Read Weaveworld for Free Online Page B

bottom of the tall-boy, hoping to chance upon the present.
    In her haste, she pushed the door wide – and something wild-eyed lurched out of the darkness towards her. She screamed. It mocked her, screaming back in her face. Then she was running towards the door, tripping on the carpet in her flight, before hurtling downstairs. Her mother was in the hallway –
    ‘What is it, Suzie?
    There were no words to tell. Instead she threw herself into her mother’s arms – though, as ever, there was that moment when they seemed to hesitate before choosing to hold her – and sobbed that she wanted to go home. Nor would she be placated, even after Mimi had gone upstairs and returned saying something about the mirror in the tall-boy door.
    They’d left the house soon after that, and, as far as she could now recall, Suzanna had never since entered Mimi’s bedroom. As for the gift, it had not been mentioned again.
    That was the bare bones of the memory, but there was much else – perfumes; sounds; nuances of light – that fleshed those bones. The incident, once exhumed, had more authority than events both more recent and ostensibly more significant. She could not now conjure – nor would ever, she suspected – theface of the boy to whom she’d given her virginity, but she could remember the smell from Mimi’s tall-boy as though it were still in her lungs.
    Memory was so strange.
    And stranger still, the letter, at the beck of which she was making this journey.
    It was the first missive she’d received from her grandmother for over a decade. That fact alone would have been sufficient to have her foresake the studio and come. But the message itself, spindly scrawlings on an air-mail paper page, had lent her further speed. She’d left London as soon as the summons had arrived, as if she’d known and loved the woman who’d written it for half a hundred years.
    Suzanna , it had begun. Not Dear nor Dearest. Simply:
Suzanna ,
Forgive my scribbles. I’m sick at the moment. I feel weak some hours, and not so weak others. Who knows how I’ll feel tomorrow?
That’s why I’m writing to you now, Suzanna, because I’m afraid of what may happen.
Will you come to see me, at the house? We have very much to say to each other, I think. Things I didn’t want to say, but now I have to.
None of this will make much sense to you. I know, but I can’t be plain, not in a letter. There are good reasons.
Please come. Things are different to the way I thought they’d be. We can talk, the way we should have talked many years ago.
My love to you, Suzanna.
Mimi.
    The letter was like a midsummer lake. Its surface placid, but beneath?; such darkness. Things are different to the way I thought they’d be. Mimi had written. What did she mean? That life was over too soon, and her sunlit youth had contained no clue as to how bitter mortality would be?
    The letter had been delayed, through the vagaries of thepostal service, by over a week. When, upon getting it, she’d rung Mimi’s house she’d received only the number disconnected tone. Leaving the pots she was making unfinished, she had packed a bag and driven North.

2
    She went straight to Rue Street, but number eighteen was empty. Sixteen was also deserted, but at the next house a florid woman by the name of Violet Pumphrey was able to offer some explanation. Mimi had fallen sick a few days earlier, and was now in Sefton General Hospital, close to death. Her creditors, which included the Gas and Electricity Boards, and the Council, in addition to a dozen suppliers of food and drink, had immediately made moves to claim some recompense.
    ‘Like vultures, they were,’ said Mrs Pumphrey, ‘and her not even dead yet. It’s shameful. There they were, taking everything they could lay their hands on. Mind you, she was difficult. Hope you don’t mind my being plain, love? But she was. Kept herself hidden away in the house most of the time. It was a bloody fortress. That’s why they waited, see?