What They Do in the Dark - By Amanda Coe Page 0,67

in a dream that is going to turn bad, but of course the house is itself, unchanged. Dad still lives there. If everything was normal, I would have approached from the backs and gone through the garden gate and in through the kitchen door, which is the one everyone uses, but because nothing can ever be the same again I take the longer route to the official street, with its parched gardens, and knock at the front door. There is a bell, but as far as I know it has never rung.

It’s Thursday afternoon, which is Dad’s half day from work. Sure enough, his face appears from behind the frosted glass of the porch, sleepy and wary. He is pleased to see me, I think, although there is the briefest moment of some large and unfamiliar emotion before he builds on his usual expression and ruffles my hair and one-handedly hugs me so that I tip into his tummy, almost non-existent after Ian’s.

‘What’s this in aid of then? Does your mum know you’re here?’

Since I don’t want to lie, I ignore the question.

‘Can I come in?’

Inside, the house is dark and cool and, even I can see, much more untidy than it ever was before. We go towards the kitchen. Everything is the same, and everything is different. When Dad sits down I see he is wearing his usual slippers, but no socks. His cigarette is burning in a saucer, a long worm of ash. There’s a nearly empty milk bottle next to his tea mug, with a sequence of slimy yellowish rings showing the bottle has been kept out of the fridge. A few old papers on the floor. A mangled packet of butter next to the empty metal dish, ordered by mum from a catalogue, whose scrape against the knife has always made him wince. I stay leaning into him as he inhales his cigarette, inhaling him. He hasn’t shaved, and the stubble is grizzled white and grey. I sandpaper my fingers against it in devotion. He almost laughs. Uneasy.

‘You haven’t run away, have you?’

I immediately wish that I had. It’s hard to speak, now. I burrow my face into his neck.

‘Eh, come on. You’ll start me off.’

I manage to breathe, but the end of each long breath produces a sob somewhere in my abdomen. We could stay like this for ever. Dad pats my back to warn that he’s going to move me away from him, but I refuse to take the cue. I burrow deeper, cling.

‘It’s not that bad, is it?’

I shake my head, furious with myself. I don’t want to be a baby.

‘Just, just wanted to see you.’

‘Do you want a drink of squash?’

Glad to be busy, he makes me a cup of lemon barley from the same bottle I was drinking at the beginning of the summer. As he runs the water to get it cold, I read the paper where it’s open on the table.

‘What’s a claw hammer?’ I ask, imagining an animal claw sprouting from the metal, shredding scalp and skin. Dad moves the paper away, on the pretext of giving me the squash. But it’s too late to stop me seeing the photo of the woman who’s been killed, staring emptily at the camera. She has striped hair and cruel eyebrows. You can always tell in photos that someone is dead. They go blurry.

‘You shouldn’t be reading that.’ He puts the paper on top of the dirty pots on the draining board.

‘What’s a vice girl?’ I ask.

‘Bloomin’ ’eck, Missis … a lady who isn’t very nice. How are you getting on at school then?’

‘We’ve finished. On Friday.’

‘Lucky you!’

He leans back against the sink, ankles crossed and hands spread behind him, clamping the Formica in a cowboyish way I recognize and didn’t know I missed till now. We’re not used to talking for its own sake.

‘I saw Lallie Paluza,’ I tell him.

‘Oh aye?’

His lack of interest isn’t sharp, like Mum’s.

‘She’s dead small.’

‘Did you get her autograph?’

I shake my head. He doesn’t get it. People who ask for autographs aren’t the same as people who become friends of famous people. If I asked her for an autograph, I’d always be rubbish, like a little sister but worse.

‘Ooh, reminds me …’

He uncrosses his ankles and goes out of the room, returning quickly with a book of some kind, which he hands to me.

‘They’re giving them away at the garage. You collect them.’

It’s not a book but an album full of empty discs that you