Wills heard him all right. He stopped in his tracks and glared at Dad.
“You can’t tell me what to do,” he hissed. “You’re not my dad anymore. You’re going away and leaving us.”
“Don’t, Wills!” cried Mom. She jumped up from the couch and tried to put her arms around him, but he pushed her away and ran upstairs to his room. Music on LOUD.
Dad looked as if he had been punched in the face. He took a deep breath, squeezed me on the shoulder, kissed Mom on the cheek, then walked out through the door and out of the house.
Wills refused to come down for dinner that evening, even though Mom tried to tempt him with exaggerated descriptions of the lemon meringue pie she had made, which is his favorite apart from jam donuts.
“I’m not eating till Dad comes back,” was all he would say.
Mom and I picked at our spaghetti Bolognese, listening for his bedroom door to open, and sort of listening for the key in the front door.
“Will Dad ever come back?” I asked Mom.
“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know, Chris. But try not to blame your father. It’s not his fault that he finds it difficult.”
I did blame my father then. He should have been stronger, should have been tougher, should have been able to cope. He was supposed to look after us come what may, not run away because he found it difficult.
“He’s made it more difficult for you now, Mom,” I said. “I can blame him for that.”
“He thinks it’ll help, because when you and Wills go to stay with him I’ll be able to have a break.”
She tried to tell me then that there were lots of reasons why Dad was leaving and that I wasn’t to think it was because of Wills. There were grownup things that I wouldn’t understand. I didn’t believe her though. And I could tell from the way she looked so sad that she wanted Dad to be there, volcano or no volcano.
“Maybe he’ll miss us so much he’ll have to come back,” I urged. Surely he would miss us so much he would have to come back. Would he though? What if he found he liked the peace and quiet of his hurricane-free zone?
“You’re right,” said Mom brightly. “Of course he’ll miss us.”
I looked at her. She may have sounded bright, but her eyes were sort of dull and I knew that she didn’t really believe it. I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept wondering where Dad was and when I would see him again. I wondered if he was thinking about us or whether he had already shut us out of his mind. I wondered how we would manage without him, how Mom would manage without him.
In the middle of the night, I heard Wills’s door open. I heard him go downstairs into the kitchen and raid the fridge. I must have dropped off asleep, because I didn’t hear him come back upstairs again. I was startled by a light joggling across my eyes.
“Chris—are you awake?”
“What in the world are you doing, Wills? You frightened the pants off me. What time is it?”
I heaved myself up against the pillows. Wills sat down on the bed and laid his flashlight on his lap.
“It’s three o’clock,” he whispered. “Dad hasn’t come back yet.”
“He’s not coming back, Wills, he told you that. Not for the moment, anyway.”
“Bastard,” spat Wills. He chewed at the inside of his mouth, then moved on to his fingernails.
“We’ll still be able to see him,” I said. “Just not every day.”
“I don’t want to see him ever again,” Wills hissed. “Never, never, never.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “He’s our dad.”
“Was our dad,” said Wills.
I didn’t want to hear him say that again. “Go back to your room, Wills,” I ordered. “I want to go to sleep.”
Wills hesitated, then whispered, “Do you wanna see something?”
Before I could answer, he jumped up from the bed, went into his own room, and came back clutching something big and round.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s an ammonite. Look, it’s a perfect round. No bits missing, no chips, nothing.”
I took it from him and looked at it. It was bigger than the whole of my hand. I traced the swirls with my finger, before Wills grabbed it back.
“Where d’you get it?” I asked.
“None of your business,” he said sharply. He turned and ran his fingers across the bars of Muffin’s cage. Then, “A friend gave it to me,” he said. “It’s cool, isn’t it? It’s the best one I’ve got.”
I could tell Wills was lying. He had this look about him. Then he said, “Don’t tell Mom about it, will you? She’ll think I stole it, but I didn’t.”
I didn’t know what to say then. I was sure Wills was lying, but I didn’t think he would steal something.
“Promise you won’t tell Mom,” he insisted.
“I wish you hadn’t shown it to me now,” I retorted. “I promise, now let me get some sleep, will you?”
“I wish I hadn’t shown you, misery guts,” fired Wills.
He trudged off back to his room, leaving me to wonder why he couldn’t have kept his ammonite to himself, especially since he didn’t want Mom to know that he’d got it. I supposed it must be that he couldn’t keep it to himself, because there was no point in having something precious if no one else knew about it. I always told Mom or Dad if I’d read a really good book, or got ten out of ten, and
