Untitled Part 2

The first half of my life was very happy. We lived in a bright, busy hub in the centre of everything- friends and family always flitting in and out, a park where I liked to go on the swings and pretend I was flying, a restaurant which did very good cannelloni. My school was just the right size and it had colourful stuff to play with, which was all that really mattered back then. The sandpit was good, plasticine was better- rice pudding and falling over were bad. Life was simple.
I was close to my parents back then, and they were close to each other. I loved the sight of them together. I loved it when he whispered in her ear and made her giggle in a way she never laughed with other people. It seemed like they were really good friends, best friends, even. They bought each other secret presents and kissed when they thought I wasn’t looking, and even sometimes when they knew I was.
But then, by degrees, it began to go wrong. In that way kids always do, I sensed rather than knew that something was up, but wasn’t able to understand it. A lurking suspicion, a lipstick stain on the pillow, several times when Dad had ‘a lot of work to do with business colleagues, so please don’t disturb us, Nathan’ in his room. I didn’t see it. In fairness, he had converted the bedroom into his office area, so I could be forgiven for missing it. But Mum knew. Mum always knew. Night after night she gritted her teeth and turned over in the cold bed and told herself she was wrong, that she couldn’t smell another woman’s floral scent on his shirt, that she was happily married and they were going to grow old together.
So the turning point came when I was nine. It was my parents’ anniversary, which is somewhat ironic. It was like something out of an American drama. Mum came home early with a gift-wrapped package under her arm. She unwound her scarf and threw it onto the sofa before coming over to me and kissing the top of my head. She looked tense.
“Hello, sweetie,” she said. “How was school?”
“Alright.”
“You wouldn’t believe what a day I’ve had! First there was something wrong with the reports we sent up to London, some weird error code-” She broke off and looked up at the ceiling. Loud, gasping cries were coming from the bedroom.
“Something must be wrong with the project,” I said innocently, engrossed in the TV. (I know, I know. I’d been leading a very sheltered life.)
Without warning Mum threw the package at the framed wedding photograph on the mantelpiece. It fell to the laminate floor and shattered into thousands of glittering shards. I jumped. Without saying a word she marched upstairs. The bedroom ricocheted against its frame and the house exploded into screaming.
I stayed where I was for a moment, too shocked to do anything. Then I ran into the kitchen and slammed the door behind me. Mum came in fifteen minutes later. She started opening the drawers and stuffing handfuls of cutlery into her wheeled suitcase. Her face was white, lips pressed tight together.
“What are you doing?” I said desolately, though I knew. “Where are you going?”
She turned around then, gave a strangled half-laugh and ruffled my hair so hard it hurt. “I don’t know and I don’t care,” she said. The front door slammed behind her.
That was it. She was gone. I took her scarf, feeding the delicate silk through my fingers, and let it fly from the upstairs window, a farewell banner.

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It was four weeks to the day since she’d gone. We were standing in the gooey remains of a congealing Chinese takeaway dropped carelessly in the gutter. A cold breeze swept through the cluster of apartment blocks, making the litter dance around the entrance to our new home. It looked grim. I stared at the cage lift with distaste and tried to avoid standing in the murky corners as it rattled and wheezed its way up to the fifth floor. The corridor was dimly lit; the door squeaked on unoiled hinges when I opened it wide. Living slash dining room. Bedroom. Cupboard-sized bedroom. Bathroom. The four rooms in which we’d spend the next nine years.
Dad was standing morose in the car park. “This is all your fault,” he said suddenly, viciously, struggling to drag a standing lamp out of the van. The cable was twisted around the leg of a table. “If you’d only kept your mouth shut none of this would have happened. Fucking stupid kid.”
“Ryan in my old school’s parents split up too,” I said helpfully, though I felt sad and empty. “He said it’s not so-”
With a brutal force I had never experienced from him before, Dad gripped my arm and dragged me into the building. “Whatever you do, you don’t say a word about that to anyone. You hear me?”
“Ye-es, Dad.”
“Good.” He straightened up and swept a hand through his hair, smiling vacuously at two women who had just come down in the lift.