Read Monday to Friday Man for Free Online Page B

would sit on Mum’s bed and watch her get ready for the evening, powdering her nose and putting on lipstick. I used to go through her jewellery box and put on her high heels. They took it in turns to choose where to go. Mum likes weird food, called sushi. Dad eats curries. Mum loves ballet; Dad tells us he can’t stand watching men in tights dance. ‘Don’t ever marry someone like your mother!’ Dad advised my brother one evening after salsa dancing. ‘She’s now threatening flying lessons. I think she wants to kill me!’
    Since Mum has been pregnant they don’t go on their dates. I think Dad is secretly happy to stay at home. He likes having a bath when he gets back from the office. He pours himself a glass of something, I think it’s whisky, and takes it upstairs and locks the bathroom door.
    Before Mum was pregnant, Mum and Dad argued all the time. There was a lot of shouting. One time he told her she was too old to have another child and she threw her glass of wine at him. He said something about not wanting to have a baby with problems. Nick and I often shared bedrooms after their fights.
    Mum is old. She’s forty-two. She married Dad when she was twenty-seven.
    She and Dad have told us the story many times as to how we are miracle twins. I look over to my brother, watching the TV. I don’t like the way Mum cuts our hair. We both have horrible fringes.
    Seven years after they married they still had no children so they decided to adopt.
    The week that they were due to sign the adoption papers she found out she was pregnant with twins. ‘My seven years of bad luck had come to an end,’ Mum told us.
    After Nick and I were born Mum was too busy looking after us even to think about having another baby.
    ‘You’re pregnant?’ Dad had said in the kitchen. Mum had summoned Nick and me into the room to hear the news too.
    Dad poured himself a gin, drank it in one go. ‘Nick, Gilly, I need to talk to your mother alone,’ he said. We left the room, sloped upstairs, but remained seated on the top step, holding our breath.
    ‘Please be happy,’ we overheard Mum say.
    ‘You promised me we were being careful, Beth. What do you expect me to do? Jump up and down with joy?’
    ‘But, Will, when the baby comes you’ll change, I know you will.’
    ‘We agreed to stop at two.’
    ‘I’m bored! The children are at school and . . .’
    ‘Of all the underhand, selfish things you could have done . . .’
    I asked my brother what ‘underhand’ meant. Nick whispered, ‘It’s not nice, Gilly. Naughty, I think.’
    ‘I need this,’ Mum went on.
    ‘This isn’t just about you!’
    ‘Will! Wait!’
    The front door slammed. We bolted down the bedroom landing and into Nick’s room. We heard the engine revving. I looked out of the window, down at Dad’s car driving off into the night. ‘Do you want to sleep with me tonight?’ Nick asked hopefully. ‘You can have the top bunk?’
    With child number three, Mum hasn’t been feeling so well. She’s been going to bed in the afternoons and often asks Lisa to come over at weekends to play with us. Lisa likes coming round because she fancies my dad. Sometimes Dad takes us on the double-decker bus to the Natural History Museum or to Madame Tussauds and we have a pizza afterwards, with lots of pepperoni.
    Lisa clears the plates away. I stare at the telephone. All day long I had this funny feeling in my tummy that my headmistress, Mrs Ward, would call me into her office to tell me that Mum had died because she was so old.
    A key turns in the door. Nick and I look at one another. Lisa puts on some lipstick and squirts something smelly onto her wrist.
    Dad enters in his thick chunky jumper and scarf and sits down next to me. ‘I’m so sorry, Nicky.’ He shakes his head. ‘You’ve got two bossy sisters now.’
    ‘It’s a girl!’ I cry out, grabbing Dad’s arm and hugging it.
    ‘Yes, and she’s beautiful and healthy, and your mother sends you both the biggest