thought the orange juice should go in the fridge door, the soup on a shelf. He spent a long time deciding, even though he knew he’d be getting it all out again in a minute.
Crystal went to the sink and ran the tap. She opened all the cupboards and looked inside, got out plates and slammed them down on the table. Then she picked them up and placed them gently. Then she pursed her lips, crossed her arms over her chest and pretended to smoke. Finally she slumped down over the table with her head in her hands. ‘What are we supposed to do?’ she said.
Gull Gilbert pulled out a chair, sat down, and got up again. The chair screeched against the floor and made everyone flinch. He opened the fridge. ‘We should have a drink,’ he said.
‘Now?’ Ivor said.
‘It’s Friday, isn’t it?’
The cans opened with a hiss. When Ivor drank, all he felt was very cold. He realised that the lights were off. He clicked them on and the kitchen turned orange. The room appeared in the black window, three faces staring back in.
He went out into the hall and looked at the pictures. In one of them, the table was laid with all the different types of cutlery, and the food was on mats in the middle. He went back into the kitchen and started laying out knives and forks and spoons, then he opened the soup and glooped it into a pan.
Gull Gilbert had one leg up on the table. His fingers drummed. ‘We need to turn the lights off,’ he said. He tipped his can and drained it to the dregs. His voice sounded huskier, as if his throat was very dry.
‘I want the lights on,’ Ivor said. He tipped his can up until the bubbles burned his throat. The taste was getting better, or maybe his mouth was going numb.
‘Someone will see us,’ Gull Gilbert said. He got up and clicked off the lights. The kitchen plunged into gloom. He sat back down and up went his leg. He stared at Crystal’s beer. ‘Are you going to finish that?’ he said.
Ivor got up and drew the curtains, glanced at Gull Gilbert, then turned on the lamp in the corner. He took another long drink, then clicked the burner under the pan of soup. Nothing happened. He clicked it again.
‘The gas is broken,’ Crystal said. ‘I tried it before.’
‘Shitting frick,’ Ivor said.
‘You have to hit something when you say that,’ Crystal told him. ‘Then you have to go and lock yourself in the bathroom.’
Ivor drank some more beer, then spooned the soup into bowls. There were only a few cold spoonfuls in each one but he laid them out anyway, then the cheese. ‘Someone else could help,’ he said.
Gull Gilbert got up and brought over the crackers and spread them across a plate. He took out the eggs and looked at them, then put one down in front of each of them. ‘I’m not hungry yet,’ he said.
Ivor looked at his watch. ‘I think this is the time we’re supposed to eat.’ He cut the cheese into slices and gave them out. The rain hit the windows with clinking sounds. ‘We should have a conversation,’ he said.
‘Us?’ Crystal said. She had taken more than her share of the crackers.
‘Say something,’ Ivor said.
Gull Gilbert was pushing his spoon around his bowl. ‘Did you make this soup yourself, Ivor?’
Crystal snorted into her bowl. ‘Why are you talking in that voice?’
Gull Gilbert’s spoon clattered down. ‘He said we had to have a conversation.’ His leg wouldn’t stop drumming.
Ivor poured out the orange juice, which looked too thick. He couldn’t remember how long it had been open. ‘Don’t actually drink this,’ he said as he passed it round.
Crystal took hers and started drinking.
‘I said don’t drink it.’ Ivor tried to slow his breathing. There was sand everywhere. He should have got everyone to take their shoes off. He crouched down and started scooping it up into his hand.
‘Where are we going to sleep?’ Crystal said.
Gull Gilbert leaned back in his chair. ‘Depends,’ he said. ‘Do you snore?’
‘How would I know?’
Ivor crawled under the table. The sand was everywhere. The grains he’d already picked up kept scattering out of his hand. ‘I think we should take our shoes off,’ he said. He followed the gritty trail out into the middle of the kitchen.
Gull Gilbert was staring at Crystal. ‘You’ll have to sleep in my room.’
Crystal stared back, harder. ‘Why?’
Gull Gilbert’s eyes shifted away, he put his leg down from the table, got up and started pacing. He pointed to her beer. ‘Are you going to finish that?’
‘I already did.’
He reached out and shook it to check, then crushed the empty can in his fist.
Ivor tipped the sand in the bin then sat back down. No one had finished their soup. Gull Gilbert was circling the edges of the room, wall to wall to wall.
Ivor took a spoonful and raised it to his mouth, but he couldn’t do it. He pushed his bowl away. His spoon had rust on the handle. His stomach made a thin, hollow noise. ‘Soon we have to go and sit in the armchairs,’ he said.
Crystal was moving her chair closer. Ivor sat very still. What he was probably meant to do was lean in to her and smell her hair, like his father used to do to Mev.
His breathing was so fast and shallow it was as if he couldn’t catch up with it.
‘You took too many crackers,’ Ivor told her.
Crystal stopped moving for a moment, then tipped her chair back and swung on its spindly legs. She started humming something fast and looping.
Gull Gilbert turned on the TV. There was someone on there doing a magic trick with cards, but you could see where she’d tucked the spare ones in her pocket. He picked up the remote and changed the channel. A zebra was running through a wide river. He changed the channel again and there was a crowd of people. He flicked it again and again.
The room was cold and dark. The blue from the TV and the orange from the lamp cast a strange, underwater light. Crystal’s chair was almost at the point where it would snap. Gull Gilbert was staring at the screen with unfocused eyes. His hair had sprung up slowly from under its layer of gel. He kept moving from channel to channel without stopping, one image blurred into the next; there was a voice, then music, then more voices. The zebra was still in the river, the crowd of people was getting bigger. The magician’s hidden cards fell on the ground like leaves from a wilting plant.
Ivor pushed his plate off the table. It slid across the shiny wood and kept sliding, then seemed to pause for a moment before it hit the floor and shattered.
Crystal stopped tipping. Gull Gilbert blinked and looked around.
Ivor picked up his glass. It glinted in the TV’s light. He held it out over the floor, then he dropped it.
Slowly,
