Outside, the sky was beginning to turn pink. The thud of bass still came through the wall. Eva’s dad threw himself back on to the sofa as though he were falling on to a bouncy castle. The sofa, which was not a bouncy castle, harrumphed in alarm. Or, at least, that’s what the noise sounded like to Eva.
‘The sofa will leave home if you keep treating it like that,’ Eva said.
‘Will it?’ Dad grinned.
‘Yup.’ Eva pushed her beanbag even closer to where Dad sat. ‘It will pack its suitcase and go. You’ll see it getting the number 56 bus into town and that will be that. You’ll have to sit on the floor.’
Dad laughed. Eva could always make Dad laugh, even if he was having a sad day.
‘Well, I’ll try to be nicer to the furniture then. We don’t want to live in an empty house. So, what have you been up to today? Did you have a good time with Jaclyn?’
Jaclyn was Gran. Eva always spent the school holidays with Gran while Dad was at work. Well, always since two years ago. But Eva didn’t let that thought get too close; she punched it on the nose before it could properly form. Her day today, that’s what Dad had asked about. They had done a grocery shop in the morning, then some dusting and a telly programme about moving abroad. She could do better than that for Dad though.
She tilted her head back to look at him. His eyes were closed and his eyelashes rested on his cheeks like tiny brushes. But he was definitely listening. She could tell by the way a corner of his mouth was tilted up.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘As you know, I was woken by the sound of the town siren calling in all the superheroes. I flew down to police headquarters in time to find a mass jailbreak had the citizens in terror. Luckily, I trapped the escaped convicts in the town hall. Once they were all inside, I used my superpowers to stop time while the police went in to round everyone up.’
Dad was smiling properly now. The lines at the side of his mouth looked like lots of brackets from where Eva was sitting.
‘Did you, now?’ he said.
Something banged next door, maybe a door being slammed.
Eva let her head drop on to the edge of the sofa. She wished she had had a superhero kind of day. Suddenly she felt a bit sad. It happened like that sometimes. She could be in the middle of laughing and making up stories for Dad, and then the blues would come.
Dad seemed to notice her change of mood. She felt his hand come to rest on the back of her head. The last rays of sunlight spilled in through the open blinds and cast shadows like prison bars across the floor.
‘What should we do this evening?’ Dad asked. ‘Game of Boggle? Or maybe a bit of The Only Book in the World??’
The Only Book in the World was Dad’s joke. It was what he called The Twits. She knew it off by heart. Which was why she always read it. Every other book was too hard. The words in them were like barcodes and her scanner was on the blink. The Twits was safe.
Eva didn’t think it was a funny joke. She drew her legs in and tucked her knees tight to her chest.
‘We can play Boggle with two-letter words if you like,’ Dad said.
‘You’ll still win.’
‘I’ll give you a ten-point head start?’
Eva flipped over on her beanbag so that her face was buried in the beans and her bum stuck up in the air. Doing an ostrich.
‘Eva?’ Dad laughed.
Even deep in the beanbag she could feel her bottom lip sticking out. Mum used to call it a slug-sulk because it was like having a slug stuck to her face. Mum would tease her about having creepy-crawlies on her chin until Eva laughed and the slug-sulk was gone.
‘Like that is it?’ Dad asked. ‘Don’t worry, Ladybug, it was just a thought. How about a takeaway and a bit of telly instead?’
The lip-slug vanished and Eva smiled. That sounded much better.
‘Chinese?’ she asked.
‘Chinese. Should I get the menu, or do you want the usual?’
‘The usual.’
Outside, someone shouted and a car squealed away.
Dad slipped his phone from his pocket. ‘Your wish is my desire,’ he said. His arm stopped in mid-air, the phone held up like an Olympic torch. ‘Oh, but we have to wait a bit. Your gran’s coming over. She has something she wants to talk about.’
‘What?’ Eva asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Dad frowned a little. ‘She sounded a bit serious on the phone.’
Eva felt a flutter of panic in her chest, like moths beating against a light bulb. Dad must have noticed.
‘Don’t fret,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure it’s nothing at all.’