The Square

The Square by Rosie Millard

Book: The Square by Rosie Millard Read Free Book Online
Authors: Rosie Millard
George pulls his mother’s bra out of the pocket of his hoodie and inspects it, turning it over in his hands. What a construction, he thinks. All those straps and hooks and hard metal bits, covered with frills in order to look soft. If you’re not wearing it, what could one do with it? He has no intention of giving it back to her. He assumes it’s hers anyway. Doesn’t know who else it could belong to.
    He gets a pair of scissors from his desk. He wants to deconstruct it. Those pointed cups would look awesome in his Star Wars desert assemblage, quite honestly. They could be alongside the Pods and the Lunar Landing Craft. Actually, he thinks, breathing heavily, his mouth moving with the excitement, they would look like those sand dunes that C3P0 walks over at the beginning of… one of the films, he can’t remember which one, but his mind is alive with possibility. Anyway, playing the piano to a film showing his Lego pieces in action would be awesome, he knows it.
    He picks up the scissors and prepares to liberate the cup from the strap of his mother’s underwear. It is harder than he thinks; he is not ready for the tough white plastic below the cup. How do ladies wear this sort of stuff? Doesn’t it hurt them?
    After a few minutes of concentrated effort, he is rewarded with two separate moulded cones of coffee-coloured lace, supported by seams and curved pieces of white plastic. He tosses away the straps in a bin. George likes his room to be tidy.
    He enjoys knowing where everything is in his room, like a pair of scissors or a protractor. So he can get right down to work with whatever is uppermost in his mind, be it a Wombles book, or building his Lego. Actually, scrap the Wombles book. He liked the first two, but felt that after that, the series ran out of steam. His father insisted on reading all seven to him, however, so he was forced to listen for practically the whole of the Autumn Term last year, but did so from politeness rather than actual interest. He was aware that this book, the Wombles, was something his father had ‘grown up with’ and so had to be experienced again. Parents were like that, George knew. Always keener on things they had known when they were young. Well, not always a bad thing. It worked with Lego, at least. Because both his father and mother had played with it, and knew it, and weren’t afraid of it, they were always okay about buying him more of the stuff. Whereas if it had been a new thing, he suspected they would have regarded it with suspicion, as they did with anything electronic.
    He sighs, idly scratches his hair, positions Cup One beside his Droid Destroyer and looks at it. It sort of worked. If you could forget where it came from. Maybe if you built some sort of covering frame around it, to hold it in position, that might work. He’d attend to that later. He puts Cup Two in a drawer, replaces his scissors in the Deloitte pen holder (which he had been given by his father after a conference, along with a bag, a pen and a baseball cap), and saunters downstairs.
    As he reaches his parent’s room he wonders how many other bras his mother has in stock, as it were. He pushes open the door and walks in, inhaling the strange sensation of adult privacy which he found always lingered in the bedroom of a parent, anyone’s parent, but most of all, his.
    He toys with opening his mother’s top drawer, running his fingers along it, but then sees the door of the ensuite bathroom is slightly ajar.
    George loves going into his parents’ bathroom, because it it is frowned upon by his parents, and he is never allowed to go there. “You have your own bathroom, darling,” his mother would say to him. “That ought to be enough. Honestly! When I was young, I had to line up with my sister and we had to share a bath… ” and on and on she would go like that.
    But here he is, suddenly, in the forbidden room. It’s exciting. George looks round, wondering which of the attractions he ought to

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