46.Chapter 157(5)-英文小说

Dear Christopher,

Well, I said I'd write to you every week, and I have. In fact, this is the second letter this week, so I'm doingeven better than I said.

I have got a job! I'm working in Camden, at Perkin and Rashid, which is a Chartered Survayors. Thatmeans they go around looking at houses and work out how much they should cost and what work needs tobe done on them and how much that work will cost. And also they work out how much new houses andoffices and factories will cost to build.

It's a nice office. The other secretary is Angie. Her desk is covered in little teddy bears and furry toys andpictures of her children (so I've put a picture of you in a frame on my desk). She's really nice and wealways go out for lunch together.

I don't know how long I'll stay here, though I have to do a lot of adding up of numbers for when we sendbills out to clients and I'm not very good at doing this (you'd be better at it than I am!).

The company is run by two men called Mr. Perkin and Mr. Rashid. Mr. Rashid is from Pakistan and verystern and always wants us to work faster. And Mr. Perkin is weird (Angie calls him Pervy Perkin). Whenhe comes and stands next to me to ask a question he always puts his hand on my sholder and squots downso his face is really near mine and I can smell his toothpaste which gives me the creeps. And the pay isnot very good, either. So I shall be looking for something better as soon as I get the chance.

I went up to Alexandra Palace the other day. It's a big park just round the corner from our flat, and thepark is a huge hill with a big conference center on the top and it made me think of you because if youcame here we could go there and fly kites or watch the planes coming into Heathrow airport and I knowyou'd like that.

I have to go now, Christopher. I'm writing this in my lunch hour (Angie is off sick with the flu, so we can'thave lunch together). Please write to me sometime and tell me about how you are and what your doing atschool.

I hope you got the present I sent you. Have you solved it yet? Roger and I saw it in a shop in Camdenmarket and I know you've always liked puzles. Roger tried to get the two pieces apart before we wrappedit up and he couldn't do it. He said that if you managed to do it you were a genius.

Loads and loads of love,Your Mother
xxxx

And this was the fourth letter

23rd August

Dear Christopher,

I'm sorry I didn't write last week. I had to go to the dentist and have two of my molars out. You might notremember when we had to take you to the dentist. You wouldn't let anyone put their hand inside your

mouth so we had to put you to sleep so that the dentist could take one of your teeth out. Well, they didn'tput me to sleep, they just gave me what is called a local anathsetic which means that you can't feelanything in your mouth, which is just as well because they had to saw through the bone to get the toothout. And it didn't hurt at all. In fact I was laughing because the dentist had to tug and pull and strain somuch and it seemed really funny to me. But when I got home the pain started to come back and I had tolie on the sofa for two days and take lots of painkillers. . .

Then I stopped reading the letter because I felt sick.

Mother had not had a heart attack. Mother had not died. Mother had been alive all the time. And Fatherhad lied about this.

I tried really hard to think if there was any other explanation but I couldn't think of one. And then Icouldn't think of anything at all because my brain wasn't working properly.

I felt giddy. It was like the room was swinging from side to side, as if it was at the top of a really tallbuilding and the building was swinging backward and forward in a strong wind (this is a simile, too). ButI knew that the room couldn't be swinging backward and forward, so it must have been something whichwas happening inside my head.

I rolled onto the bed and curled up in a ball.

My stomach hurt.

I don't know what happened then because there is a gap in my memory, like a bit of the tape had beenerased. But I know that a lot of time must have passed because later on, when I opened my eyes again, Icould see that it was dark outside the window. And I had been sick because there was sick all over the bedand on my hands and arms and face.

But before this I heard Father coming into the house and calling out my name, which is another reasonwhy I know a lot of time had passed.

And it was strange because he was calling, "Christopher. . . ? Christopher. . . ?" and I could see my namewritten out as he was saying it. Often I can see what someone is saying written out like it is being printedon a computer screen, especially if they are in another room. But this was not on a computer screen. Icould see it written really large, like it was on a big advert on the side of a bus. And it was in my mother'shandwriting.