Selfish People. Lucy English

      SELFISH PEOPLE

      

      Lucy English

       Copyright

      Fourth Estate

       An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain in 1998 by

      Copyright © 1998 by Lucy English

      The right of Lucy English to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      Lines from Mrs Robinson

      Copyright © 1968 by Paul Simon

       Used by permission of the Publisher

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      Source ISBN: 9781857027631

      Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780007484935 Version: 2016-02-29

      TO MY FAMILY

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Chapter Twenty-Six

       Chapter Twenty-Seven

       Chapter Twenty-Eight

       About the Publisher

       CHAPTER ONE

      This is a dream. I’m in the middle of a field making a daisy chain. The chain is long and curled round and round in my lap. Rachel, next to me, is knitting a picture jumper. Trees, long grass, buttercups, she is knitting the countryside around us. Knitting fast and the picture pours out of her hands. Now a piece of sky, now an elder bush. We don’t speak. The needles clack. I can smell the hot sun on the grass. The field is so full of daisies it’s bursting. The chain is longer. Then the jumper changes and the blue sky becomes grey and more grey. ‘Because I’m sad,’ says Rachel …

      She woke up and she knew she had to see Rachel. Across her room the geraniums cast grey shadows on the rug and this confirmed it; Rachel always wore grey. It was eight o’clock, too early for a Sunday morning, but Al was shouting at the children. Her dream snapped shut and she ran downstairs.

      ‘What’s going on?’ There was milk on the floor and Shreddies everywhere.

      ‘We were hungry,’ they wept.

      ‘It’s too much. They woke me at six.’ Al, in his stripy dressing gown, stood in the middle of the room picking damp Shreddies off his foot.

      ‘I was asleep,’ apologised Leah. She had done the wrong thing, again. He began to clean up, ineffectively. He had fair curly hair which he hadn’t brushed for days and it was now matted at the back. It irritated Leah.

      ‘Let me do it. You go back to bed.’

      ‘I