Read Glass for Free Online Page B

the proud disseminating of said information. My method was to start off on the day’s ‘featured article’, and keep clicking through articles until I felt I had learnt everything I could take in that day. I became, to coin a word, a Wikipedophile . As I lay in bed each day surfing and eating my weight in Dutch waffles, I became fat (and as my vocabulary improved, corpulent).
    Over those first months, my grief wore in and I felt a little give in the shoulders. If grief had an equivalent of the Schmidt sting pain index, it might have relaxed from a 4 down to a 2. 21 I felt guilty, in case it meant that I had begun to care less, but I was also seized regularly by a vague ennui. For all that Mum might have approved of my project, my life seemed to have lost its track. I decided that the thing to do was to retrace my steps. Whenever I used to lose something, my mother always told me to retrace my steps.
    I went to the milk depot. They looked like they were doing a roaring business. In fact, there was a brand new sign saying they had started offering long-life, the bastards.
    I walked back past the school with its tessellated fence. There were no children playing today. It must be shut for the Easter holidays. A Rice Krispies Squares wrapper was caught in the fence, and a cherry tree had been snowing over in the corner near the vegetable patch. People ambled purposelessly by. I suppose most people don’t have somewhere to be every minute of the day. At least, not in Salisbury, they don’t.
    I marched onwards until I reached the green by the cathedral and stopped to look up at the spire. I thought about my mother, the Russian doll, lying in two. My eyes watered a little – from the cold breeze. The clouds swam faster, and I began to feel a little nauseous as I stared at the tip of the spire. Again, I saw a red light flash on its tip. I wondered what it was for.
    â€˜For the aeroplanes,’ said a voice. I looked to the source of the sound, which was a small lady with short curly white hair and hands clasped like a Grecian key. 22 I recognised her as Dean Winterbottom, who had given the service at the funeral.
    â€˜Do aeroplanes land near here?’ I asked, a little dazed.
    She smiled as if I had made a joke.
    â€˜Ugly little bugger, isn’t it? Still, height regulations. The council insists.’
    â€˜It looks like an aerial for receiving God’s thoughts.’
    â€˜I’d never thought of it like that,’ she said. We stood in silence for a little while, looking up at the spire together. Then I felt her eyes on me. ‘Would you like to come in for a cup of tea? It’s rather cold, and you’ve been standing out here for a good hour now.’
    â€˜Have I? Well—’ and here I looked back the way I had come to indicate the busy and fulfilled life that was waiting for me, ‘I’m sure I could stop for a cuppa.’
    We went inside the cathedral. I stared at the rich colours of the glass and imagined a great choir chanting. I wondered whether I was allowed to come and hear the choir if I wasn’t a proper Christian.
    â€˜You see how it’s thicker at the bottom?’ Dean Winterbottom said, pointing to one of the larger panes. ‘It has flowed like that over time.’
    â€˜That isn’t really—’
    â€˜Not many people know, but glass is actually a very slow liquid.’
    â€˜No,’ I said, knitting my brow, ‘That isn’t right, I’m afraid. Everyone says it’s a liquid, but it’s just the way they used to make the glass. Sorry.’
    â€˜Oh,’ she said.
    â€˜Sorry,’ I said. ‘I wish it was true.’
    For some reason I started crying. She looked at me kindly and held me by the shoulders.
    â€˜Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you that tea.’
    Sitting in a little back office on a couple of worn and comfortable chairs, we talked a little about my mother. The Dean