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6

I fitted the lock on the bathroom door that evening. It took about twenty minutes. When I was finished I admired my handiwork, trying out the shiny gold-coloured lock a couple of times to make sure it worked, then I went to tell Gemma.

I knocked on her door and, when there was no immediate answer, pushed down on the handle to go in. The door would not open. I pushed a little harder and still it seemed it stuck. A few moments later I heard a little click and Gemma opened the door.

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5

I stood now in the café on the top floor of the big Waterstones in Guildford, waiting for a coffee. It was Sunday. I had been out to buy a lock for the bathroom door when I had remembered there was a book I wanted and may as well get while I was out.

It was not often that I actually got out of the house anywhere, except to the supermarket or Lucy’s school or to give Gemma lifts to places. I was going to buy the lock the day before, but Gemma had gone to town a little while after the bathroom incident and had not returned until after six, and with her out I had not wanted to leave Lucy alone. I thought as well that the town would be too busy on a Saturday, so I waited until today.

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Tracing a separate path between streams and puddles on the undulating concrete she passes in front of me, head down, water bouncing off the shiny gumdrop-green raincoat she wears. It suits her: It suits her scent: not the scent of perfume, or of shampoo, or washing powder, or even a body scent, but something more intangible and unexpected, like icing sugar or sherbet. Airy, aura-like, this scent was so distinctive that it would linger after she had left, like paper leaves fallen from a breeze-blown tree. If she fell, I might catch her, rather than poring over the lines on fallen paper leaves, but, inexplicably too tense, I never touched her, fearing always her delicacy, as if she were made of dust and dreams suspended on a wire skeleton.

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Read Part One

Read Part Two

Read Part Three

4

“Dad, will you give me a lift down to the sports ground in a bit?” This was Gemma. It was Friday evening.

“What for?” She sighed when I asked this, looking at me as if it was perfectly obvious, then said in a slightly patronising voice,

“To go hang out with my friends.” I was about to reprimand her for speaking like that but decided against it and instead asked,

“What time?”

“About seven.”

It was half six already.

“You haven’t eaten yet.” I said.

“What we having?”

“Fish and chips.” She wrinkled her nose and I felt a little dismayed; she always used to really like fish and chips.

“I’m not hungry yet,” she paused, thinking, “you could drop me off on your way to the fish shop.”

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