The next morning my body ached and groaned at every tense and twitch. Joints were rusty hinges, muscles as heavy as pistons. Standing up hurt, sitting down hurt, even cleaning my teeth hurt and I grumbled as I pulled on my uniform. I’d moaned the day before about having to go to school when there was still stuff that needed doing to the house but Dad made the point that I could hardly be seen at home, skiving, by the Social Services Family Placement Team.
I walked down the stairs that morning into a new house. I’d been too tired the night before to see what we’d achieved in the previous forty-eight hours. And judging by the further progress made, Dad must have continued long after I went to bed. I found him asleep on the settee, hugging himself, mouth wide open and the warm smell of sleeping man fugging up the room. I didn’t wake him; I wanted to enjoy our new home alone for a few minutes.
The sun threw itself through the windows and onto our work. The snowball-white walls contrasted with the crimson-red light shades and the matching throws on the settee and chairs. I couldn’t help thinking that Dad had chosen well, that his eye for detail had been put to good use. My eyes were drawn to the floor, to the smooth brown surface. No longer grey and rough, no nails in sight. In each room hung a couple of my paintings. In the lounge were two paintings of the stones at the top of the fell. In the hallway he’d hung two paintings of a derelict barn. I’d painted them on different days. One was done on a crisp, clear day like today. The other was painted on an early-winter evening with a Lucozade-orange sky hovering above the dark, crumbling barn.
Dad had woken and padded his way into the hallway. Despite his moaning about how quickly the damp would come through, I could tell he was pleased with the place. Pleased with how it had turned out. And for the first time since we’d moved to Duerdale, for the first time in months, I was somewhere I didn’t want to leave. I was sad to climb into the car and go to school and sit in scruffy classrooms in itchy trousers for hours. I was nervous throughout the day. I was worried that when I opened our front door at the end of the afternoon it would have turned back into the dirty old house it had been for the last thirty years.
But when the bus dropped me off at the end of our lane I could see lights burning in rooms that had never had light bulbs before. And when I got through the door I saw plants in pots in corners of the hallway. There was even a doormat inside the front door with a picture of a cat in a hammock and ‘Home, Sweet Home’ across the bottom. I thought that might be too much. He’d varnished doors and fixed dodgy handles. All the washing-up had been done and put away. The place was immaculate. I found him in the lounge, collapsed on the settee, messing up a throw. When he saw me walk in the room he said, ‘Hello, Luke, guess what?’ I lowered myself carefully into one of the chairs and said, ‘What?’
‘The bastards have just rung. They’re not coming till next week now.’ He laughed like a lunatic, shouted ‘Jesus Christ!’ at the ceiling and told me to put the kettle on.