Lorcan’s fingers are caressing the neck of his guitar, back and forth, so long and thin and white as to be almost girlish. Everything about him has that elongated quality, his cheekbones high and fine, his brown curly hair straggling around the collar of his stripy flannel shirt. I know how the fabric will feel when my cheek presses against it, but right now I’m sitting at his feet, my gaze zigzagging up and down, chasing the chords he’s picking out. I daren’t look away. If I look away he might be gone, but if I concentrate hard enough I can keep him ensnared in my web. I’m a big, fat spider and he is my prey. You must never tell your prey that they’re your prey, in case they make a run for it.
‘Is that your song?’ I ask, as he lays the guitar down on the battered floral sofa we got from Molly’s mum and dad when her family moved house. He laughs, his face a Polaroid of the stupidity of my remark, and I search desperately for something better. ‘Is it The Beatles?’
‘No, darling, it’s classical guitar. Can’t you hear it?’ He picks out a refrain again, his blue eyes – almost as dark blue as my new, scratchy, uncomfortable school uniform – tracking my face. Can he see I’m more grown-up now? I try to make my listening face reflect how mature I’ve become in the months he’s been gone. I drink tea with breakfast, like Mum, and I read Smash Hits.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I say. ‘Did you play it on tour?’
‘You’re beautiful,’ he says, laughing at the grown-up description, this laugh very different from the knife-slice laugh from before. I look at him, counting all the bits that make him a whole person. He’s younger than other people’s dads, his skin smoother, his shaggy hair untroubled by grey. ‘My beautiful, beautiful baby. I missed you so much while I was away.’
‘I missed you more!’ I cry, risking springing up onto the sofa, my hot cheek pressed on the exact point of his chest I was eyeing from the floor. I can hear his heart beating through the soft fabric. It makes me more sure he’s really here, more than a mirage that I’ve conjured up with the sheer force of my longing. ‘I missed you every single day.’
‘Shall we make some supper?’ he says, standing up, long denim-clad legs unfolding from underneath him like a pair of stilts, my cheek left hot and bare. I wonder if I’ve been too ‘mushy’. He hates mushy. I dig my nail into my palm to remind myself, hard enough for it to really hurt.
The kitchen is NOT big, in fact it is very small, with a very old oven and a fridge that rumbles like a hungry dragon and sometimes keeps me awake. Mum says if my friends say anything I should tell them it’s ‘vintage’ but the way our flat is makes me not especially want to invite people over. I don’t think they especially want to come anyway, not the girls I’ve met at my new school. I’m glad I’ve got Molly. She’s got a fridge with an ice maker, but she doesn’t care that I haven’t.
He’s pushing a bloody bag out from the recesses of the fridge, triumphantly thumping it down on the rough wood of the ancient table that we got from his mum and dad. Everything at their house is valuable, which is different from expensive, and can mean it smells very old and doggy. We don’t go there very often, but I don’t really mind. I sent them a letter to thank them for paying for my new school, because Mum said it was polite, but they didn’t write back.
‘Steak!’ he says. ‘You can try it medium rare now you’re nearly nine.’
The clocks went forward last week, and as I watched Mum stand on a chair and swivel the arms on the plastic kitchen wall-clock I wished that she would turn round and swivel me. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen . . . then I’d be a teenager and I would be properly mature, and we could all go on tour together. I’m only eight and a half but maybe six months is ‘nearly’ in Lorcan’s head.
The meat glistens on the counter, a red slick of blood oozing from its marbled flesh. I don’t remember the last time we had a meal like this. We have boiled eggs and soldiers, pasta and pesto. I eye it nervously.
‘Chef Mia,’ says my dad, producing a strange little hammer from his rucksack, silver with a mottled surface. He bows, passes it to me with a flourish. ‘Over to you.’ And he throws a handful of herbs over the steaks, then shows me how to flatten them, his fingers as tight as a tourniquet around my forearm.
‘Harder!’ he shouts, as we hammer harder, although by now I’m giggling too much to be any use. Perhaps I don’t want to gain my chef stripes: it feels safe here, his grip strong enough for me to believe that the moment will never end. ‘Magnifique!’ he says, unclasping me so he can put a tape in the ancient player next to the sink. Next he produces a bottle of red from his seemingly bottomless rucksack, opening it with the same sense of ceremony he’s giving everything. He fills a glass to the brim, then grabs a beaker from the cupboard.
‘In Italy the bambinos drink wine from when they’re toddlers. You can just have a taste.’
