When I got home, Bella handed me another letter.

“I think that’s enough now, Bella,” I said. “You should give Dad a chance to get used to your letters, and not…you know…bombard him.”

“He likes it, I told you. And anyway, this one’s really important.”

This was getting silly. I had to do something about it. But with the art competition and Joanne Pyke and everything else going on, Bella and her letters had been pushed to the back back backest part of my mind.

When I got into my room, I opened it.

Dier Dad,

I couden’t find to socks the saym this mornig. This is why we need you heare.

Love, Bella

Socks. That’s what she thought was really important!

But maybe Bella was right. We needed a dad not just for all the big things, like buying us stuff and taking us out and giving us advice. We needed him for all the zillions of small things too.

I wrote back to her straight away and put it in my drawer to give her in a day or two.

Dear Bella,

Ask your mum to help you find socks. I can’t come back just to do that. I’m trying to save the world over here. Or just buy loads the same color so you can always find a pair.

Love, DAD

Bella didn’t even bother waiting for the reply. Later that evening, she stood in front of me. She pulled something out of her shirt and gave me another letter. I hadn’t even put the last one in an envelope yet.

I sighed, went to my room and opened it. Really. What now?

Dier Dad,

If I joine the scool kwaya will you come and here me sing? I want you to come overwise there’s no pointe. And wil yu teache me how to mak a good card tower? Mine kieps falling down, so I neid you.

Love, Bella.

Bella was so weird.

I couldn’t draw that evening after the drawing frenzy the night before, so instead I stared into space and thought about Bella’s letters. I had to do something to sort that problem out. And after a while it came to me. The answer seemed obvious.

I wasn’t going to write back to her anymore.

It was just making things worse.

I knew she’d be upset about it but she left me no choice.

After I finished my homework, I got ready for bed and lay there thinking about my dad. I was annoyed with him for doing this to Bella. The black hole inside me started swirling again, darkly and silently. I tried to breathe deeply so it wouldn’t suck all the air out of my lungs. I don’t know how much time went by.

Mum came in to put laundry away. It was quiet in the house. Bella was in bed. I must have looked dark and silent myself because Mum said, “What’s up with you?”

I shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Right. So why have you got steam coming out of your ears?”

I pulled myself up and looked in the mirror. My forehead was in a knot and my lips were snarling. No steam though.

“It’s an expression, Amber. What’s the matter?”

I stood by the mirror a little longer. I was checking if I could see my dad in my face, because if I could, I wanted a new face. Maybe I didn’t get his face at all but, like, chunky fingers or a hairy back. Great. Or maybe I didn’t get something you could see, but a gene of brilliance and when I got older I’d discover I was a computer genius or a world-champion racecar driver. Or maybe I got the gene of weirdness that would make me walk out on my kids too when I grew up.

Nah.

No way.

I sat on the edge of my bed, wondering if my dad even cared what a mess he’d left behind.

“Amber, what is it?” Mum said.

I stared at my reflection and muttered, “Why did he leave?”

Mum knew who I meant.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s what’s bothering you.”

She stopped putting the pile of clothes away, closed the wardrobe door and sat on the floor with her back against it. I could hear clapping from Mr. Venables’s telly through the floor. Mum’s head was tilted back so it was resting on the door and she folded a sock around her hand again and again, smoothing it like she was stroking a pet. Then she sighed so hard all her body lifted and then sank.

“It wasn’t anything to do with you, Amber. He didn’t leave you.”

“Yeah, he did.”

“Yeah, well, he did, but it wasn’t because of you. You didn’t do anything. I told you—he loved you. And I’m sure he still does.”

I didn’t want Mum to see the tears in my eyes so I turned my head the other way. I just didn’t get it. It made no sense at all.

I didn’t tell her what I was thinking. He couldn’t have loved me that much. Maybe if I’d been a boy he’d have stayed. Maybe if I’d been a cooler kid he’d have been so proud of me he wouldn’t have been able to rip himself away. Maybe if I’d been a genius at math or an amazing piano player he’d still be at home. Or he’d have taken me too.

