The Museum of Ordinary People by Mike Gayle

Author:Mike Gayle [Gayle, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529344752
Amazon: B08R89B82X
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2022-07-06T23:00:00+00:00

25.

Then

Since the call from the charity shop manager yesterday, this supposed diary of Mum’s had been all I could think about. Mum wasn’t at all the sort of person to keep a diary. She was far too practical and pragmatic for that. I’d kept one briefly in my teens after getting one from Luce for Christmas but I’d never stuck with it. After a week or so of documenting every mundane detail of my life I’d grown bored and instead it had become a repository for doodles and to-do lists. I’d tried again in my mid-twenties, after spotting a particularly alluring day-to-a-page diary in Paperchase. It had a pale green silk cover and marbled end pages, and was so exquisitely beautiful that even though I couldn’t strictly afford it, I’d found it impossible to resist. I think I managed to record my daily thoughts in it for all of three days before I gave up and it eventually joined the small but not insignificant pile of beautiful abandoned notebooks that now lived in a carrier bag in the wardrobe.

Getting in the car, I drove over to the charity shop and, as I entered, was grateful to see the mean manicured volunteer was nowhere to be seen. The personable young man in her stead greeted me with a smile when I asked to speak to the manager, before pointing me in the direction of the back room. The manager, a tall, grey-haired woman who carried herself with the air of a retired teacher, seemed to know who I was straight away.

‘Here you go,’ she said, handing the diary to me. Holding it in my hands, I stared at it blankly. It was about the size of a paperback, the cover, a navy-blue faux leather, embossed with the words ‘Five-year diary’, in gold lettering. It looked worn and well used, the gold edging on the pages had faded in places over time, but it failed to ignite a single spark of recognition until I flicked it open, and felt my heart lurch at the sight of Mum’s unmistakable neat boxy handwriting.

‘So, it’s yours then?’ asked the manager.

I nodded mutely.

‘Well, that’s good news. You wouldn’t believe the things we come across in bags of donations: false teeth, money, car keys, the lot. I’m just glad we were able to reunite you with it.’

Once outside I sat in the car for a while, turning the diary over in my hands. Part of me was desperate to open it up straight away and read it, to trace my fingers over the words she’d written, to hear her voice in my head and feel close to her. But another part of me, the part that had felt uncomfortable going through her private correspondence and her underwear drawer, felt like it was wrong, an intrusion somehow. This was the dilemma before me – to read, or not to read? – and I wrestled with the question all the way home, but as I pulled up outside Mum’s I saw two burly men knocking on the front door and the question slipped away.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.