Mum must still be in her room. She’s there more and more recently.
To cheer myself up I put on my granddad’s Omega. Dad called me into his office on Boxing Day and said he had something very important to give me, from my grandfather. Dad’d been keeping it till I was mature enough to look after it myself. It was a watch. An Omega Seamaster de Ville. Granddad bought it off a real live Arab in a port called Aden in 1949. Aden’s in Arabia and once it was British. He’d worn it every day of his life, even the moment he died. That fact makes the Omega more special, not scary. The Omega’s face is silver and wide as a 50p but as thin as a tiddlywink. ‘A sign of an excellent watch,’ Dad said, grave as grave, ‘is its thinness. Not like these plastic tubs teenagers strap to their wrist these days to strut about in.’
Where I hid my Omega is a work of genius and second in security only to my OXO tin under the loose floorboard. Using a Stanley knife I hollowed out a crappy-looking book called Woodcraft for Boys. Woodcraft for Boys’s on my shelf between real books. Julia often snoops in my room, but she’s never discovered this hiding place. I’d know ’cause I keep a ½ p coin balanced on it at the back. Plus, if Julia’d found it she’d’ve copied my ace idea for sure. I’ve checked her bookshelf for false spines and there aren’t any.
Outside I heard an unfamiliar car. A sky-blue VW Jetta was crawling along the kerb, as if its driver was searching for a house number. At the end of our cul-de-sac the driver, a woman, did a three-point turn, stalled once, and drove off up Kingfisher Meadows. I should’ve memorized the number plate in case it’s on Police 999.
Granddad was the last grandparent to die, and the only one I have any memories of. Not many. Chalking roads for my Corgi cars down his garden path. Watching Thunderbirds at his bungalow in Grange-over-Sands and drinking pop called Dandelion and Burdock.
I wound the stopped Omega up and set the time to a fraction after three.
Unborn Twin murmured, Go to the lake.
The stump of an elm guards a bottleneck in the path through the woods. Sat on the stump was Squelch. Squelch’s real name’s Mervyn Hill but one time we were changing for PE, he pulled down his trousers and we saw he had a nappy on. About nine, he’d’ve been. Grant Burch started the Squelch nickname and it’s been years since anyone’s called him Mervyn. It’s easier to change your eyeballs than to change your nickname.
So anyway, Squelch was stroking something furry and moon-grey in the crook of his elbow. ‘Finders keepers, losers weepers.’
‘All right, Squelch. What you got there, then?’
Squelch’s got stained teeth. ‘Ain’t showin’!’
‘Go on. You can show us.’
Squelch mumbled, ‘KitKat.’
‘A KitKat? A chocolate bar?’
Squelch showed me the head of a sleeping kitten. ‘Kitty cat! Finders keepers, losers weepers.’
‘Wow. A cat. Where’d you find her?’
‘By the lake. Crack o’dawn, b’fore anyone else got to the lake. I hided her while we did British Bulldogs. Hided her in a box.’
‘Why didn’t you show it to anyone?’
‘Burch and Swinyard and Redmarley and them bastards’d’ve tooked her away’s why! Finders keepers, losers weepers. I hided her. Now I come back.’
You never know with Squelch. ‘She’s quiet, isn’t she?’
Squelch just petted her.
‘Could I hold her, Merv?’
‘If you don’t breathe a word to no one,’ Squelch eyed me dubiously, ‘you can stroke her. But take them gloves off. They’re nobbly.’
So I took off my goalie gloves and reached out to touch the kitten.
Squelch lobbed the kitten at me. ‘It’s yours now!’
Taken by surprise, I’d caught the kitten.
‘Yours!’ Squelch ran off laughing back to the village. ‘Yours!’
The kitten was cold and stiff as a pack of meat from the fridge. Only now did I realize it was dead. I dropped it. It thudded.
‘Finders,’ Squelch’s voice died off, ‘keepers!’
Using two sticks, I lifted the kitten into a clump of nervy snowdrops.
So still, so dignified. Died in the frost last night, I s’pose.
Dead things show you what you’ll be too one day.
Nobody’d be out on the frozen lake, I’d suspected, and there wasn’t a soul. Superman 2 was on TV. I’d seen it at Malvern cinema about three years ago on Neal Brose’s birthday. It wasn’t bad but not worth