He dribbles some into the glass, then puts it under the tap until it’s Ribena-coloured, different from the potent ruby red of his. I take a tiny sip, trying not to recoil from the bitter mustiness of it.
‘Now you have to say cheers,’ he says, and taps my glass with his.
‘Cheers!’ I shout, and we shout it back and forth, knocking our glasses together, harder each time. He drinks deeply, and I try to do the same, but it goes up my nose and then we both laugh some more.
Mum doesn’t even try to get home for supper. The clock hands have got to quarter to ten when she comes back, and we’ve listened to both sides of the tape of Dark Side of the Moon three times. She looks a bit like she’s been in a storm. Her hair – which is blonde, the best colour for a girl – is quite messy, and she isn’t wearing any lipstick.
‘Mia, why are you still up? You know bedtime is eight.’
She’s looking at my dad when she says it, and he’s looking at me. He smiles a naughty sort of smile, the kind I reckon Mr Toad would have when he gets to drive his car, and I smile back.
‘I’m not tired,’ I say, even though secretly I am, and the wine and water has given me a headache and I don’t want to listen to Pink Floyd any more, even if they are musical geniuses. I prefer Wham! but if I ever told my dad that he might not even like me any more.
‘Go upstairs and brush your teeth,’ she says, in a voice that is all bossiness and not love, and which is not her usual voice.
Lorcan chinks his glass against mine. Luckily mine’s empty so she can’t prove there was wine in it, but she eyes it suspiciously. He’s still grinning, and now he looks sort of soft around the edges.
‘We’ve been having a fine old time. Mia’s been telling me about school and what she and Milly have been getting up to.’
‘Molly,’ I say, before I can help it.
‘That’s really wonderful,’ says Mum, in a voice that says different, ‘but she’s got to be up for school at 7.30.’
Mum has to be up at 7.30 too. She works in a café now, because it means she can pick me up from school, but in another life she was going to be a lawyer.
‘She’s far too clever for school. School of life is all this one needs. How about we go on an adventure tomorrow?’
I turn my head to look at Mum, but not quickly enough. Her face is already saying no. Now I turn my face into the ugliest thing I can make it. She smiles at me like she wants to make up, but I don’t want to. Suddenly I am really, really angry. The dragon is inside my chest, not inside the fridge. I make my feet stomp on the stairs when I go up them so everyone will know, but I don’t think they’re really listening. Mum’s turned her horrible cross voice on my dad, which is so stupid. He’s only just come home: he’s never going to want to stay here when she sounds like a wicked witch. I shouldn’t have stamped my feet either.
When I’m in bed she comes to tuck me in, but I turn my face away because I want to have an adventure with my dad and now I can’t.
‘Night night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite,’ she sing-songs, stroking my hair, which is brown, not at all the right colour for a girl. Normally I like it when she does that, but not tonight. I keep my head very still so she won’t feel like she’s forgiven.
It’s much later when my dad comes in. I’m asleep, but I wake up when I feel the weight of him pressing down the mattress. He’s sitting on the end of the bed, and he smells the way he smells late at night. Roll-ups and something sweeter. If it’s wine, then perhaps I smell of it too. My mouth is dry, and I drink from the tooth mug of water on my bedside table.
‘Hello,’ I say, reaching out my fingers so they wrap around his.
‘Shsh,’ he hisses, very loudly, putting his other fingers up to his lips, holding on tight. ‘I came to say goodnight. And to tell you something.’
I’m wide awake now: I sit up straight. ‘What?’ I whisper.
‘It’s all a game of tennis. Of mad tennis.’ He stands up, mimes swiping at a ball with a racket. ‘Don’t ever let them tell you it’s you who’s the mad one. It’s always them.’
I giggle, because he looks so silly and funny. I don’t really know much about tennis. He suddenly swipes at me, instead of the imaginary ball, gathering me up close to him. I snuggle in. It’s the best place in the world, here against his chest. He is so thin that I can feel the ladder of his ribs.
‘Night, D—’ I wish I could call him ‘Dad’, or ‘Daddy’, but he hates it. He says ‘Daddy’ in a horrible voice which tells me I must never say it unless it’s to make a joke about other people and how silly they are. ‘Night, Lorcan,’ I whisper quite loudly.
‘Goodnight, my angel,’ he says, and walks out of the room, his silhouette long and tall, like a skyscraper.
I won’t see him again until the lack of him is like a boulder inside my chest that I can’t roll away.