What I Did (28 page)

It's so obvious, I nearly ask, — When are you off, then? But Mum is fetching the biscuit tin so I don't, in case it stops her offering me one.

I needn't have worried. The rest of today is not just normal, it's especially nicely normal, right from the have-another-biscuit snack through to no-need-for-a-bath-tonight bedtime. Mum reads me two extra chapters of my
Blade the Stallion
book before I go up. It isn't particularly realistic because the baddies could just have hobbled Blade when they caught him after the brushfire, and then he wouldn't have been able to escape by gnawing through the rope, but it's still a good enough story, especially when Mum reads the suspension bits in a hushing voice, very slow. I almost don't have to do any reading myself after that, but when Dad comes in to say good night he sits down on the edge of my bed and whaps my schoolbook on the duvet like usual.

— Where were we? he asks.

— Can't remember.

— Right then. The start it is.

It's an extremely boring book about twins who go to a fair. One gets frightened by the ghost train. The other one doesn't. The frightened one takes flight. Then the not-frightened one goes around again and this time he looks up high and has a fright, too. Finally the one who was frightened first comes back and stops them both being frightened by turning on a bright flashlight. After that they both sigh happily. There's no real reason for the story: it's just an excuse to write “igh” in a lot of words. But Dad listens very carefully as I'm reading, looking at me rather than the words. It's like I'm a chess puzzle on the computer. If Dad just stares hard enough at me, he's thinking, he'll work out the right move.

I shut the book and neither of us says anything for quite a long time.

Then he leans over — nearly putting his hand on my swimming bag, which I've sort of half got my leg on under the covers for lumpy camouflage — and kisses the top of my head. It's normal. But he's not fooling me, particularly when he forgets to say anything at all to me after he turns out the light, because that's not normal, not normal at all.

 

Have you ever counted sheep? It's supposed to put you to sleep. Even though horses are better at jumping fences, and dogs are, too, there's no point counting them because they don't rhyme. Sleep. Leap. Sheep. Actually, there's not much point counting sheep, either. Not for me at least. You're supposed to count one after another again and again until you get bored enough to make your brain think, Christ I've had enough of this I'm going to switch off for a bit, but my sheep aren't in fact properly boring, because I can't make them jump over the fence normally. Some of them will, but every now and then one does a backflip or trips up or says bugger off I'm not jumping that and sits down instead or explodes. It's not fascinating, but it's interesting enough to keep me wondering what's going to happen next, and if you're wondering that then you're not actually sleeping because you're staying awake to find out what's going to happen next instead . . . which I do.

A very long time is called a neon.

After Dad says good night I count sheep for at least a neon, probably two.

It helps me keep awake as I listen to the mumbly conversations downstairs, and the dishwasher chuntering away, and the feet back and forth across floorboards and that rug, the one with the pattern that looks like a dragon upside down grinning in the hall. Then there's the voice from the television, and hundreds of people laughing on and off in a biscuit tin, and louder advert music, all
buy some toilet ducks now
now!

Ducks for your toilet: very strange. We keep mine in the bath.

I lie on my good-leg side with an arm looped through the strap of my swimming bag, one eye shut for the sheep, the other open watching the landing slice through the gap in my door. And yes! I was right! Because there's Dad now, gathering up clothes from the airing cupboard. Why? To put in a bag of his own, of course. A couple of sheep trip up. He goes in and out of his bedroom with things in his hand, including a towel, and there's no way I'm going to sleep now. Backflip. I'm just not. Somersault. And I'm not jumping over that, either. Explosion. No way, no! Explosion. No way. Explosion. No.

I wriggle nearer the bed edge and stick a foot out, then pull it back, then grab the bag tighter, and watch, watch, watch, as nothing much new happens for a while, either out on the landing or in the sheep field. Gray carpet. Green grass. Dad. Naughty sheep. Everything in modern nations, Son, because even exciting things get boring after a while.

Explosion.

Ex pollution.

Expel lotion.

Ex pillow shin.

Ex plow shone.

