36

Joseph didn’t want to hear what she had to say.

He had feared it was coming long before his father marched off to war, leaving early one morning, planting a kiss on his forehead as he lay in bed.

Joseph had not been asleep. He’d heard his father enter his room, the floorboards betraying his approach: felt his lips gentle on his skin. Joseph had kept his eyes shut, his breathing even.

He refused to open his eyes. That would show acceptance, that he was content to see him leave, and a knowingness that he would never return. For that was what people did. He drove them to it.

‘Joseph... ? Joseph. Come on now, son. Come away from there.’

He had almost forgotten where he was until Mrs F’s hands prised his own from Adonis’s bars.

The ape looked on, still some yards away, chewing slowly, intent on the two of them.

She tried to turn Joseph, but he resisted, staring on at Adonis, wishing he was on the other side of the bars too, that his life was as simple.

‘This isn’t easy for me, Jo—’

‘Then don’t say it.’

‘I have to. I have to tell you what the letter says.’

‘I already... KNOW.’ He pulled his arms from her grip on the last word. He had to move. The charge inside him was growing, and it hurt.

His movements were random, steps in many different directions, looking for escape.

Mrs F had no idea how to tell him, what words to use, or how to even think about calming him afterwards. How did you hold a boy together, when he was already broken? There were already too many pieces to manage, without dropping and damaging even more.

‘There’s been a telegram. Delivered to your grandmother. Your father has been killed, Joseph. In France.’

Joseph continued to pace. Shorter steps, and more of them. His face was blank, unreadable, eyes fixed on anything but her.

‘His regiment was marching on a town when they were attacked. He battled bravely but they were outnumbered, outgunned. There were many fatalities, and your father’s injuries were too great. I’m sorry, Joseph, but your dad won’t be coming home.’

At that moment, as the last of her words died away, his movements changed. Gone were the random directions. Instead he ploughed a straight line alongside the cage, in the direction of the gates, so quick and decisive that Mrs F had to trot to catch up with him.

‘Joseph? Joseph!’

She made a grab for his arm to stop him, to make sure he had heard what she said. But the contact was too much for him to bear.

‘Don’t do that,’ he said, flatly.

‘Do what?’

‘Touch me. It’s not safe. Can’t you see that?’

‘What do you mean, Joseph? I don’t know what you mean?’

But Joseph didn’t answer. He was still on the move, the gates edging closer.

‘Joseph, please,’ she cried. ‘I don’t understand. Where are you going?’

‘To pack.’

‘Pack? What do you mean?’

‘I was only here until he came home, wasn’t I? And now he’s not coming. So I can’t stay here. I’ll go home.’

‘Joseph, it’s much too soon to be thinking of that. And there’s no need. You need time. Your gran just wants you—’

‘Wants me? WANTS ME?Are you joking? She doesn’t want me. She just wanted to be away from me. Just like everyone else.’ The anger was back, a switch flicked, every word, every syllable spat with poison. ‘So, I’ll go somewhere else. I’ll get on a train. No one will notice. I’ll hide, and when I get off the train, wherever it’s going, I’ll look after myself. Cos nobody else wants to do it.’

‘That’s not true, Joseph. There’s a home here for you. Here, with me.’

But he couldn’t hear it. ‘You’ve changed your tune, haven’t you? Anyway, it won’t last. You don’t want me, or need me, and I certainly don’t want you!’

He made to walk on, but as with their first meeting, Mrs F was having none of it, hanging on as he railed and thrashed.

‘Joseph, listen to yourself. To what you’re saying. You do need someone, you’re only eleven, for Chr—’

‘I’m TWELVE!’ he barked, which drew a growl from Mrs F in return.

‘Yes, you are. And no twelve-year-old should lose his father. Not like this, not at all. But it’s happening, son, it’s happening everywhere. To lots of people.’

‘Yeah, well, they’re not me, are they?’

This stopped her dead, her feet planted. With a single pull, she held his anger and strength, every shred of it. He couldn’t move. He had to listen.

‘No, they’re not. But pain is pain. It’s not limited to you, you know. Other people feel it too. Like Syd.’

Joseph thought of Syd. Her incessant talking and know-it-all attitude – but this was quickly drowned by an image that Syd had given him earlier in their friendship. The thought of her parents, thrown on top of her, their instinct to protect her so she might live.

While the image had troubled him when she first painted it, it was only now, with the news of his father, that it truly hit him.

It pulled the plug from his veins and saw him slump to the ground. That sacrifice: the act of protection, of literally throwing yourself on top of your child, no matter what the consequences were. He saw it, clearly: the pain of it filled every cell to the point of bursting, until he had no option but to ask the question that had been racing round him for as long as he could remember. A question he’d never dared to ask.

‘What did I do wrong?’ he wept, defeated. ‘Please, Mrs F, tell me. What did I do?’