{"id":806,"date":"2018-05-02T16:27:37","date_gmt":"2018-05-02T16:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/?page_id=806"},"modified":"2019-08-10T12:54:28","modified_gmt":"2019-08-10T12:54:28","slug":"listen-with-mother","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/?page_id=806","title":{"rendered":"Listen with Mother"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listen with mother – from ‘Listen with Mother’ published by Silverhill Press, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sit there, Loo-see. Sit. Don\u2019t moof.<\/em><\/p>\n

Greta\u2019s fingers like a witch\u2019s. Pointing. Angry.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m hunched up against the cold, my bare knees like old stones. Behind me our wooden stairs yawn up into the darkness. A smell of greasy mince in the air. Dust and beeswax polish. My socks wrinkled and white in the gloom. There\u2019s a money spider on the step. Close to the edge of the green stair-carpet. I hate spiders but money spiders are OK; they\u2019re too small to be scary – they don\u2019t scuttle. I watch the spider drop from one stair to another. Now it\u2019s found the piano in the sitting room below.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a quarter past two. One ding of the church clock. <\/p>\n

The radio is playing in the living room. Distant. I can\u2019t hear the words and I can\u2019t see my brother curled up on the sofa. He\u2019s been a good boy today. Not me. Greta says I\u2019m bad. I refused the mince. I made patterns with it on the plate. I closed my mouth to it.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t make me, you can\u2019t. You\u2019re not my mummy. <\/em><\/p>\n

A long time on the step, the yawning space behind me a thick black now. Like the cloak in the dressing up box. The spider is gone. Listen with Mother<\/em> is finished. In a few hours Mummy will be home. But I won\u2019t say. I\u2019ll keep my mouth closed against the words I want to speak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listen with mother – from ‘Listen with Mother’ published by Silverhill Press, 2019 Sit there, Loo-see. Sit. Don\u2019t moof. Greta\u2019s fingers like a witch\u2019s. Pointing. Angry. I\u2019m hunched up against the cold, my bare knees like old stones. Behind me our wooden stairs yawn up into the darkness. A smell of greasy mince in the … Continue reading Listen with Mother<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":761,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/806"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1036,"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/806\/revisions\/1036"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bronwengriff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}