Rule Breaker (Mixed Messages Book 1) by Lily Morton

Author:Lily Morton [Morton, Lily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-08-16T15:00:00+00:00

Three days later, on Christmas Eve, I sit at the big table in the kitchen of my family’s farmhouse. It’s a beautiful day that comes very rarely in December. The sun is bright and cold, shining through the low windows and glancing off the masses of photo frames littering the Welsh dresser. They trace me and my siblings seemingly through every stage of our development and are set randomly amongst the beautiful, warm, clear colours of my mum’s Poole pottery collection.

The radio is on in the background as we wait for Pop Master on Radio Two. My mum and I have been doing it for years, and even after I left home we’d still text each other, gloating and smug if we’d beaten each other. A pile of ironing is resting on the corner of the kitchen table, and on top, a small tabby cat called Katie is slumbering happily.

I stare down at the wooden surface of the table. It’s older than any of us, and belonged to my dad’s grandmother. It brings back so many memories of family dinners and sitting at it kicking the legs while I tried to do my homework.

If I look carefully I can find my brother’s initials on one corner and the words, ‘Dylan is a giant poo head’. He’d carved it when he was seven and I was five, and apparently, I’d been aggravating him. The aggravation had increased for him when my dad had found the carving, but for some reason my mum had refused to sandpaper it out and still laughs when she sees it.

A cup of tea appears in front of me, and my mum runs her hands through my hair, giving me a whiff of lilac and linseed oil. It’s her smell and the scent of our childhood surrounding me. It had been there when I’d fallen and skimmed my knees, right up to the embarrassed, hot tears when my first love had supposedly broken my heart.

“Nearly time,” she hums happily, looking at the ugly wall clock made by my sister. It’s the only artistic thing that any of us have ever done, and my mum loves it. “Ready to get your arse handed to you with my superior music knowledge?”

“Dream big,” I snark, and she gives her big, raucous laugh that makes the brown and grey curls of her hair jiggle and bounce.

She reaches into a cupboard and removes the cake tin with the picture of Charles and Diana on it. She’d loved Diana, declaring her a free spirit who’d been crushed by the oppressive palace machine, and had made me go with her to London to chuck flowers at Diana’s coffin as it had passed. It had been both touching, and hideously embarrassing.

I’d tried to use the excuse of having to go to school to get out of it, but my mum had declared loudly that her children would not bow down to the oppression of the Department of Education. Luckily my dad had written a sick

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