34

My walk home from the butcher’s that night was prolonged by the lazy warmth of an orange dusk. It was stretched beyond recognition, like the walk behind a family hearse.

By the time I was home I was a wreck. I forgot to take my overalls off. A dirty apron. A splattered white coat. Boots dashed with the ghostly spots of the bleach Red Ted would use to clean the floor. A white netted hat with animal blood coagulating on its rim. I looked like a mental umpire.

I took off my stinking boots outside and placed them neatly side by side at the step leading in. With surgical care I slid my key into the slot and turned it. Inside I found Mal, surprised to see me, loading a cardboard box with an assortment of uncoordinated clothes.

‘If you’re here . . .’ I said, ‘why do I have to tell her?’

No room for hellos. No time for how-are-yous.

‘Because she’s not here,’ he said. ‘She’s at the mayor’s office, working, and I won’t be here when she gets back.’

‘But you can be.’

‘But I won’t.’

He scooped entire bundles of his own things from the wardrobe with both arms, as though shifting boulders with a growing urgency, and with no regard for the sharp creases and folds Mum had loved into them dropped them into the boxes arranged on the floor until they spilled out over the sides. I flung my bloody hat onto the bed but it rolled onto the carpet. I sat down where it landed and watched him as he packed.

‘OK. I’m going. Tell her I’ll be back tomorrow to get more stuff.’ He waddled through the door, a box under his arm, Lou waiting in a car parked in the street. ‘And tell her it’s fine. It’s normal, that’s all. People leave home all the time.’

He shut the door behind him with his hooked left foot. He’d gone to enter a world he never before wanted to be a part of. He’d started his run-up with a plan to make a dent in a surface he’d once told me wouldn’t bend.

The house felt dormant. I could hear the dull mechanics of the clock on the wall. I could hear the bubbles pop pop pop in the can of cola Mal had left on his bedside table, and I silenced it by drinking it down in one go.