Chaos Clock Read Online Free Page A

We may as well do it now I suppose.”
    David heaved a theatrical sigh and carried the empty plate across to the sink. “Thanks, Claire. We’ll be in my room.”
    “Okay, Davie, just call me if you get stuck with anything.”
    “Ha ha.”
    “Cheeky brat!” Claire said in mock outrage. Being rude was their way of showing how fond they were of each other. Claire had looked after David for nearly three years now and they knew each other inside out. Before she’d come, once it was only Dad and him, there had been a succession of women who’d cooked and cleaned and picked him up from school, but none had lasted longer than a year, and most for only a fewmonths. The record shortest stay had been four days, but he couldn’t even remember that one; he’d only been five after all.
    They retrieved their bags from the hall, went into David’s bedroom and re-dumped them on the floor in there. Tiger, David’s cat, was curled up asleep among the tangle of clothes and duvet on his bed. He looked up when Kate and David came in and Kate went across to stroke him. “Hello, Tiger. Caught any mice?”
    To her surprise, Tiger flattened his ears and drew back from her, hissing. “Tiger? Come on, you know who I am.”
    But the cat jumped down from the bed and shot out of the room.
    “Why’d he do that? Is he all right?”
    “Weird. He usually loves it when you stroke him. Maybe you smell funny or something.”
    “Oh thanks.”
    “Not that you
do
smell funny; well, not to
me
anyway, but maybe to a cat …”
    “David!” She threw a pillow at him and five minutes of cheerful anarchy followed, before they settled down to the awful maths.
    ***
    “Kate, that’s your mum,” called David’s dad.
    “Thanks, Alastair. I’m just coming.”
    “Lucky for you,” said David. “I was just about to bankrupt you.”
    “No you were not,” Kate replied, pulling on herjacket. “Leave the board set up and I’ll prove it next time I’m here.”
    “Are you going to tell your mum and dad what happened to you at school today?”
    “Of course not! Don’t you dare tell your dad.”
    “Don’t worry.”
    In the sitting room, Ruth and Alastair were chatting as they waited.
    “Thanks for tea,” said Kate as she came in. “Bye, David, see you tomorrow.”
    “Remember about Saturday.”
    “Oh yes. Mum, we need to go back to the museum. I can go with David on Saturday morning, can’t I? There’s no football this weekend.”
    “Can’t see why not. This project had better be good, the amount of time that’s going into it.”
    ***
    After Kate had gone, David went through to the sitting room again, where his father was emailing friends in Houston.
    “Want to say anything to Kevin?”
    “Nah.”
    “I thought you two were friends.”
    “We were, but what’s the point of just emailing each other if we won’t see each other any more?”
    “That didn’t stop you emailing Kate from America.”
    “That was different. Think how long I’ve known Kate. Anyway, I knew we were coming back.”
    “We might not have.”
    There was a short silence.
    “You never told me that.”
    “I wanted you to see the place and get to know it without automatically hating it. You know you would have, if I’d said we might be moving there for good.”
    “So why didn’t we?” said David gruffly.
    “It was never more than a possibility. Things didn’t work out.”
    “Do you mind?”
    Alastair swivelled his chair around from the computer to face David properly. “I thought I would, but when it happened, or in fact
didn’t
happen, I was relieved. Once we were in Houston, I realised I didn’t want to leave Edinburgh. It was fun for a year, but only because I knew we were coming back. I found out about three months into the trip.”
    He smiled at his son. “Should I have told you all this before?”
    David thought for a moment. “I don’t know. It would have been nice if you’d talked to me about it, but I’m not sure I would have told me if I’d