do as I say!’
Another officer comes and joins the first. They lead Pado into a room. Ama gets back into the car, crying. She bangs the door shut so hard that we all freeze. She sits holding her head in her hands, then she gently switches on the tape machine for some music, something to take her away from here, from this. Instead of music, the tape is still stuck on Giulio’s joke. His distant voice coughs and laughs. Ama punches the eject button furiously. The tape flies out onto the floor. She picks it up and hurls it onto the top of the dashboard. Giulio fiddles with the biscuit packet beside me, pushing his face up against the glass so no one can see his eyes. Then I hand Ama a biscuit to calm her. She absently takes a bite and throws it out of the window. A seagull snatches it up and deposits a large white dropping on the car in exchange. Pado returns a while later with a heap of clipped receipts.
‘What the fuck is this shit doing on the car?’ he shouts.
He starts up the car again. Ama leans out and tries scrubbing the bonnet with a tissue. The white stain won’t go. She scrapes at it with a piece of paper. It rubs onto her hand. We drive off into England, Pado yelling about customs officers and seagulls that shit everywhere. Duccio leans against the head rest in front of him. I can see he is watching Ama clench her dirty finger, two layers of antiseptic wipes wrapped tight around it.
From Portsmouth to London and then on to Machance’s is always busy.
‘Left-hand side darling,’ Ama reminds Pado at every crossroads and roundabout.
By the time we get to London, Pado has to turn and say: ‘Yes, I’ve understood it’s the left. Thank you.’
Our drive is going to take a little longer than usual as we’re stopping near Regent’s Park for a doctor’s appointment. Ama gently tugs at my sleeve.
‘Jean-Pio, we’ve arranged for you to pop in on a colleague of Pado’s. He’s a headache specialist. A very good doctor.’
‘What headaches?’ I complain.
‘Come on. Please darling. It’ll only take a moment and we’ll all feel better.’
There’s no point arguing as Pado has already parked the car and started reading the door numbers. Giulio looks at me as if to say, ‘See, I told you.’
Pado helps me out of the car and Ama waits behind.
‘I’ll only complicate matters, really I will. Your father is much better at these things. I’ll stay with your brothers,’ she assures me.
Pado pushes a button on an intercom. A woman’s voice shouts back, out of the wall: ‘Fourth floor!’ We go up some brown-carpeted stairs. As we’re about to go in, Pado sits down on the sofa on the landing. He leans his head on his arms and takes a long, deep breath.
‘Are you all right Pado?’ I say.
He looks up and pokes me in the stomach, smiling. ‘Course I am. I’m just a little tired today and I can’t see when I’m going to find time to do my research for the next conference. Anyway, we’re here to sort you out. Not me. Come on caro! Andiamo!’
A secretary opens the door and the doctor emerges from behind her to greet us. He can’t wait to talk to Pado about his latest book. Pado would prefer to get straight to the point.
‘We’re in a bit of a rush, sorry, but if you come to my next lecture …’
The specialist is disappointed. He pulls his chair up towards me. Talking to Pado, he shines a torch into my eyes, takes my blood pressure and checks my knee reflexes.
‘You don’t have to bother with all that,’ Pado intervenes. ‘I’ve already checked him over. I think you just need to get him to describe his symptoms.’
I don’t know what to say except that I get headaches in the car and on the boat.
‘Describe us the feeling?’ the doctor asks. I can’t. ‘Where does it hurt?’ he adds. I don’t know.
Pado breaks in to avoid the silence. ‘He’s been having these headaches and dizzy spells for some time now. He gets some form of vertigo or migraine. It seems to come when he is tired. Maybe he’s a little dehydrated from time to time. My wife says he’s easily distracted too. Personally, I don’t see the connection.’
‘How often do you drink water?’ the doctor questions me.
I give him the same answer I’ve given Pado: ‘Every morning, lunch time and in the evening and, since I’ve been told to drink more, at tea time too.’
‘He probably gets travel sickness like most children!’ The doctor reaches for his prescription papers. ‘There are some very good new pills,’ he promises Pado.
‘No, really,’ Pado stops him. ‘I don’t think we would have come to see you if it was just to get some travel sickness pills. Besides, I recently read some research into the side-effects of those pills. They’re not too great.’
I begin to shift in my chair because the specialist seems to be quickly searching for ways to impress Pado.
‘I tell you what,’ he says to Pado, ‘could you leave us alone a few minutes. I’d like to ask him a couple of questions.’
Pado now looks like he thinks this whole specialist thing is a bit of a waste of time. He gives in anyway.
‘If you think that would help. But remember, he’s only eight.’ Pado pats me on the back. ‘It won’t take long, try and tell him what it’s like.’
‘Yes,’ I smile. As Ama said: we’ll all feel better afterwards.
I’m left facing the doctor, who has taken out a writing pad. I imagine Pado walking down the stairs to join Ama. Perhaps they’re sitting in the car together, with music slowly suffocating in the machine. Or maybe Pado is in the room next door, trying to fit in some work, reading through magazines or rewriting his book with the photos of white rats, fleshy pink stumps growing out of their backs and cut-open lungs.
‘Well, Jean-Pio, what can I do for you? Why don’t you tell me how the headaches start?’
I begin to tell the doctor again that sometimes, in the car, with the swerves and dips, I get a bit sick, but that instead of feeling sick in the stomach I get a headache and that if I get a headache I have to close my eyes to make it go away. Then, when my eyes are shut, I feel even more sick. And that’s that. I can’t tell him any more. He wouldn’t understand that I have to stop the car from crashing or the ferry from sinking or that if I’d known Grand Maurice was going out fishing on his own, I would have thought about it all day so that he didn’t drown and leave us with a gap in everything. And now that Grand Maurice has gone, and we’re all stranded for ever, I have no choice but to swap bad thoughts for good thoughts all day long because I can’t think that someone can just go out fishing and never come back, or that hundreds of people, all across the world, are drowning and dying every day and no one is trying to stop them, or that all the air conditioners are spewing out diseases that kill and no one knows.
‘Are there any other pains? Do you