Ex pull low shun.

Ex. Pull. Low. Shun.

Ex. Pull. Low.

Ex. Pull.

Ex.

Boom! I'm suddenly awake in the dark with something wet on my face. Sweat. No, tears. Tears because he said he'd go and I saw him packing an invisible suitcase before I fell asleep and now he must have gone. The landing light is off and so is the TV. My room is blackly dark, except for some streetlamp glow by the window, and it's totally quiet except for some tire hum over there. Which means it's middle-of-the-night normal. So he's left. I sit up in bed and take a deep breath. Human infants scream when they're terrifically upset, and timber wolves howl to bring back the moon. I take a huge breath.

But before the howl comes: whap!

There's a hand over my mouth and — Shhh! in my ears.

I freeze.

The — Shhh! goes soft to a whisper.

My duvet lifts itself off me, the hand comes away from my mouth, and two rustly arms bundle me up.

But something's dragging me back.

— Swimming bag, I say.

— What? Not now, Dad whispers, working to untangle the straps. One of my cheeks presses against his normal sharp chin, the other feels cool against his gore tricks coat. — An adventure, though, he goes on. — Just keep quiet until we're in the car. I'll explain.

— But I packed. It's all inside my bag.

— We're not going swimming, Son.

— But my bag.

— Christ! Okay. Just . . . shh!

The hand works its way up over my mouth again as Dad cat-foots to the head of the stairs. It means going quietly. A horse will never tread on you if it can help it and even elephants can walk softly when they want to. Down we go, with a question I manage not to ask out loud using incredible powers of concentration. It's there, though, bubbling up as he swings a rucksack onto his other shoulder in the hall, and it nearly asks itself while he checks his coat pockets, and slides back the lightning bolt, and hushes us through the door. The streetlamp has an excellent halo.
Ask
, it says. I'm about to, but the — Shhh! purrs softly in my ear again. Dad strides us down the pavement past the skip. Skips. I don't know why they call them that, but I do know that you can fill them fuller if you put big flat things up the sides and in the ends. Planks of wood or old doors. Don't try with plasterboard: it goes soggy in the rain. And anyway, here's the roof of the car full of wet reflections. Dad sits me on it all the same. Then I'm in my excellent padded seat with a damp pajama bum and his coat over my chest and our bags down there in the footwell. There's no bucket. Dad even clumps the doors shut gently, like he's closing egg-box lids. Hand-breaks are to stop you running into obstacles and breaking things, your hands included. That's ours, there: down it creaks when Dad does it and here comes the question as the engine flutters us off up the road.

— Where's Mum?

No answer.

— Where is she?

— Go back to sleep, Son.

— Isn't she coming, too?

— We'll chat about it in the morning.

— I want—

— Sleep, Billy.

— Mum.

—
Sleep
.

 

We drive for a long time and even though he's told me to go to sleep I don't. Not immediately, anyway. I watch instead. To begin with streetlamps do slow jellyfish pulsing in the car, all tangerine. Then their orange bits flicker faster across the back of Dad's headrest, like flames. Eventually they flutter out entirely. The car goes nice and black except for the dashboard lights which are excellent light-saver green. Feel the Force, Dad. It will guide you to a rebel spaceship where they may finally take off your plaster cast revealing a brand-new hand! That will be good because right now the cast is obviously annoying him: the fingers of his good hand keep digging into the stinky crevasses while the bad hand steers. Crevasse is another word for a crease so big you have to stick a V in it. Did you know that an itch is like a yawn? It's true: they're both catching. Dad scratches so hard my eyes need rubbing, too. They're very heavy and puffy, like Lizzie's pull-ups first thing in the morning. I shut them. It's easiest. The road hums. I don't know where we're going, but wherever it is it's at the end of the longest-ever torn-off Cheerios-box lid.

