Read Megan 3 for Free Online Page B

crisply. ‘And that’s all you need know about him.’
    An hour later we’d eaten our potatoes, the place was looking like a rubbish dump again and Jack was sitting under the table wailing. I’d put him to bed once and he’d screamed and screamed as if he had a pain, so I’d had to get him up again. I’d tried to sit him in his high chair while we ate, but he’d cried so much that Mum had told me to get him out of it and let him do what he wanted for ten minutes, just so we could eat in comparative peace. Being under the table and playing with our shoes had amused him for two minutes, then I’d got the quacking duck out again which had given us another couple of minutes, but now he was full-on wailing, tired and miserable, rubbing his face with his blanket.
    I looked at him. His face was red and the whole of the front of his sleeping suit was wet with dribble, which meant he was teething. The health visitor had told me he was probably going to cut several teeth at once and I should be prepared for some disturbed nights.
    Mum cleared her plate and got up. ‘I’m going outtonight,’ she announced. ‘So I’m going to put the water on and have a bath.’
    Ellie and I looked at her in astonishment.
    ‘Mum! Have you got a date?’ Ellie asked.
    ‘Is it George Simpson?’
    ‘Don’t look so surprised,’ she said to us. ‘I’m not completely over the hill, you know. People of my age are allowed to go out on dates.’
    ‘Where you going?’ I asked.
    ‘Just out in the country for a drive and a drink,’ she said. ‘Can you clear up in here, Ellie?’
    ‘I’m going out too!’ Ellie said. I shot a look at her – not with that boy again, surely. She knew exactly what the look meant. ‘I’m only going over to Neema’s to watch a video,’ she added.
    ‘That’s not fair!’ I said immediately. ‘I’ve already cleared up once today.’
    Mum got up. ‘I don’t care who does it. Sort it out between you,’ she said, going into the bathroom.
    ‘I’ll do it tomorrow!’ Ellie disappeared into our bedroom at the speed of light and seconds –
seconds
– later I heard a carefree ‘Bye, everyone!’ and the front door close behind her.
    There was a moment’s silence while I looked at the amount of washing-up I had to do, and then Jackstarted wailing again. A sort of tired and moany wail that, I knew from bitter experience, could go on for hours.
    Friday night, I thought. The weekend starts here. Yippee.

Chapter Six
    It was Sunday evening, Jack was in bed, Mum and Ellie were both out again and I was bored.
    Yawning heavily, I flicked from channel to channel on the TV. Nothing! I had homework to do but I’d started reading it – ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ by T. S. Eliot – and couldn’t work out what was going on. What did it all mean? It didn’t seem much of a love poem to me. And apart from old Prufrock I had washing, cleaning, ironing and washing-up to do and I didn’t feel like doing them, either. OK, at least Mum was out with George Simpson and so off my case, but with Ellie out as well it was deadly dull. There was no one to talk to – no one, even, to moan with about the stuff on the telly. It was all very well Ellie growing up and Mum going off and having a life of her own, but it didn’t seem fair that they both had to do it at the same time.
    I wondered if it had been like this for Mum after Dad had left. Ellie had been a baby, then, and I’d beenabout five, so until she’d started work she’d had no one grown-up to talk to for years and years. And no social life to speak of either – not until now, when this George person had turned up. But that, said a little voice inside me, was what happened when you had children. You had to put them first; make
them
your life. Everyone said so.
    Sometimes, though, it didn’t seem enough. Sometimes? Mostly.
    I flopped down on the sofa and stared across at the horrible yellow-gold curtains, which had been hanging there ever since I