Read Phosphorescence for Free Online Page B

Cactus. He’s mental too.’
    Wildly excited, Cactus hurls himself into the water and swims across the inlet, diagonally because of the current, yapping his enthusiasm for this brilliant game. Nell and I laugh together as Cactus leaps out and shakes himself, twirling fast to catch his tailand nibble it before bouncing onwards in search of the stick.
    â€˜But he’s mental in a dog-mental way,’ says Nell. ‘Not like your parents. I wonder if you will come back to stay with your dad much?’
    â€˜Of course I will, and if he’s away, I’m sure the Christies will let me stay with them. Or Jack and Grandma.’ I hook my thumbs into the front pockets of my jeans and walk on again, absorbed by a new thought. ‘Wow, I wonder what they will say. I can’t believe Mum is doing this.’ And I wonder how long she has been planning in secret without thinking what she is doing to everyone else.
    Jack and Grandma say nothing about Mum, although Grandma doesn’t draw breath through the lunch she invites me to on my last day. Just me, not Mum or Dad or both of them, which is a bit odd. I leave our house just after midday. Dad is warming up some baked beans. Mum is upstairs packing, and I feel as though we have already left.
    Grandma makes roast chicken and apple crumble, even though today is Wednesday and that is what we always have for Sunday lunch.
    I keep catching her glancing at me with narrowed, anxious eyes. When it’s time for me to leave, she hands me a basket containing a tin of flapjacks and three linen tea towels depicting the village church.
    â€˜Here, take this for your mother.’ She looks searchingly at me. ‘People never remember about tea towels when they move.’ Her voice is steady; only herhands twisting around the basket handle reveal her distress. It is too much. I fling my arms around Grandma’s neck, breathing her familiar china-tea scent, my face soothed in her soft grey jersey.
    â€˜I’ll come back soon, I promise.’
    â€˜Of course you will, and I shall look forward to it.’ Grandma is so calm, her eyes are bright, but she stays calm and smiling when she waves me off from her front door.
    Jack walks back across the marshes to Staitheley with me. The tide is in when we reach the quay, lapping at the gangway, filling the village with the whisper of water.
    â€˜There’s a bigger tide coming at the weekend,’ Jack says, ‘and I won’t have you to measure it for me this time, will I?’
    His cap is jammed down over silver-white hair, and his eyes are a paler blue than the sky. I tuck my hand in his arm.
    â€˜I bet it’ll be as high as the window on that house. It’s got to be this time.’
    â€˜No, not this year. We won’t see another flood like that for quite a while now.’
    I love Jack’s flood rescue stories.
    In the nineteen fifties, the water rose to the windows of Lilac Cottage where I live now. Mrs Stoddart, the doctor’s widow who lived there then, had been rescued by Jack along with her three poodles, Jessica, Barbara and Anne, a set of coffee cups and her wedding dress. I drew a picture of Jack rescuing her when I was about seven, the first time Jack told me the story, and it hangs in Grandma’s kitchen, next tothe cat-shaped coffee pot I bought her when I was nine on a trip to London, and the three boats her boys made her when they were about the same age.
    Jack stands with me on the doorstep of my house, and I look past him at the marshes. Everything feels suddenly so big and important. I am the focus of everyone’s attention in the drama of my family. Suddenly all I want to do is go over to the Christies’ and curl up with Sadie on the sofa.
    Jack hugs me.
    â€˜It’ll do you good,’ he says gruffly. ‘You should get away and find your own place in the world. Sometimes Staitheley is too full of ghosts and the people can be swallowed by memories. You