Being Here Read Online Free Page A

she hugged her daughter, dabbed a foamy sud from the sink on the tip of her nose.
    â€˜Just you and me, now,’ she’d say. ‘Just you and me.’
    Then Leah watched evening settle over a parched landscape and counted stars as they freckled the night. Sometimes she sat at her mother’s side and listened to her read from a thick book. The stories were difficult to understand and she couldn’t see the life in them. Then her mother put her in a tub near the fire in the front room, wrapped her in thick towels that smelled of flowers, tucked her into the big bed and read her a fairy story.
    After Leah’s mother closed the bedroom door, Adam came. Leah lay in the dark and felt him arrive, though she never quite saw the moment he appeared. They talked quietly, though Adam rarely said much. He sat on the end of the bed and listened as the girl wove stories into the dark. She never heard him leave either. But when her mother opened the door later and carried Leah to her own bed, he was always gone.
    There was safety in routine. The nights of summer flickered past.
    One evening, Leah’s mother didn’t read her a story at bedtime.
    Instead, she lay down next to her. Warm air wrapped itself around them.
    â€˜Leah,’ said her mother. ‘I want to tell you about a special book. You have heard stories from it. Every Sunday, when we go to church and sometimes in the evening. It is not a book you’ve read by yourself yet, because it’s too old for you. But you will. It tells wonderful stories. And it teaches us wonderful things.’
    Her mother felt underneath the covers and took her hand.
    â€˜This book is about love. And one of the things it teaches us is this: I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.’
    The girl liked the music in the words. But they didn’t make sense in her head.
    â€˜Love never ends,’ her mother continued. ‘Prophecies will pass away, tongues will cease, and as for knowledge, it will pass away. Now faith, hope and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’
    The girl didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing.
    â€˜You love me, don’t you, my angel?’
    She knew the answer to this.
    â€˜Yes, Mummy,’ she said.
    â€˜And I love you too. More than I can say.’
    Silence gathered. A swollen moon dusted the room with silver. The girl thought her mother had fallen asleep, but it seemed her voice was only resting.
    â€˜Just a little more from this book. It says love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. What this means is that if you love someone you must never tell them lies. Do you understand? I will never lie to you and you must never lie to me. Only then can our love last for always. Do you promise? Do you promise never to lie to me?’
    â€˜I promise, Mummy.’
    â€˜And I promise, too. We will love each other always. We will not lie.’
    Leah’s mind circled the world of sleep. She felt its warmth stealing her thoughts. There was something lurking in her mother’s words. A danger, like the shadowy evil in a fairytale forest, but she couldn’t pin it down. She recognised the language of fear, though. It filled her mother’s voice and made it thick. But she knew she could make it go away. Words were power.
    â€˜Yes, Mummy,’ she said.
    It was easy.

    â€˜Sounds like you were happy as a kid,’ says the girl.
    Once again, I’ve almost forgotten she is here. My mind freezes around the burning image in my head. A small girl cocooned in love and darkness and stories. I press the pause button of my memories, and it is now, only now with time stilled and mind lucid, that the thought explodes like a soft and soundless bomb. That far away night was the last moment I’d experienced happiness like