Gloria Dont Speak – Lucy Apps

The house smells of air freshener. And then a warmer softer smell hidden underneath. Gloria goes inside. At first it seems dark but then she can see everything. There is a grey carpet on the floor. There are stairs. The walls are white. There is a picture of red and white flowers. There is a long black scuff mark along the wall. There is a wooden door that is half open. Gloria goes in. It is the living room. The TV sits on a yellow wooden cupboard. There is a clock over it, silver with gold lines instead of numbers.

There is a grey sofa and a grey armchair. There is a white computer on a desk in a corner of the room. There is a table. Over the table there is a big photo of the family. In the photo the children are younger than now, the boys are not tall and Salim don’t have a moustache. The children stand around Mr Miah and the mum. The mum is smiling.

Mr Miah is smiling too. He’s wearing a white shirt. Sumera is little, she has her hair in bunches and she is wearing a pink dress. On the table there is a blue-green folder and a pink exercise book and a stack of books and some pens and a watch. The watch is light blue with a light blue clear plastic strap. It has buttons on the side. The time is written in numbers.

11:02. The number 2 flicks and changes to a 3 as Gloria looks. She holds the watch up to her face and looks through the strap. The world turns blurry blue. She puts it down again and looks around. The ceiling in this room is higher than in her house.

The house feels open and clean. There is a light coming out of the ceiling with three light bulbs attached to it, like an upside-down tree. Mr Miah lived here. Mr Miah probably sits on this sofa, watching TV. She feels calm inside. Now she don’t think of Mr Miah dying on the pavement with all his blood all around him. She thinks of him sitting on the sofa holding a cup of tea and smiling. She looks at the window. The net curtains are thick white but she can see the park through them.

The boy on the bike turning round in circles. The bench where she likes to sit. She goes back through the wooden door and down the corridor. There is the kitchen. Inside the kitchen is normal things. An oven, a sink, cupboards and drawers. The cupboards are red-brown wood.

She concentrates on the circle of ketchup she’s squeezing onto her paper and the way the room smells of vinegar, and the oil that sits on the skin of the chips and shines her fingertips smooth. Jack’s house. Jack smiles at her and raises his can then sips from it and nods. Gloria looks down at the light gleaming on the red circle of ketchup. It’s Monday afternoon in July. It’s summer and she’s finished college and they haven’t had Christmas yet.

Jack eats his chips like he’s angry with the air in front of him. He picks up his can and takes swigs and puts it down again. He keeps on doing the same motion. He don’t just hold it in his hand. Gloria copies him with her Coke, picking it up and drinking then putting it down, her fingers all cold and wet from the tin. ‘Want a beer?’ Jack says.

Gloria don’t speak. ‘You can’t be a kid all your life,’ Jack says. Wanna beer wanna beer wanna beer. She plays Jack’s words over in her head, finding the rhythm. She rocks a little in time to the sound. Inside her mouth she runs her tongue over her teeth. She can feel her tongue on the inside of her cheeks and the hard dips and jags of her molars. Her teeth are warm from chips and sweet from ketchup. She don’t want a beer.

Jack has handed her his drink before and told her to take a sip. It was bitter and like metal. Not sweet. Jack watches her rock for a moment. When she don’t answer, he says, ‘Suit yourself.’ Mum won’t like Jack. Gloria already knows, she can guess. If Mum finds out about Jack she won’t let Gloria see him no more. And Gloria don’t want to stop seeing him. She walks the pavements by herself all day long in the heat, in her pedal pushers and Adidas trainers that are too small for her now, but she still likes them.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 53c07da2e7765da8
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 3,984,141 bytes (3.8 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 190
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 293.27 minutes
• Total Words: 58,654
• Total Characters: 308,942
• Average Words per Page: 308.71
• Average Characters per Page: 1626.01

Most Frequent Words

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