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And then I get some dry clothes from the house of a family who are dead. And I go home to Father’s house, except it’s not Father’s house anymore, it’s mine. And I make myself some Gobi Aloo Sag with red food coloring in it and some strawberry milk shake for a drink, and then I watch a video about the solar system and I play some computer games and I go to bed.
And then the dream is finished and I am happy.
233. The next morning I had fried tomatoes for breakfast and a tin of green beans which Mother heated up in a saucepan.
In the middle of breakfast, Mr. Shears said, “OK. He can stay for a few days.”
And Mother said, “He can stay as long as he needs to stay.”
And Mr. Shears said, “This flat is hardly big enough for two people, let alone three.”
And Mother said, “He can understand what you’re saying, you know.”
And Mr. Shears said, “What’s he going to do? There’s no school for him to go to. We’ve both got jobs. It’s bloody ridiculous.”
And Mother said, “Roger. That’s enough.”
Then she made me some Red Zinger herbal tea with sugar in it but I didn’t like it, and she said, “You can stay for as long as you want to stay.”
And after Mr. Shears had gone to work she made a telephone call to the office and took what is called Compassionate Leave, which is when someone in your family dies or is ill.
Then she said we had to go and buy some clothes for me to wear and some pajamas and a toothbrush and a fla
Then she had to go back to the shopping center to buy me some clothes and some pajamas and a toothbrush and a fla
And when Mother got home she brought me a glass of strawberry milk shake and showed me my new pajamas, and the pattern on them was 5-pointed blue stars on a purple background like this:
And I said, “I have to go back to Swindon.”
And Mother said, “Christopher, you’ve only just got here.”
And I said, “I have to go back because I have to sit my maths A level.”
And Mother said, “You’re doing maths A level?”
And I said, “Yes. I’m taking it on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday next week.”
And Mother said, “God.”
And I said, “The Reverend Peters is going to be the invigilator.”
And Mother said, “I mean, that’s really good.”
And I said, “I’m going to get an A grade. And that’s why I have to go back to Swindon. Except I don’t want to see Father. So I have to go to Swindon with you.”
Then Mother put her hands over her face and breathed out hard, and she said, “I don’t know whether that’s going to be possible.”
And I said, “But I have to go.”
And Mother said, “Let’s talk about this some other time, OK?”
And I said, “OK. But I have to go to Swindon.”
And she said, “Christopher, please.”
And I drank some of my milk shake.
And later on, at 10:51 p.m. I went out onto the balcony to find out whether I could see any stars, but there weren’t any because of all the clouds and what is called light pollution, which is light from streetlights and car headlights and floodlights and lights in buildings reflecting off tiny particles in the atmosphere and getting in the way of light from the stars. So I went back inside.
But I couldn’t sleep. And I got out of bed at 2:07 a.m. and I felt scared of Mr. Shears so I went downstairs and out of the front door into Chapter Road. And there was no one in the street and it was quieter than it was during the day, even though you could hear traffic in the distance and sirens, so it made me feel calmer. And I walked down Chapter Road and looked at all the cars and the patterns the phone wires made against the orange clouds and the things that people had in their front gardens, like a gnome and a cooker and a tiny pond and a teddy bear.
Then I heard two people coming along the road, so I crouched down between the end of a skip and a Ford Transit van, and they were talking in a language that wasn’t English, but they didn’t see me. And there were two tiny brass cogs in the dirty water in the gutter by my feet, like cogs from a windup watch.
And I liked it between the skip and the Ford Transit van so I stayed there for a long time. And I looked out at the street. And the only colors you could see were orange and black and mixtures of orange and black. And you couldn’t tell what colors the cars would be during the day.
And I wondered whether you could tessellate crosses, and I worked out that you could by imagining this picture in my head:
And then I heard Mother’s voice and she was shouting, “Christopher…? Christopher…?” and she was ru
So she made me promise never to leave the flat on my own because it was dangerous and because you couldn’t trust people in London because they were strangers. And the next day she had to go to the shops again and she made me promise not to answer the door if anyone rang the bell. And when she came back she brought some food pellets for Toby and three Star Trek videos and I watched them in the living room until Mr. Shears came home and then I went into the spare room again. And I wished that 451c Chapter Road, London NW2 5NG, had a garden but it didn’t.
And the day after that the office where Mother worked rang and told her she couldn’t come back to work because they had got someone else to do her job for her, and she was really angry and she said that it was illegal and she was going to complain, but Mr. Shears said, “Don’t be a bloody fool. It was a temporary job, for Christ’s sake.”
And when Mother came into the spare room before I went to sleep I said, “I have to go to Swindon to take my A level.”
And she said, “Christopher, not now. I’m getting phone calls from your father threatening to take me to court. I’m getting it in the neck from Roger. It’s not a good time.”
And I said, “But I have to go because it’s been arranged and the Reverend Peters is going to invigilate.”
And she said, “Look. It’s only an exam. I can ring the school. We can get it postponed. You can take it some other time.”
And I said, “I can’t take it another time. It’s been arranged. And I’ve done lots of revision. And Mrs. Gascoyne said we could use a room at school.”
And Mother said, “Christopher, I am just about holding this together. But I am this close to losing it, all right? So just give me some—”
Then she stopped talking and she put her hand over her mouth and she stood up and went out of the room. And I started feeling a pain in my chest like I did on the underground because I thought I wasn’t going to be able to go back to Swindon and take my A level.
And the next morning I looked out of the window in the dining room to count the cars in the street to see whether it was going to be a Quite Good Day or a Good Day or a Super Good Day or a Black Day, but it wasn’t like being on the bus to school because you could look out of the window for as long as you wanted and see as many cars as you wanted, and I looked out of the window for three hours and I saw 5 red cars in a row and 4 yellow cars in a row, which meant it was both a Good Day and a Black Day, so the system didn’t work anymore. But if I concentrated on counting the cars it stopped me from thinking about my A level and the pain in my chest.