What They Do in the Dark - By Amanda Coe Page 0,25

neatly placed coins, them rammed it viciously into its housing and pulled it back, empty. The machine gurgled into life. Pauline regretted allowing Gemma to perform this final, satisfying operation, but it was too late now. Next time she’d know.

‘There,’ said Gemma. There was a row of orange plastic chairs for them to sit on. They sat and watched the soapy waves breaking against the porthole.

‘Go on then,’ Gemma prompted. ‘You can tell me now. About the film with the skeleton lady in.’

Pauline slumped in her chair, chewing a bit of her fringe. She felt dreamy and warm.

‘Can’t be bothered.’

‘You said—’

‘I told you, I don’t feel like it, right?’

Gemma peeled her back away from her chair, rigid with outrage.

‘You said you’d tell me. You promised.’

‘I didn’t say when, did I? And I didn’t promise, any road.’

‘You’re a liar.’

‘No I’m not, you are.’

Gemma stood. ‘You are a liar and if you don’t tell me, I’m telling. I’m telling Mrs Bream you left the school without permission.’

Indignation had pinked her face a shade deeper. Pausing to hoist her white socks over the plump crowns of her knees, she made for the door.

‘You can’t,’ Pauline called after her. ‘You’ll get done and all.’

Panicked by this observation, Gemma stopped.

‘If you tell, I’ll tell,’ Pauline promised.

‘They’ll think you made me. I’ll tell them.’

‘An’ I’ll tell them you showed me what to do.’

Pauline could see tears filling Gemma’s eyes like the water rising in the washing machine. She turned and ran off, away down the street. Pauline didn’t care particularly, she was too tired. She hoisted her legs onto the row of chairs and curled up, falling asleep to the churning rhythm of the water.

IAN DOESN’T LIKE Mum smoking in the house so she has to go out into the garden with her mug of tea in the morning, before she leaves for work. He and I sit at the table in the dining room eating our breakfast, while she stands in an open slice of the sliding French door, smoking out into the garden and talking back to us. This is new to me in all sorts of ways. Mum and Dad and I have never talked in the mornings, and Dad’s a smoker as well so I’m used to waking up over my toast while they smoke over me, silently. This new, sociable way of breakfasting is quite nice, although both Mum and I have less time than we used to because of the bus journey. We walk to the bus stop together then take separate buses into our different bits of town, while Ian drives the opposite way to his office in Bawtry. Mum and I chat as much as always, although I never ask her the two questions which weight my stomach: when are we going back to Dad, and what happened to Ian’s wife.

Of the two, the Dad question is the more urgent and frightening, while the one about Ian’s wife is pure curiosity and so becoming unbearable. Her photo is everywhere in his house. Tanned, she squints into the sun on foreign holidays, inclines her head towards Ian as they stand holding hands more palely on the front lawn, and, wearing something sequinned, raises a glass of wine at a party. She looks the same in all of them, round-faced and fat and placid. She looks very like Ian. In fact, the reason that I know not to ask any more about her is that when we first moved in I asked him, looking at one of the photographs, if the lady was his sister.

‘Now, Gemma.’

It was as though a door had flown open which Mum hurried to shut before anything blew in from outside. But it was too late. Ian’s mild, bulbous brown eyes had already welled with tears.

‘That’s my good lady,’ he said, with a sigh. Mum started talking about spotty Trish getting engaged, and that was that. Now I know better than to ask. Ian’s wife died. I wonder if she died in the house, and that spooks me at night, although I realize she’s unlikely to have died in my bedroom. One night I have a dream where she turns into a fat version of the skeleton lady with a rat running through her skull teeth. It’s then, stumbling from my room, crying and terrified, that I discover that Mum doesn’t sleep in the other spare room, but with Ian in his bed. It’s a surprise like a small, cheap firework, amazing for less than a