Every afternoon around four o’clock Theo sat on the third verandah step from the bottom and waited for his father to come home from work. It was autumn and the weather was pleasant and Theo scratched a kingdom of castles and moats into the dirt by the stairs with a long stick.
‘It’s too early, Theo, he won’t be home for ages yet,’ said Lilly the first time he’d sat waiting, but Theo had shrugged and sat and waited, so Lilly brought him biscuits to eat and milk to drink while he sat there. She knew she shouldn’t take him food because they would have dinner as soon as Peter got home, sausages and mash and fresh beans from the backyard, and Maud Blackmarsh was forever telling her that she fed Theo way too much. But Maud had no right to be giving child-rearing advice since she and her husband hadn’t had any children yet. And besides, no matter how much Lilly fed Theo, he never seemed to grow any fatter.
The night before, Peter had picked up his crumbed chop, leaned forward and said to Theo, ‘Son, I’m thirty years older than your mother. I don’t know why she married an old codger like me — a beautiful young girl like her could have had anyone. People thought she was mad, they tried to stop her, oh yes they did, but she ran off with me anyway.’
‘Oh, stop filling his head,’ said Lilly.
But Peter ignored her. ‘I was fifty when I found your mother.’
‘And I was barely twenty,’ said Lilly quietly.
‘There was never anyone before her but she was worth waiting for, son. Every minute was worth it. So you wait, son — you wait for the right woman,’ and he waggled the chop and some of the crumbs fell off. ‘Oops,’ he smiled and popped the crumbs into his mouth.
In the mornings Theo and Lilly stood on the verandah and waved Peter off to work, and Peter always stopped at the gate to wave and blow them kisses before he set off down the street. Theo and Lilly would fill their days together with household chores, Lilly cooking and washing or ironing, and sometimes Theo helped and sometimes he played until it was time for him to sit on the third step from the bottom and wait for his father. Sometimes he took paper and pencils with him and drew on paper instead of in the dirt, but the drawings always had lines in them where the pencil got lost in the cracks between the wood. Sometimes he took his teddy bear to talk to and sometimes he took his marbles, but he had to be careful not to lose any of them through the cracks.
Lilly brought him pound cake and milk on a little tray that had a hand-painted windmill on it, just like she always did.
Today Theo waited and waited for his father. His father would normally be home by now and he wasn’t and it was so extraordinary that Theo didn’t know what to think. Lilly came and sat next to him and Theo could see the dark grey clouds in her eyes as they waited together. Then darkness came and Lilly began to cry soft quiet tears and she said to Theo, ‘You be a good boy, you just sit there for a moment.’
Theo nodded and wondered why adults told him to be good when he never considered being anything other than what he was. He watched as Lilly pulled her cardigan tightly over her chest. Then she walked down their path and up Missus Blackmarsh’s path and knocked on their door. Mister Blackmarsh opened the door and Theo could hear the muffled sounds of their conversation. Lilly came back and sat next to him again and she was crying harder and it made Theo feel like crying too. A few minutes later Mister and Missus Blackmarsh stood in front of him looking hard at him and Lilly but not saying anything. After a while George the policeman appeared and said he and Lilly would have a few quiet words alone. Lilly patted Theo’s hand and walked a few feet away from the steps and she and George had their quiet words. Then George walked over and ruffled Theo’s hair, which Theo hated, and said, ‘You look after your mum, hey,’ and Theo nodded solemnly. He knew policemen were serious people and you had to do what they told you. George had a few more words with Lilly and Lilly cried out and collapsed onto Missus Blackmarsh’s shoulder and Theo heard Missus Blackmarsh say, ‘I’m sure there’s another explanation — Peter wouldn’t —’ and she looked at Theo and changed her mind about what she was going to say and added, ‘Besides, in this small town we’d know about it, men can’t hide anything like that.’
That night Lilly let Theo sleep in her big bed where his father normally slept and Theo buried his face in the pillow that smelt just like his father. The next day when he woke up Aunty June and Uncle Cliff were in the kitchen eating huge slices of cake and whispering with his mother. They stopped whenever he walked in and his mother continued to cry.
‘No, no, no,’ said Uncle Cliff, ‘I just don’t buy it. I don’t buy it at all. Not my brother.’
In the afternoon Theo went and sat on the third step from
