad talk. He’s so nervous and excited the words just keep tumbling out of his mouth. He looks different. Or maybe it’s that he’s stopped looking different. He
looks like Dad again; older, with silver hairs around his temples, lines around his eyes, but it’s like inside he’s remembered who he was before all this. I feel a pang of envy. I want
to know how he did it.
    ‘It’s going to be fine,’ he says as we go through the door and he puts his hand on my shoulder and for a tiny fleeting