Chapter One - Part Five
Back at Sarah’s, and I was sneaking in the door – not that she wouldn’t hear me, the woman had the ears of, well, someone with very good hearing – hoping I might at least get two steps in the door before she started yelling at me.
Sarah was my adopted mother. My guardian, they called it, when they wrote letters from school and didn’t want to be stupidly insensitive. Her house was red-brick, black-slate roofed, with white-painted windowsills and a perfect neat garden. The picture postcard suburban home. She was queen of her castle and even when it was full of temporary foster kids running riot or trying to quietly smash mirrors over themselves – we got all types here – she always seemed to have a soft spot for giving me a hard time.
Of course, it was only because she loved me. Naturally.
Alarm bells were going off in my head by the time I made it up the stairs without being cornered.
I dropped the violin case reverently into the wardrobe – like it would make any difference if someone tried to rob the place, but it was a hard habit to break – and listened, carefully. There was nothing to hear, except the drone of cars zipping by outside. I felt like the mouse who stirred on Christmas Eve and shattered the perfect quiet.
I was too distracted by this new, startlingly silent development to notice the ever-growing pile of kink in my room, the foul staleness of the air that came from not having opened a window in three days – Sarah refused to enter in case it gave her some kind of infectious disease - the unmade bed. Distantly, I was aware of a random cat unfurling with a jaw-breaking yawn and a back-bending stretch from somewhere in the jungle-esque corner, then padding off through the door, pausing briefly to rub against my shin with an insanely loud purr, like I’d just cured into of a horrendous itch.
It didn’t feel like Sarah had just gone out for milk or been called to meet with a new foster kid. No, it felt like the calm before a storm.
I sighed in resignation. Knowing she was going to get me sooner or later, I thudded downstairs again, deciding I had better get it over with, instead o waiting for her to get so impatient and infuriated that I wouldn’t hear the end of whatever I’d done for a week.
Actually, since that happened most times I caused trouble – which could be the only reason for her mysterious silence right now – that happened anyway, so maybe this time I might even get blasted every day for a month. Great. I couldn’t wait.
She was in the kitchen. Nearer to the back door than I was, her glare hit me like a gale-force wind.
