Summerwater by Sarah Moss (top 10 motivational books .txt) 📕

hopes it turns out to be worth leaving all her friends. People will visit, won’t they? Justine’s bringing – dragging wouldn’t be quite fair but you can see she’s losing her temper – the second child out and the dad’s got the engine going and the wheels turning almost before the doors are closed. Can’t wait to get out of here, apparently. That’s it then, she thinks, the morning’s drama. Josh has probably gone back to sleep, which means that if she wanted to she could eat three of the baps herself, and if she takes him the last one on a tray with a bowl of cereal as well and a big mug of tea – well, he likes cereal, no need to say how many baps there were in the first place. It’s a pretty benign kind of faking.

always wolves

She steps out of the trees above the shore, nervous, ears cocked, her fawn a few paces back. The trees behind them shiver in the wind, cast off rain. In her mind there are always wolves, day and night, a pack of them slinking on the edge of scent and sound. They creep nearer when she sleeps, when she and the fawn bow their heads to drink, when the trees cluster to make hiding places. The wolves in her mind are fleet on land, fast as pike in water, hungry. They can scent her fawn from their hillside lair, from deep in the forest and they are coming, always coming.

She nibbles some leaves, to show the fawn what to do. They both glance back, into the woods.

a stone falling

IT’S LIGHTENING UP, Mum says, barely raining at all now, you’d better make the most of it and get your boots on, you need the vitamin D. I read about it, most kids in this country have a deficiency and it puts you at risk of all sorts, you need to get at least half an hour’s sunlight a day. But I’m busy, Lola says, it’s not sunny and the rain doesn’t look any different to me. She’s colouring in. You weren’t busy five minutes ago, Mum says, and there’ll be plenty of time to be busy later. You don’t want rickets, do you? Or MS like Judith down the road? Come on, Jack, you too, you didn’t want to come in from the beach yesterday, you can go back there now. It wasn’t raining as much yesterday, Jack says. It’s not raining now, says Mum, or barely. Come on, boots and coats the pair of you, you can’t just lounge around this room all day, you’ll go mad, we’ll all go mad. Lola looks up but Jack isn’t moving either, just lying on the sofa closing his eyes and trying to touch the tips of his index fingers together from outspread arms. Mum’s started pacing up and down again, French windows to kitchen door and back, twisting her hair up tight round her finger and letting it go, which means that sometime this afternoon she’ll probably start crying and apologising for crying and crying some more. Lola won’t go mad. She’s got a head on her shoulders, Lola, Dad says, take a fair bit to put her off her stride. She allows herself the purple, her second-favourite colour, for the girl’s trousers. Come on, says Mum, I mean it, get your boots on, you need to be out in the daylight or you’ll be ill, people don’t recover, you know, from MS. Jack misses and spreads his arms again. Lola outlines the trousers. Why doesn’t Dad have to go out, asks Jack. Dad’s doing some work, Mum says, remember? He did go out, sort of.

Dad took his laptop to the pub for the wifi. Might as well catch up, work doesn’t stop just because the boss is on holiday, we’ll be down another week at the end if I don’t keep an eye on things, book in the quotes and that. Mum gave up her work last year, so Dad says she can’t say anything about his. It’s not easy, running your own business, there’s no one else to blame if your cash-flow goes tits up.

Go on, Mum says, boots and coats both of you, and Lola sighs like Mrs Singh at school and puts the lid on her purple pen. Only promise me you won’t go on the big swing, Mum says, I don’t like that one, and you won’t go too near the water, will you? I thought you wanted us to go to the beach, Lola says, you know the beach is near the water, right, but Jack’s shaking his head. Lola, he says, please don’t. Just don’t go in the water, Mum says, and you stay off that swing, and watch out for the stones, they’ll be slippy. Yes, Mum, says Jack. Mum doesn’t go out enough to know that the stones won’t be slippy, it’s not that kind of rock, but the wooden steps will be. And Lola, Mum says, come straight back here if your chest feels tight, OK? You can see the next thing she says will be come back in, actually I don’t want you out in this weather, you know the rain starts you wheezing, don’t want you having an asthma attack when we’re all the way out here, and now she’s thought about it Lola does want to go out so she pushes her feet into the boots and jumps down the steps, pretends not to hear Mum changing her mind.

It is raining. A lot. You can hear it drumming. Lola feels her chest cramping as she breathes in cold and the smell of trees and earth and rain. She checks in her pocket for her inhaler. At first she thinks there are two in there and then she remembers that one of them is a lighter she found in Mum’s handbag, in the lining where Mum keeps the cigarettes they’re not supposed to