“You don’t leave someone if you love them,” I said.

It was so quiet I could hear Mum breathing. It was one of those times where your thoughts sit around you like a blanket and you’re weighed down by them. Even the air felt heavy, and it made me wonder whether it felt like that in a vacuum or whether vacuums were actually really light.

“Life is more complicated than you think,” Mum said after a while. “Nothing is black and white.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, turning to look at her.

“When you get older you’ll understand. It’s hard to figure out how adults think when you’re a kid. It’s hard enough when you’re an adult. Life is so confusing and human beings are strange creatures, Amber. They’re complicated. Illogical.”

I didn’t say anything for a bit. But then it just came out. “He can’t have been very cool. Someone cool wouldn’t have done that.”

She sucked on her teeth. I knew that if she got the chance she would have strangled him. She had to bring us up alone and she had no one to help her. No one to share the bills with her or fix the sink when it broke. No one to help her decide whether Bella was really too ill to go to school that day or if she was just pretending. Mum had to make every decision on her own. She worked hard every day and we still had no money. And she had to be everything to us.

She could easily have told me all the bad things about him. I knew she had a whole list of them. But she didn’t.

I was glad because right then I really didn’t want to hear them. I wanted to think, just for one minute, that despite all the things I’d just said, he was perfect after all. I wanted to believe that instead of him deciding to go, it was this messed-up world that forced him out of our lives, against his will. That he got pulled away screaming, his arms outstretched reaching toward us, his eyes full of despair. Something dramatic like that. Otherwise, I just couldn’t get it.

“No one’s perfect,” she said. “When you get older you’ll understand that life is about choices. Your dad made his choice and now he has to live with it.”

I had to think about that for a minute.

“What choice does he have to live with?” I said.

She paused. Somewhere in the distance a siren started wailing.

“He’s missing out.”

“On what?”

“On the greatest gift of all. Better than anything.”

I had a feeling I knew what she was going to say. But I asked anyway.

“What is it?”

“You.”

I’d never thought of myself as a gift before. “Me? Just me? Or Bella as well?”

“Bella as well. Gifts, plural.”

“But we get sick and you have to find someone to look after us so you can work and we grow out of our shoes all the time and we drive you crazy and there are a whole bunch of things you’d love to do but you can’t because you have to look after us.”

Mum smiled. “Don’t kid yourself, honey. You two are the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m blessed, and you know why? Because I get to spend every single day with you, watching you grow into the most amazing people on the planet. Your dad is missing out on all that. His choice. His loss.”

The air felt even heavier and the black hole kept swirling. After a while I said, “Mum?”

“Mmm?”

“Do you think someone should tell him that? Because maybe, once he realizes what he’s missing, he’ll come back.”

Mum touched her fingers to the corners of her eyes. I think she was trying not to cry. For me. She cleared her throat and said quietly, “I doubt that very much. He knew what he was walking away from. But it’s a shame. You two need him so badly.”

I felt my face sting.

Mum got up and stroked my head. Then she said good night and left my room, her sad-sounding footsteps shuffling across the floor.

I didn’t tell her about you.

You sat on the end of my bed when she went out. You weren’t a sumo wrestler or a samurai this time. Instead you were a nice old doctor in a white coat with glasses on your nose.

I looked at the ceiling and bit my lip.

“It’s all right to cry,” you said. “You need to wash the stale tears out or you could get chronic globbi-itis. That’s when tears get globby from sitting in your eyes too long. And if you’re not careful, it could lead to tear poisoning, which is the most painful form of death there is. Better to let them flow out and then your body can produce new ones. You don’t want to die like that, believe me.”

I looked at you and raised my eyebrows.

“Trust me. I’m a doctor. I’ve seen it before. If you don’t believe me you can google it. Google ‘globbi-itis’ and see what comes up.”

I would have gone out to the computer, but I still wasn’t allowed to use it, technically. So I let the tears out. You know, just so it wouldn’t get all globby in there. The last thing I needed was tear poisoning when I had so many other things to worry about.