Read Crossing the Line for Free Online

me.
    â€˜Sixth year, Geddes. That makes you almost a grownup.’ There was a sneer in his voice. ‘Sixth years are in school of their own free will,
boy.
If your free will can’t be bothered to turn up, get another life. Go flip a burger.’
    A bit more along those lines, and he let me go. I got the impression he was trying to needle me into a reaction,but I was better than that. All I had to do was stomach a year. All I had to do was protect my sister. Oh, and turn around my whole life and my educational prospects. Piece of piss. I didn’t have to be liked. Not by McCluskey and not by anybody else.
    Just as well, really.
    Slouching home, miserable and furious, I wished I’d dragged Allie back to school to share the bollocking. But then, nobody yelled at Allie. Even if I’d hauled her back by the hair – even tomorrow, if she deigned to turn up – nobody would. They’d probably offer the brat more counselling.
    At times like this, the only company I could bear was Lola Nan’s. I reckon that was because Lola Nan’s world made no sense at all, and sometimes mine didn’t either. She and I used to connect; we liked each other a lot. Perhaps, on some level, we still did.
    Or maybe I was kidding myself, but as I creaked open the rusting gate of our house I felt a desperate longing to see her, to bask for a while in her irrational, largely silent company. Lola Nan didn’t ask awkward questions (apart from, occasionally, ‘Where’s Geoffrey?’ – Granda having retired to his crematorium urn twenty years ago).
    When I was little, Lola Nan used to half sing, half hum to me to calm me down and stop me crying. Nowadays there was no singing but often she still hummed, tunelessly and for hours on end, and I found that just as comforting as I always had.
    Anyway, I’d had such a bad day I didn’t deserve for it to get any worse. But it went right ahead and did, because when I got home and slammed the door and went into the sitting room, Lola Nan wasn’t there.
    But Aidan’s mother was.

3
    There was nothing imaginary about Aidan’s mother. Often it seemed she was on the verge of being imaginary, even to herself. But not yet. Not yet.
    She and Mum were sitting opposite one another, Mum in Lola Nan’s stained armchair and Aidan’s mother in the best one. They held cups of tea, a biscuit perched on each saucer. Neither biscuit had been touched, so each was melting in a little crescent of chocolate against the hot china. Lola Nan must have been banished upstairs for the duration.
    The two women turned simultaneously as I pushed open the door, Mum with an expression of faint panic that wasn’t quite hidden by her sensible counsellor-of-the-heart exterior. Aidan’s mum wore her regular smile.
    She had a broad, bright and pretty face and she smiled a lot. She wasn’t just brittle, she was already broken andshe looked like she was held together only by an act of will. You got the feeling that if she stopped concentrating for a single second she’d disintegrate like some clever special effect, that we’d have to hoover the bits off the carpet like so much shattered china.
    I liked Aidan’s mum, and I felt sorry for her, sorry that she had to put up with Allie’s nonsense, but I could hardly say so.
    It wasn’t as if Allie was discreet. One day the poor woman had come upon my sister in the park, sitting on a bench hugging her knees and talking to thin air. Allie hadn’t even had the decency to lie about her invisible friend’s identity. The invisible friend’s mother had fled home in silent tears.
    â€˜Hello, Nick.’ Sunk in the armchair, Aidan’s mum gave me her bright and fragile smile. She always tried hard to be civil and friendly to me and I appreciated that.
    â€˜Hello,’ I said, and then, ‘Is it Allie?’
    â€˜Nick,’ said Mum, perfectly illustrating the expression