Mike Read Online Free Page A

often. Maybe that was part of it, but there was more.
    And it had to do with his swimming.
    Gretchen was dozing on the rug at her feet as she sat in the brown velvet lounge chair Tony had picked up one day from a garage sale.
    â€œIt’s like new,” he’d said. “just right for my study. And it was only forty dollars.”
    His study. It was the room she came to when she needed tofoel close. To him. She sat in his chair, surrounded by his books, looking out over the folds he had loved to watch. Feeling his presence, she closed her eyes and slept.
    The dog stirred for a moment, to move its head a little closer to her feet. Then it too closed its eyes.
    A few hundred metres to the south on a steep section of Elizabeth Drive, the diesel roar of a huge eighteen-wheeler cut through the silence of the early afternoon as it changed gears and belched a plume oo black smoke into the clear sky.
    But Riny heard nothing.
    She was dreaming of love.
    â€¦ And lizards.

10
MOST PEOPLE
    â€œWhy are you training?”
    She had a knack of asking me awkward questions while I stood, dripping, in the cold wind at seven o’clock in the morning, then staring at me while I tried desperately to think up an acceptable answer.
    I thought of one. “I don’t know, really.”
    Okay, so it’s not one of the world’s most original lines. But I was tired. And cold. And Riny had put me on a spot. I found it hard to lie to her, so I tried to avoid questions I didn’t want to answer, and most of the time, she let me. But not this time.
    â€œOnce,” she said, “when Gretchen was just a puppy, she fell into the pool and she was too small to climb out. She paddled around for a long time before Tony noticed her and we fished her out.’ ’
    I waited. There had to be more.
    There was. “Even she knew what she was swimming for, and she’s just a dog. You’re a little bit smarter than a dog, I think … Why are you training so hard?”
    Okay, why not?
    â€œYou’ve got to promise not to tell Mum.”
    She just nodded, but I knew it was a promise, all the same.
    So I told her about Shane Thomas.
    That afternoon, we were sitting by the pool, watching the sun on the water, and talking. About everything and nothing. And about school.
    â€œMost people don’t understand loneliness. They are never really alone,” she said.
    I’d been talking about how I felt. Left out; cheated. Stuck in a place I didn’t want to be, among a whole pile of people who couldn’t really give a damn whether I was there or not. She had that far-away look in her eyes. I’d seen it before. It was as if she was watching something on an invisible screen; a replay of some incident in her past.
    â€œCome with me,” she said. Then she got to her feet, and walked slowly out through the side gate to the front of the house. “You see that field over there, the one behind your house?”
    I nodded.
    â€œI remember, once, not too long ago, maybe a year or so before you came, there used to be a horse. An old horse, it was, not too well looked after. It stood in that field all day and all night, grazing and flicking away the flies. Probably it was too old to be of any use. Its bones showed through its skin and it … drooped. We used to watch it sometimes, especially early in the morning. Tony always loved the mornings …
    â€œSo, one day, not long after sunrise, along came this dog. A stray, I think. But it doesn’t matter … It came up behind the horse. Straight up to it. And the horse got nervous; it bucked a little, and kicked out the way horses do when they’re scared. The dog backed off.”
    I watched her face. She was staring off across the field, but looking into the past.
    â€œBut it didn’t go away. It circled around to the front of the horse. A few metres away. And it sat down, just facing the horse. It sat there for some time; a few minutes,