Mole

The door slammed, and the whole lot of them jumped in their seats. She stood there, frozen, salad tongs in her hand. I'd stormed in right as she was coaxing one of the kids to take a portion of something green.

The moment melted and the smiles returned, the bubble and simmer of warm dinnertime conversation. It should have soothed something in me, after what had just happened, but it didn't.

God it was so cosy. So Brady Bunch. I could have screamed. Or vomited. I couldn't bear to sit down with them. I knew they'd scoot over, someone would fetch a chair and a plate and, "Sit, please, there's plenty to go 'round..."

But I just. Couldn't. Do. It. I'd have been a piece of sky or waterfall in the sickeningly cute puppy's face. It would've made me feel worse, not better.

I hadn't even taken my shoes off, and that meant the thumping on the stairs was extra satisfying. I headed arrowlike to my room. That door banged as well.

After a moment, the homely chatter and clatter filtered up to me, all the way up to the distant planet I was on. I stretched out on the bed (which was a bit too short) and stuffed my head under the pillow.

It was no better under there, in the dark. I saw Da's face again.

Da's eyes had been so blank. I don't think I saw a single flicker of recognition there. I might as well have not existed. If he thought of me at all, he thought I was still that same, skinny kid. The mummy's boy. The pansy. My blood started boiling again.

Even then, he wasn't really upset that he didn't know where that boy was.

I'm here, Da. I'm right in front of you...

No, he got upset because he thought Ma would be upset with him. He could be brash, and old fashioned, and a chauvinistic pig... But he did have a real soft spot for her. I wouldn't call it love, not from that brute. He might have thought of it that way. Unless he thought love was just for pansies...

Even when he was angry, there was nothing personal in it. He might as well have been yelling at a stranger in the pub.

This lot, they didn't get on all the time. Sometimes the kids fought like cats and dogs. But even when there was a spike of bickering, it was personal. That was why there was friction, because they did belong together. They were too alike, or too different but no less close for it.

I think that was my first show of open rudeness or temper towards the family. I was determined it should be my last.

I had three thoughts, lying there, listening to the hum of a warm family drifting up to me from the kitchen.

First, the realisation settled over me and congealed: I wasn't part of this family, and it was useless trying to be. A joke. Pathetic.

Second, whatever I did next, it would be easier with a somewhere cheap to live and surrounded by people kindly disposed towards me.

Third, if my own family was truly lost to me...

Maybe it was, maybe I'd never find my brother now.

Then I might need a new hobby.

I remember the school nurse. The rat. The one who nitpicked, and sniffed, and handed out bits of paper. Scribbled on clipboards and squinted at scales, and the measly sandwich in my battered old Asterix lunchbox...

She was dead now. I'd never look her in the eyes and demand she face up to what she did with her snooty ways. But there was a carbon copy of her right downstairs, with a dish towel over her shoulder and a carefully constructed sandcastle built all around her.

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