Of course, if he was wrong about the business he’d have no excuse for not returning to university. But he felt sure he wasn’t wrong. There was a tension about his dad’s face, a kind of fear in his eyes he’d never seen before, not even when his mum first got ill.
Julian’s dad was snoring in front of the television. He crept past him to his parents’ bedroom. His mum was in bed. The slackness of sleep gave her face a symmetry it didn’t have when she was awake. She looked like the mother he used to know, only much, much older. He stared at her a long moment, reluctant to wake her. Then, reaching to gently shake her, he said, “Mum, Mum.”
Her eyes flickered open, glassy, struggling to focus. “Julian,” she murmured. “What is it?”
“I…I…” Julian paused, then tried again. But he couldn’t bring himself to speak the lie, not even a few words of it. Then, suddenly, he was leaning forward and tears were streaming down his face. “I’m so confused, so confused, so confused.” He pressed a hand to his eyes as the words bubbled through his lips.
“Shh,” Christine soothed, drowsily drawing Julian’s head onto her shoulder, stroking his hair. Her voice fading off into sleep, she murmured over and over, “Everything’s going to be alright. Everything’s going to be alright.”
Julian felt the tension drain from him, but although his body craved to follow his mum into sleep he didn’t release his grip on wakefulness. After maybe an hour, he rose and left the room. His dad was still asleep on the sofa, the telly blaring. There was a two-thirds empty bottle of whisky and an empty glass on the coffee-table. Julian covered him with a blanket from the back of the sofa. A plate of pasta had been left for him in the kitchen. He took it to his bedroom, followed by Henry, and ate on his bed, thinking about Mia and trying not to think about her, wanting to be with her, yet at the same time wishing he’d never set eyes on her.
Chapter 9
A little after seven am, Julian’s dad came into his bedroom without knocking, still wearing the previous day’s clothes, and looking hung-over. “Right, Julian, get your stuff packed. If you set off in the next half-hour, you should be back in time for afternoon classes.”
Julian wasn’t caught off guard. He was showered and dressed in a shirt, tie and trousers, his hair neatly combed. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?” Robert frowned, noticing Julian’s clothes. “And why are you dressed like that?”
“For my first day of work at the factory.”
Robert stared at Julian as if unsure what to make of him. “Is this a wind up? Are you trying to provoke me?”
“I’m trying to show you I’m serious.”
“Serious about what? Screwing up your future?”
“I want to protect my future. I know the factory’s struggling-”
Robert’s frown turned into a scowl. “Who the hell told you that, your mother?”
“No one told me. It’s obvious from the way you’ve been acting lately.”
Robert was silent a moment, chewing his lip. He sighed. “Okay, let’s say you’re right, let’s say the business is going through a difficult patch. In that case, why would I want to take on a new worker?”
“I’ll work for nothing.”
“It’ll still cost money and time to train you. Listen, Julian, if you want to help me, the best thing you can do is finish university.”
“But what’s the point if-”
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Robert burst out. Putting a hand to his head as if it ached, he continued more quietly, “We’re not going through all that again. This matter isn’t up for discussion. Now change out of those clothes and get packed.”
Julian shook his head. He held his dad’s gaze, trying to appear calm while his heart raced. His dad’s expression briefly seemed to be caught between anger and disappointment. Then anger tipped the balance. His voice was cold with it, as he said, “You have two choices, Julian: either you do as I say, or you don’t do it. But whatever you do, you’re not stopping in this house.”
“So you’re throwing me out?”
“Yes, if that’s what it takes to make you see sense. I warned you not to push me on this.”
“Okay, fine.” Figuring he was calling his dad’s bluff, Julian stuffed a few things into his rucksack and slung it over his shoulder. His dad watched impassively, arms crossed. Julian walked past him to the kitchen. He stooped to kiss his mum, who was eating breakfast.
Christine twisted round to look at him in surprise. “Are you going back?”
“No. Dad’s throwing me out.”
Her face drew up into a one-sided frown. She looked past Julian at her husband. “Is that true?”
Robert spread his hands. “I’ve tried to reason with him, Christine, but he’s too damned pig-headed to listen. I don’t see what else I can do.”
Julian snorted at the word ‘reason’. “I’ll speak to you soon, Mum. Take care.”
“Hang on,” Christine said, as he turned to leave. “This is ridiculous. Where will you go?”
“Oh don’t worry about him, he’ll bunk-up with his mates, and when they get sick of him and turf him out, he’ll realise how stupid he’s been about this,” Robert said, with more than a hint of condescension.
Biting down on an angry retort, Julian headed for the front door. Even as he stepped through it, he half- expected his dad to call him back, try to reason with him some more. But he didn’t.
Julian drove around aimlessly. He’d intended to go to Kyle’s, beg a place to kip for a few nights, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so with his dad’s parting remark still smarting in his ears. When his car ran low on fuel, he pulled into a petrol station and filled up. He tried to pay with his bank-card, but it was rejected. He guessed at once that his dad had put a stop on it — they had a joint account, which his dad paid a monthly allowance into. “Bastard,” he muttered under his breath, paying with most of the cash in his wallet.
Julian drove to Mia’s school. He sat hunched down like some kind of deviant, scanning the faces in the playground. Mia was stood alone in the crowd, as if on her own little island. He left the car and called to her through the railings. Although she must’ve heard him, she turned to go into the school building. Sucking his lip with annoyance, he returned to the car. It flashed through his mind to drive out of town at top speed in some random direction, and keep driving until the tank was empty. He didn’t, though. He rolled a joint and smoked away the turbulence in his veins, smoked away the morning. When Mia reappeared at lunchtime, he approached her at the gates.
“I need to talk to you,” he said. She blanked him. He dogged along after her. “Please, Mia.”
“Go away.”
“Not until you talk to me about what happened yesterday.”
“Go away or I’ll scream.”
“Just answer me one question.”
Mia stopped and let out a scream. Other school kids stopped, too, turning towards her in surprise and curiosity. “Hey, what’s going on?” asked somebody.
“Okay, okay I’m going.” Julian backed away from Mia. I’m sorry, he mouthed, before heading to his car. He drove to the bridge and leant over the handrail, wondering what Mia saw when she stood there. The look that came into her eyes reminded him of something, he realised. It reminded him of the way his Grandma Alice had looked all those years ago when she’d burst into the bedroom after the seance. It was the look of someone seeing, or trying to see, into the unknown, the beyond. But who did her eyes search for there? And why did it matter to him? Why did this nobody girl matter so much to him? He wondered if there was a connection between the one and the other. He stared into the water, the water stared back inscrutably, holding onto its secrets jealously.
Julian drove to The Cut. He bought a beer with the last of his money and sipped it slowly, making it last as long as possible. His eyes were never far from the clock on the wall behind the bar. At three o’clock he returned to the school, parking where he could see the gate, but out of the line of sight of a casual glance from the gate. At the end of the school day, when the kids streamed home, he followed Mia in his car, careful to keep his distance. She went straight to her foster parents’ house, speaking to no one along the way. He parked on the busy main-road at
