spending the afternoon with his mother and broken the rule about ‘No locked doors’, I went upstairs to find David removing the locks from inside Phin’s room, his jaw clenched, his knuckles tight around the handle of the screwdriver.
Phin sat on his bed, watching with his arms folded hard across his chest.
When at dinnertime Phin was still sitting on his bed with his arms folded, silent and deathly, David dragged him down by his – still folded – arms and threw him into a chair.
He forcibly pushed the chair into place and served Phin a large bowl of curried marrow and rice. Phin’s arms remained crossed. David got to his feet, piled some curry on to a spoon and forced it to Phin’s lips. Phin locked his lips together. I could hear the spoon hitting his teeth. The atmosphere was shocking. Phin, at this stage, was fifteen and a half, but looked much older. He was tall and he was strong. The situation looked as though it could turn violent very easily. But Phin stood his ground, his eyes boring a hole into the wall opposite, his whole face rigid with anger and determination.
Eventually David gave up trying to feed the spoon into his son’s mouth and hurled it across the room, the curry forming an ugly yellow crescent across the wall, the spoon making an angry metallic scream as it hit the floor.
‘Get to your room!’ David shouted. ‘Now!’ A vein throbbed on his temple. His neck was tensed and puce. I had never before seen a human being as engorged with rage as David at that moment.
‘With pleasure,’ hissed Phin.
David’s hand appeared; then, almost in slow motion, as Phin passed him it connected with the back of his head. Phin turned; his eyes met his father’s eyes, I saw true hatred pass between them.
Phin carried on walking. We heard his footsteps, sure and steady up the staircase. Someone cleared their throat. I saw Birdie and David exchange a look. Birdie’s look, pinched and disapproving, said, You’re losing control. Do something. David’s look, dark and furious, said, I intend to.
The moment the meal was over I went to Phin’s room.
He sat on his bed with his knees drawn tight to his chin. He glanced up at me. ‘What?’
‘Are you OK?’
‘What do you think?’
I edged a little closer into the room. I waited for him to ask me to leave but he didn’t.
‘Did it hurt?’ I asked. ‘When he hit you?’
My parents, strange as they both were, had never hit me. I couldn’t even imagine such a thing.
‘Not really.’
I edged closer again.
Then, suddenly, Phin looked up at me and it was there again. He was seeing me. Properly.
‘I can’t stay here,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’ve got to get out.’
My heart skipped a beat. Phin was the only thing that kept any sense of possibility alive.
‘Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know. To Mum’s.’
‘But—’
I was about to say that his mum was sleeping on a sofa in Brixton. But he interjected. ‘I don’t know, all right? I just have to get out of this place. I can’t be here any more.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
He looked at me through his ridiculous eyelashes. I tried to read his expression. I felt I saw a challenge there.
‘Do you … Should I … come with you?’
‘No! Fucking hell. No.’
I shrunk back into myself. No. Of course not.
‘What shall I say? When the adults ask?’
‘Nothing,’ he hissed. ‘Just nothing. Don’t say anything.’
I nodded, my eyes wide. I watched him throw things into a drawstring bag: pants and socks, a T-shirt, a book, a toothbrush. He turned and saw me looking at him.
‘Go,’ he said. ‘Please.’
I left the room and walked slowly to the back staircase where I sat on the third step down and closed the top door to just a crack, through which I watched Phin disappear through the hatch into the attic space with his bag. I couldn’t imagine what he was doing or where he was going. For a moment I thought maybe he was planning to live on the roof. But although it was May, it was still cold: he couldn’t possibly. Then I heard scuffling noises outside and dashed into Phin’s bedroom, cupped my hands to the glass of his dormer window and watched the back garden. There he was: darting across the dark garden into the ink-black shadows of the trees. And then suddenly he was gone.
I turned to face his empty room. I picked up his pillow and held it to