62

I formulated a strange revenge that night in my bed, listening to Mal’s stupefying snore. I decided not to tell him that soon I’d be gone with Lou. Instead I thought about how it must feel to sleep in a different room. To turn to a different face, not the ashen patty before me now. Hers. To see a different ceiling.

Over the next few days I sneaked my possessions into a suitcase that I kept underneath my bed and that I only took out when Mal was asleep, Dad was in the attic and Mum was keeping watch upon some simmering pan or other. I rooted out the passport I’d had but never used, and signed the visa papers Lou organised. Not knowing how long we’d be gone for, I carefully folded away everything I owned. Soon enough the case was full to bulging, spilling out over the sides, tearing and stretching at the seams. I sat on it and used a stiff finger to probe the clothes inwards, warding off the frustration each time the zip fell apart by imagining I was sat astride Mal, prodding at his innards as they flapped about the carpet, sticky and collecting dust.

Weeks and weeks seared past, and by the time the Tuesday of our flight arrived I’d still not told anybody bar Red Ted about my departure. At sunrise I wrote a little note for Dad explaining that Lou and I had gone on holiday, that I wanted him to take care of Mum and Mal, if she’d let him, and I slipped it in the thin crack between the entrance to his loft and the ceiling, where it sat. Then, in a hurry to leave before Mum delivered a piping hot English breakfast, I took my case and left quietly. Mal got a parting glance. I walked to the taxi waiting at the far end of the road, out of sight.

‘You’re his brother, aren’t you?’ the driver asked me.

‘Whose?’ I said.

‘Malcolm Ede’s.’

‘Yes.’

Because I had that effervescent insomnia a bride has the night before her wedding, I waited restlessly until we’d picked up Lou, who was waved off by her dad and Rebecca Mar standing in their dressing gowns, and then I told the taxi driver the story of what happened the last time we went to the airport. They both laughed, reminding me that I could talk when I was in the mood. My obstacles were often my own.

Soon we were paying, the taxi driver shaking my hand. We loaded our two bags onto a misshapen metal trolley and I followed Lou’s lead through the airport as we performed a routine I found both hectic and reassuring in preparation to board the plane.

Inside the man directly across the aisle twisted in his seat and said, ‘Excuse me, are you . . .?’, so I turned my head, leant over Lou’s lap and looked out of the window, waiting to watch the world roll out of view.

The kick-start of the engine on the runway set my body in concrete and bound the back of my head to the seat. I didn’t even notice that I was kneading Lou’s cute little wrist, turning her flowery skin white. The muscles in my legs stiffened until they were both chicken-wire rickety with cramp as we moved faster and faster, with each second my body breaking new ground. Blastoff. One thousand feet. Two thousand feet. Three thousand feet further away from home than I had ever been. Climbing at six hundred miles per hour, powered by fire, exiting my orbit. I was airborne, a broken spell and a lifted curse. The machinery made noises as the wheels were stowed away. I was breaking my mooring. Leaving my dock. I was no one’s brother in the middle of the sky.

I saw the white cliffs of the English coast and remembered when Dad told me why they were that colour. Billions of years of bones, he said. Trillions of lives, all the skeletons of the sea, ground up by the tides and impacted by the waves. Pressure plus time making chalk. Amazing. Enough pressure for enough time will always make something new.