LITMIR.BIZ

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turning it round and round in his yellow-stained fingers like a marble egg; a kid playing with a tiny world. I turn my back on him and go.

      ‘And stay clear of Alec,’ Banks shouts after me. ‘I’m telling you!’

       9.

      Thought Diary: Dictionary: ‘Alchoholic: Pronunciation [al-kuh-haw-lik, -hol-ik] adjective: Of, or pertaining to, or of the nature of alcohol. Containing or using alcohol.’ Long-winded explanation for getting pissed too often. No chance with beer – it’s vile!

      By the next evening I’m starting to feel bad about hitting him. When the streetlights come on, Mum draws our heavy curtains against the cold and sweeps off to the kitchen. We’re having a dinner party. Mum is cooking a curry from scratch and Dad is shutting the back windows. It’s too cold to use the garden anyway.

      The year is on the turn for sure – it was freezing first thing. I’d left my bedroom window open and the chill woke me up before it was properly light. I didn’t mind in the end because when I checked my phone, there was a text from Joe:

      ‘Be yourself,’ it said. ‘You can’t be anyone else.’

      The silliness of it made me laugh and I texted back in the chilly darkness:

      ‘Be someone else. Anything’s an improvement.’

      To my surprise, he sent one straight back: ‘Love you just the way you are.’ And there we were, in our separate bedrooms before anyone else was awake, miles apart, but just a fingertip away.

      I got up when I heard Dad go downstairs and we sat in the kitchen eating toast. I tried to imagine Joe thirty years from now, but I just couldn’t. Dad looked like he’d been grown up for ever.

      Dad spent the morning sorting the back yard out, but had to give up. There’s all this timber out there from ages ago when he had an idea for a sort of awning we could sit under. Sam had been in one of his ‘good patches’ where he didn’t drink as much. He’d talked about getting a job or moving away, and when he came into a room I didn’t immediately look for the quickest way out of it. He’d been really keen to help Dad with the awning. Mum had in mind lights and rambling roses, but it never happened of course. It stayed a pile of wood under a blue tarpaulin. Sam started drinking again, and soon the ‘good patches’ stopped for ever.

      In the end the evening is okay. Ben and Matt come round and we eat at a new table Mum has just bought for the shop. It’s noisy and enough fun that the knot in my stomach unwinds. Mum is laughing – she’s had a glass or two of wine – and she leans into Dad’s arm, which encircles the back of her chair.

      Afterwards we play cards, and then let the chill air in from the garden while Dad makes coffee. By the time I see Ben and Matt off, it’s almost two in the morning.

      ‘Nice weather for polar bears,’ Matt jokes. ‘Good thing we’re just across the way.’

      He peers into my face. ‘Here if you need me,’ he says, and I open my mouth to tell him… but I don’t know what.

      ‘Yes,’ I say instead. ‘Yes, I’m all right.’

      I smile and watch them go, but when I glance down as I shut the door I see three cans right outside under the shop window. A stain runs from them into the gutter. A chill goes through me and I almost call out to Matt, but it’s late and what would I say that wouldn’t make him ask too many questions? Then he’d want to tell Mum and Dad, and they’d ask more. No. It’s probably nothing. Lots of people drop cans around here – they could belong to anyone, but somehow I know they don’t. I nudge them aside with my foot and they roll crazily across the pavement with a sound like Chinese gongs.

      It’s freezing in the hall now and I think of Banks. How does he keep warm? How does he wash or go to the toilet? What does he do for food? It feels wrong going back to the warm kitchen to scrape leftover food into our big bin. The table still holds dishes of creamy dessert and wineglasses with dregs of red wine. All Banks has is whatever nasty stuff he’s drinking. I wish he could have been here tonight, but let’s be honest, even sober, he’s not the sort of dinner guest Mum would have in mind.

      ‘Are you all right, Coo?’ Dad says as he feeds the dishwasher.

      ‘Yes. I’m just thinking,’ I say – and I am. I’m hatching a plan that’s making my heart beat faster with excitement. I’ve just remembered that tomorrow is Sunday, and Mum and Dad are going on a buying trip. It will just be me here. It’s the perfect time.

      My scheme almost goes wrong first thing, when Mum asks if I want to go with them. She stands in the doorway of my room looking awkward, more like a guest than a woman in her own home. ‘We wondered,’ she says, ‘if you’d like a trip out with us.’

      I look at her long fingers stroking the wood of the doorframe, at her hair where it’s come loose from its clip, and her eyes as they search mine. They’re creased at the corners but the wrong way up. Not laughter lines, that’s for sure.

      ‘I’d rather stay here,’ I tell her, but I wonder what I’d have said if I hadn’t got my plan. Whether I’d have gone with them and tried to mend the chasm that’s widened between us without any of us noticing until now.

      She goes to say something but then stops and just nods her head and goes. I hear her feet on the stairs and then the click of the front door. ‘Bye, Mum,’ I whisper.

      The silence in the house seems to rise like air pressure, and I hurry out, slamming my bedroom door behind me.

      I smuggle Banks in by the main front door like a fugitive, and he stops dead just inside so I have to push him to get the door closed. Even then he just stands there, sniffing the air like an animal brought indoors, checking out the danger spots. I squeeze past him then lead him by the hand into the kitchen where I make coffee as if I do it every day. When I press down the plunger on the cafetière and turn round, I notice, with a lurch in my stomach, that he’s disappeared. I want to trust him, and I do, but it is Mum and Dad’s house after all, and I know what they’d think. I dash out of the kitchen in a sudden panic, but he’s only in the hall, peering through the inside door that leads to the shop.

      ‘Lotta nice stuff in there,’ he says, squinting past the lace curtain

      ‘Yeah, I guess so. It does okay. It’s Mum’s thing really.’

      ‘Lots of that Japanese looking stuff.’

      ‘Mostly pine – boxes and that. They used to keep blankets in them but now people use them as coffee tables.’

      ‘Can we go in?’

      ‘It’s closed because Mum’s not here. She locks it.’

      He sighs. ‘Okay then,’ and straightens up, twisting his head so he’s looking right up the stairwell. ‘How many floors?’ he says.

      ‘Three. You want to see?’

      We go up the first flight and he stops to look at the claw-footed bath before we work our way up. It feels odd to see him tiptoeing through my parents’ bedroom. He picks things up from the dressing table, examines Dad’s book by the bed and even opens the wardrobe like the snowman in that cartoon – he’s certainly no less weird. I know he shouldn’t be here. I’ve made a mistake but now I have to see it through, so I follow him like an estate agent while he pokes about. He looks at everything, even the flock wallpaper on the upper landing – running his hand up it to feel the texture.

      When we come to my room I push ahead in case there’s anything out that shouldn’t be, like knickers! There isn’t, but an old diary is on the floor and I kick it under the bed. I don’t use it any more – I got tired of shouting from the end of a biro, but it’s pink and embarrassing somehow.

      Because he’s there, it’s like seeing my room for the first time. Teddies on the bed and little kid curtains still up at the windows;

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