them, prising their bodies apart. Brian reached bleary-eyed but frantic for his pyjama bottom. Julia wrapped the duvet around her naked buttocks. Sam burrowed deeper.
‘Sam, you’ll be on a psychiatrist’s couch for life if you come any closer,’ Julia managed. She flailed an arm backwards, connecting with Brian’s nose.
‘What’s a – that thing you said?’ Sam asked.
‘A man you’ll have to see for a long time if you touch your mummy’s bottom.’ Brian wriggled into the pyjamas.
‘Like this, you mean?’ Sam deftly slid pinching fingers under the covers.
Julia yelped and threw herself halfway across the room. ‘Sam! You know better than that. What have I told you about touching bodies … other people’s bodies, and allowing them to touch –’ She broke off. Everything turned into a lesson one way or another.
‘You’re always squidging me,’ Sam said.
‘That’s different. I get paid to squidge your bum.’
‘I do yours for free.’ Sam beamed.
‘Do you want to reach eight?’ Brian asked. ‘Bugger off downstairs and I’ll be down in a minute.’
‘What’s …’ Sam was peering under the covers.
Julia couldn’t think what Freudian nightmare lay waiting to be revealed. She grabbed at his hand. ‘You heard your father. Bugger off. Do some drawing or something while you’re waiting for us.’
‘I’m bored of drawing.’
‘Read then.’
‘I’m bored of reading.’
‘Just bugger off anyway.’
‘I’m bored of buggering off.’
Brian raised his hand. ‘Move – or I’ll skelp you.’
Sam curled his top lip. ‘Yeah, sure you will.’
‘Come and give Mummy her morning kiss,’ Julia wheedled. That should do it, she thought. ‘Mwah, mwah, mwah,’ she went to Sam’s cheek, looking up to check if Brian was annoyed, as she intended. He was.
‘God Almighty,’ he exploded, ‘I can’t be up to ye’re games. Sam, go now, before I boot you up the arse.’
Sam giggled and ran from the room. They were under his control again. Brian looked at Julia; she shrugged.
‘He’s a character,’ Brian said proudly.
‘He’s a little shit,’ Julia reciprocated and lowered her eyes to hide her own pride.
Brian hummed; he grabbed at his clothes, trying to conceal his excitement. Home.
‘A bit excited, are we?’ Julia teased.
‘Don’t start,’ Brian said. He had to scowl to suppress the little shiver of delight which coursed through him.
Surprising herself, she hugged him. Ah, baby, she thought.
He yawned and stretched. Thought: Got you.
Alarm bells were ringing. Julia swallowed a mouthful of bile and toothpaste and shouted downstairs: ‘Brian? Are you deaf? Sam’s got the alarm going again … Turn it off and give him his breakfast.’
In the hall, Sam added to the cacophony. Arsenal vs. Manchester United: ‘Goooal! Yes! Bergkamp has done it again. Yes! Yes!’
He was prostrate, punching the air with his fist when she flicked the alarm off and signalled him to the kitchen with a pointed finger, which he ignored. Brian was already there, crunching on toast while he read his horoscope in yesterday evening’s paper. He remained standing, however, just in case she thought he was doing nothing to help. Julia shovelled Coco Pops into a bowl for Sam, thinking that they might at least lend a uniformity of colour when regurgitated later on the ferry.
‘I don’t know why we have an alarm anyway.’ Brian flicked to the sports results. ‘I mean, nothing ever happens when it goes off, and besides, there’s nothing much to rob here, is there?’
Julia downed a glass of orange juice. ‘I guess the alarm is to ensure that no one discovers that fact, don’t you think?’ she said in a levelled tone. Her thin smile said: Failing accidents and breast cancer, thirty maybe forty years to go.
In the hall the ball thumped against the front door. ‘That’s it! Arsenal have clinched it with a mag-nificent goal. Arsenal two hundred and twenty-three to Manchester’s lousy two. And the crowd are going crazy …’
‘Alarms, shutters, infra-red lights and the like, all to advertise what you don’t have. It’s a bit nuts, you have to admit,’ Brian offered. He looked up. ‘I’ll bring the bags down, will I?’
Julia studied her fingernails. ‘You do that,’ she said. ‘And Brian?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I have never wished you a slow, agonizing, horrible death. I just want you to know that.’
As the car pulled away from the house, Julia took one last lingering look back. Her gaze took in the bleached winter bones of the magnolia tree in the front garden and the mellow red bricks of the double-fronted Edwardian house with its large white-framed, multipaned windows. The middle-class dilemma, she thought: more work, bigger house, more work, bigger house, more work, biggest house – death. Big house sold by son to pay for drug habit.
It really does sink, she realized, the heart; it was nearly in her stomach, on its way to her ankles. But there was no way out of it this Christmas – Brian’s sisters would be home from Australia, the first visit in fifteen years. Besides, for some reason entirely unfathomable to her, Sam loved the place. She had refused to accompany them last summer. Off they went – Sam waving goodbye at Heathrow from his perch on Brian’s shoulders – to the rain and wind and the absurdly contrasting stoical countenance of Brian’s father and his equally stoical dog. As it happened, they returned wearing two well-entrenched tans while she was wan and pale from a fortnight’s rain in London.
Sam was in a daze in the back. She craned her neck to check on him. He was staring out the window through bleary eyes. It was still a watery dawnlight. The streetlamps glowed orange against the pallid sky. Julia reached her hand back; Sam grazed it with his own, then contemplated the window again.
‘How long more?’ he asked.
‘We’ve only just left,’ Julia said. ‘Hours to go yet. Play a game of football in your head.’
She watched him in the rearview mirror while he mouthed a running commentary, legs twitching, head jerking from side to side, as he headed the ball into the net. She wondered if any passing drivers would have sympathy for them and the mentally retarded paraplegic in the back.
