my throat. “How’s Sophia?”
He waggled a finger. “Oh, no, don’t change the subject. Have you asked him yet?”
“No. I don’t want to spook him.”
“Pah, pah, pah.” Tom put up his hands. “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but—”
“And you’re practically living together anyway. He hates his flatmates. He’ll never live with his parents again—”
“Not likely. I’ve never met such bigots. If you live south of the river they think you’re a foreigner.”
“Well, then,” Tom said. “It’s simple. Ask him to move in. Think of the money you’ll save.”
“Sounds like you want to move in with him.”
Tom flicked his spoon at me and I ducked, narrowly avoiding a well-aimed chocolaty milk blob that splattered on the floor. “I wish I could move out, believe me,” he said. “And as soon as I’ve finished this bloody economics degree, I will. Until then...”
“You get to live with the Wicked Witch of the East.” I grinned, wiping up his deliberate spill with a piece of kitchen paper.
Tom laughed. “Mum’s not that bad.”
“Not to you, she isn’t.” My smile disappeared. “She hates me.”
“Knock it off. She doesn’t hate you.”
“Yes she does.” I took a breath. “Because I remind her of Dad.”
Tom pulled a face. “You’ve said that before. But if it was true, she’d hate, uh, I mean she wouldn’t get along with me. I’m the guy. I must remind her way more of Dad than you do.”
“I don’t think gender has anything to do with it.” I paused. “I’m pretty sure I have his mannerisms, you know? Facial expressions, gestures, that kind of thing. At least that’s what Mum accused me of.” I plopped a tea bag into a mug. “But I’m not like him. I’ve never been unfaithful. I wouldn’t cheat on Liam. I don’t have a gambling habit. And I’d definitely never walk out on my partner.” I sighed. “I love Liam.”
He grinned. “Told you. You’re going all mushy.”
“I’m being serious. I mean I really love him. And it scares the hell out of me.”
“Why?”
I threw up my hands. “Why not? What if this is another relationship I mess up? I don’t want that to happen... I’d do anything for him, Tommy. Anything.”
Tom tut-tutted and rolled his eyes. “Except ask him to move in with you.”
I flicked him with my dishcloth. “We’ve not even been going out six months. Anyway... How is Sophia? And I mean really.” He pulled a face and I raised my eyebrows. “Arguing again?”
“Yeah.”
“So she’s still possessive, paranoid and, well, a bit odd?”
“Sounds about right.” Tom laughed.
I flung my hands into the air again. “Why do you bother? You hate conflict.”
“Well, that’s not surprising, is it?” Tom put a hand over his heart. “My poor soul’s been badly traumatized by all the fights you and Mum had.”
“And that’s exactly why I moved out. Five years later and I can still hear her shouting at me.” I nudged Tom with my elbow. “But Mum loves you, so her heart’s only half made of stone. Or maybe it’s two sizes too small.” Tom didn’t grin like I thought he would, so I added, “Like the Grinch who stole Christmas. Dad used to read us that book. Remember?”
He kept his eyes downcast and his shoulders hunched, looking like an abandoned puppy standing in the rain waiting to be let inside. “I wish I remembered him,” he said quietly. “Properly, I mean. I wish we knew where he was.”
“I know. So do I.”
I shook my head as I recalled the day my father had walked out, which had been ordinary in every other way. Everything about that day was still vivid, almost as if someone had etched it all, right down to the tiniest detail, permanently in my mind. A definitive marker of the day everything changed.
It happened during the school holidays, a few weeks after Tom’s ninth—my tenth—birthday. It seemed “Upside Down” by Diana Ross was on a constant loop on the radio, and I knew all the words by heart, singing them as loud as I could at every opportunity.
“Stop singing that!” Tom had moaned the day before, flicking me on the back of the neck each time I broke into the chorus. But it was one of those earworms you couldn’t get out of your head. Even walking around the house, humming The Muppets tune didn’t help. Although—and this delighted me—I noticed Tom couldn’t stop humming that now, which was payback for flicking me in the first place.
The boy I liked sat on the park swings with me the day Dad left. Derek Stokes stood barely taller than me despite being almost two years older. But he had big, emerald green eyes and the cutest half-moon dimples I’d ever seen. I greedily snatched up any and every glance he threw my way, storing them so deep in my memory, I could still recall them over a decade later. Derek really did turn me inside out, and made all my feelings go around and around.
Even my recollection of the weather was clear. I could almost feel the drizzle that had softly fallen on my cheeks as Tom and I walked home from the park. See the billowing clouds that hung around in the air until the evening, when, finally, the sun broke through. Whenever that happened I thought it meant good things were on the way. After all, if the sun always won against the rain there had to be hope for everything else. There had to be.
We ate supper. The four of us—Mum, Dad, Tom and I—sat at our square table with the vase of daffodils in the middle, and the red-and-white-checkered plastic tablecloth, which had a cigarette burn on the left side, three squares up. I couldn’t say what we had to eat the evening before, or the one after, but that day we had bowls of steaming homemade tomato soup, buttered bread, thick slices of cheddar cheese and sweet gherkins. Lots and lots of sweet gherkins.
Mum wasn’t unusually quiet. Dad didn’t shout. In fact, they had a perfectly civil conversation about politics. My mother had trouble believing an actor could be the President of the United States, whereas my father insisted Reagan was the man to rule the Land of Opportunity.
Tom and I didn’t care about politics. We pulled faces at each other when our parents weren’t looking and chattered about what to do with the rest of the summer holidays. Neither of us wanted to go back to school; it would get in the way of playing hide-and-seek until the streetlights came on—later if we could get away with it—or playing circus with Mrs. Bennett’s golden Labrador and my silver-and-pink-striped Hula-Hoop.
“Let’s go outside,” Tom said as he licked his bowl clean of the last remnants of soup, leaving an orangey moustache above his lips. “On our bikes. We can roll over the smiley ball.”
He didn’t need to ask twice. As soon as Mum had given her approval in the way of a curt nod,