 

When I wake up we've stopped. My body feels as if somebody has taken a rusty spanner and tightened up all my knee and elbow and hip and shoulder joints while I was asleep, and that feeling is normal if you've spent a long time asleep in a car seat which is nicely padded but still a chair. So I know we've come a long way. I also know that we're not
there
yet, wherever
there
is, because where we are is a massive car park like you have at the shops, and there's no way Dad would plan an adventure in a shopping center.

— Where are we? I ask.

Dad straightens up from leaning forward and stretches his good arm out, and I realize that he was probably asleep, too.

— Service station.

— Can we go in? I need the—

— Sure, mumbles Dad. — Of course.

Yes, yes, yes! Excellent! A service station! Fantastic! All my joint-nuts are suddenly incredibly well adjusted and oiled. I ping my seat belt — good-bye snail — and jump out of the car, then realize I'm wearing my pajamas and jump straight back in. But, amazingly, Dad doesn't mind about clothes today. He just rummages my coat and boots out of his bag and says, — Stick these on. Let's get something to eat.

— In the . . . service station.

— Yes.

— Do they have real hamburgers in this one?

— I imagine so.

— And can I, can I, can—

— Yes.

Just
yes
? Not even a
for breakfast
? Oh yes, yes, yes! Hamburgers in service stations are excellent. Not only because they are quite nicely flat and come in buns full of gunky ketchup, and not just because you normally get a massive milk shake and some excellently thin chips to go with them, but because they come with an actual toy as well. It's true. I know because I had one once. The toy was in a little plastic bag at the bottom of the big paper bag everything else was in. I didn't even ask for it: it was just there, a whole tiny red baddy plastic-figure thing, with a gun.

And that's not the only reason service stations are excellent. There are lots. Like the fact that they have huge cardboard cups of coffee. I don't drink the coffee, but Mum and Dad do, and when they do it makes them talkatively pleased and very likely to buy some sweets. In a service station! Which is excellent! Because the sweets there don't come in normal rolls; they come in massive plastic bags instead. You can eat them when you've dried your hands after going to the loo in one of the hundreds of loos they have. Not on a towel. In a brilliant wind-tunnel machine called an Airblade. It's made by the man who makes all the Hoovers, Son. Dyson. Clever bugger. You can actually feel the air drying your hands off! Then, when your hands are clean and dry, and you've had some sweets, you can mess about with the massive computer games they have in the dark bit. Not actually play them, no, because they're a rip-off, Son, but you can sit on that motorbike and push all the buttons you like and watch the racetrack picture come at you like an excellent endless snake.

But sadly today the service station isn't as good as normal.

We walk across the parking bit in the rain and go in, with Dad looking at his phone most of the way. He's still looking at it as we queue up to get a burger for breakfast, and he doesn't like it when I interrupt to tell him it's the wrong kind of burger place because it's not a McDonald's but Burger King.

— Same difference.

— But—

— Don't start, Son, or you'll be eating a muesli bar quicker than you can say Soft Mick.

I don't start. I say Soft Mick in my head a few times, though, hoping that it will help, but it doesn't: my burger comes on a tray and I can see just by looking at it that there's no free toy, or even a milk shake, because he's bought me orange juice instead: the sight of it makes my sore leg throb.

We sit down at a little table to eat, but Dad hasn't ordered himself any food, just black coffee in a small paper cup. He winces when he takes the first sip. My burger is actually quite nice, but still, I can tell there won't be any sweets.

Dad stops squinting at his phone to press it against his ear.

— Cicely, he says.

Then he lurches up and nods at me to stay put and walks over to the corner of the restaurant and stands with the phone in his red hand while the good one squeezes the ridge of his nose and runs down tight into his cheeks. Every now and then he shakes his head. I can't really hear what he's saying because his voice is leopard low and there is strange music everywhere. He only growls up loud once when he says, — That's why I'm asking you to tell her.

There's lots of mayonnaise up my pajama sleeve. I don't try to clean it off, though, because I'm keeping my eyes on Dad. When an animal is in a corner it might do anything. Dad finishes speaking to Cicely and stares at the phone for quite a long time, then walks over to the rubbish bin and . . . drops it in.