“Don’t read one of them,” he says, racing over to his chest of drawers and pulling out a pair of striped pyjamas. “I’ve heard them a million times. Make something up.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” I laugh, trying to disguise my fear. I’ve never made up a story before. I don’t know how it works. Do you know what the ending will be before you begin? Do you make it up sentence by sentence? Do you start with a character? Or a setting?
I look up at the ceiling as Nike starts changing. He has the same glow-in-the-dark stars that I had as a kid. His walls are painted blue, and there’s a wallpaper border featuring cartoon rockets and planets. “Are you into space, Nike?”
“What do you mean?” His tone of voice suggests that he’s struggling with something. I look over and see his head is stuck inside his pyjama top, and he’s naked on the bottom half. Is it appropriate for me to help him get dressed? Fortunately, as I’m wavering, he pulls his head through the correct hole and follows my gaze, which has now moved back to the wall.
“Oh yes, that space,” he says. “I like space. I like trucks and stegosauruses and questions too.”
“Questions?”
“Yes.” He begins putting on his pyjama bottoms. “I’ve got a question for you. How big is a stegosaurus’s brain?”
I perch on the end of his bed. “This big?” I ask, stretching my arms wide apart, doing the old grown-up trick of pretending I think something is much bigger than it really is. My outstretched arms almost touch the walls on each side of his room. It’s not much smaller in here than a saturation chamber, which would sleep six adults.
“Dummy. It’s the size of a Ping-Pong ball!” Nike leaps onto the bed, giggling. I hope he’s not getting hyper.
“Come on, pup,” I say. “Under the covers.” I prop him up with pillows and hand him his mug.
Nike scrapes the wrinkled skin off the top of the cocoa with his finger. “I like eating the skin,” he says, sucking his fingertip, and then downing his entire drink in two goes. He grins and shows me his teeth, a brown scummy film smeared across them.
“Okay, mister,” I say. “Story time.” I think back to the stories my dad used to tell me. They seem so complicated when I try and remember them now. I’m going to have to invent something from scratch.
“This is a story about an astronaut,” I begin. “An astronaut who decides to live in outer space.”
Nike wriggles under the covers and looks up at me expectantly.
“The astronaut—who is called Rik—doesn’t have a wife or children. He’s always been too consumed by his work to have time for that sort of thing. One day, Rik tells NASA that he wants to go and live on the moon. He says that he might even like to start a colony there. Of course, NASA is very excited by the proposition. They tell Rik that he deserves to have dreams as big as this one. What’s more, they have the power to make his dreams come true.”
The rocket hasn’t even left the launchpad yet, but Nike begins to snore. I slowly count down from ten to zero.
16
“So good of you to pop up and see your old man,” says my dad, for the hundredth time since I arrived. He turns to his carer. “Reveka, show Sol that thing you showed me last night.”
Reveka gives my father a definite look. “It’s really not so great,” she says. “Just something my kid showed me.” Reveka has hunched shoulders, and a mouth that’s reluctant to smile. She’s probably very good for my father.
My dad is a scoundrel and a womaniser. If his boasts are true, then roughly three-quarters of his carers have ended up in bed with him. Never refers to them as girlfriends, though. It’s easier to end a business relationship.
“Go on,” my dad urges.
“Whatever it is, I’d love to see it,” I say politely, wondering how much longer we all have to sit around the kitchen table before I get a cuppa. I know I should offer to make one myself, but even though I grew up in this house, I feel as if I’m a guest these days.
It’s comforting to be here, in any case. This 1930s semidetached home still has the same kitchen cabinets that my mother installed. Her magnolia brushstrokes still adorn some of the walls. And although the house is close to a part of Bristol that has recently become a hipster haven, it’s thankfully positioned a good forty-minute walk away from the micropubs and coffee roasters. Here, the houses still flaunt grey pebbledash and uPVC front doors. They’re not decorated in the bright colours that Bristol is famous for. I’m not ready for my childhood to be hidden behind those colours just yet.
“It’s a trick,” my dad tells me, and I realise I’ve been staring into space. “With fridge magnets. Go and fetch ’em, Reveka.” It’s good to see him happy. Takes years off him. Even though he’s still got all his own hair—a thick and lustrous brown— there was a period of time last year when I began to refer to him as “elderly.” I’m sure he was depressed, though he never admitted it. And I never built up the courage to ask him.
Reveka sighs as she goes over to the fridge. She peels two flat magnets off the door and comes back to the table.
My dad elbows me. “Wait till you see this. Hurry up, Reveka, doll.”
It’s hard to get an idea of my dad’s good side if you spend only ten minutes in his company. Last night, though, while I was babysitting Nike, it hit me: my dad did a good job bringing me up. He protected me from the grief that crouched
