That afternoon, Mum and I are eating soup in the kitchen. (It’s one of her ‘experiments’, coconut and Stilton, which doesn’t really work, to be honest.) Steve’s working late, and Carly said this morning that she was in the school choir, which I know to be a big fat lie, and besides, I saw her heading off in the other direction with Jolyon when I came out of school, but I haven’t said anything. I know far better than that.
The soup is hot and we wait for it to cool a little (which suits me fine).
“Mum …” I’m trying to find the right words. “Did Dad have any hobbies? I mean, things that he did apart from work?” I’m trying to find out if Mum knew about his Top Secret Underground Laboratory.
Mum thinks for a while and lifts the soup spoon to her mouth. She drinks it without slurping even a little and then answers, “Ee, well, not really.” (This “Ee” that Mum says, it’s part of her Geordie accent, and it usually makes me smile, but right now I’m too interested in what’s coming next.) She looks a little puzzled as if she had never really thought about it before.
“Your father was a very clever man, and he thought about things a great deal, but …”
“Was he, like, into science fiction or, or … stuff like that?”
“Science fiction? Your dad?” Mum gives a slight snort. “No. Definitely not! Not his thing at all. Why?”
“Ah … no reason.” Mum’s looking at me intensely, so I invent something quickly. “I was just thinking of the stories Dad used to tell me, and I wondered what he liked to read.”
Mum smiles. “Detective stories. Real-life crime. Mysteries. Anything with a puzzle. That was your dad. Always trying to work things out.”
We eat our soup in silence for a bit. After a few spoonfuls, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Then I get a brilliant idea.
“Did Dad ever mend cars?”
“When we first married we had an old Ford Fiesta that he’d work on. Why?”
“In the garage at Chesterton Road?”
“No. We didn’t live there then. Why?”
“It’s just there was that hole in the floor for mechanics to stand in, and I thought he may have used it.”
“The pit? Ee, no. I don’t think he ever used that, apart from when we first moved in and we checked out the fall-out shelter.”
I furrow my brow. “The what?”
“The people we bought the house from were terrified that there was going to be a nuclear war. MacFaddyen, they were called. Rough, they were, and …” She makes a twirling motion with her finger next to her head. “Anyway, they converted the cellar into a shelter under the garage to protect them from a nuclear bomb. It was tiny and creepy. They thought it increased the value of the house, but it didn’t. We only went in it the once, when they showed us round.”
“You never told me this before.”
Mum shrugs. “You never asked. You never asked about the loft either, but that was there as well. I suppose I didn’t like the thought that you might want to play there, so I just never mentioned it. To be honest, Al, neither your dad nor I gave it a minute’s thought.”
Mum’s taking a deep breath and looking at me with her head tipped to one side. She’s about to change the subject and I think I know where it’s headed.
“The boys in your class …”
I was right.
“Is there anyone you’d like to invite back for tea one day, or just to play?”
Now, Mum has asked me this, or a clever variation on it so that I don’t think she’s obsessed, roughly once a month since I started at St Eddie’s. The answer’s always the same.
“Not really, Mum. Most of them are busy with other stuff. You know – homework and that.”
Mum nods and looks away. She’s not going to pursue it today. Finally she says, “That letter from your dad. Was it … OK?”
It’s a funny choice of word and I smile. “Yes, it was OK. It was … private. Growing up advice, and –” I add this next bit to try to deflect her attention – “guy stuff. Man to man, you know? Growing up, drink, drugs, girls.”
Mum smiles warmly and a bit sadly, but says no more.
Which suits me because I’m just sitting there thinking: Fall-out shelter. That’s where the time machine is.