Bright Burning Things(18)

I stand, go to the window and lean my forehead against it. I open the wardrobe, get my wheelie bag and start to throw things in haphazardly.

Tommy opens one eye. I stop what I’m doing.

‘How’s Nod, darling? Have you found the land of the kind giants yet?’

He smiles, still half asleep.

‘Remember, you have a special guardian angel looking out for you. Always.’

He turns over, cuddles into Herbie.

‘See you later, alligator,’ I whisper.

‘Not for a while, cwocodile,’ he whispers back, in his sleep.


I walk back into the kitchen with my bag, just in case, though I’m not even sure if I packed any underwear.

‘How long?’

‘Three months.’

‘What? That’s way too long. Tommy would never survive that long without me.’

‘My concern is whether he’ll survive with you.’

A feeling lands in me I’ve never felt before.

‘I’m sorry, Sonya. I know this is a shock, I know you’d like to hear me say, “Let’s try to make this work with AA,” but he’s too little, it’s too dangerous. You can’t beat this disease on your own.’

He sits, slumps, looks exhausted.

‘Can’t you come back in a few days? I need to get Tommy used to the idea.’ I almost say ‘and Herbie’, but don’t want my father more alarmed than he already is.

‘There’s a place for you tomorrow, Sonya. If you’ll agree to go. You have to agree to go, willingly.’

‘Not tomorrow, Dad.’

‘These places don’t come round very often, Sonya. Please, think about it. For Tommy. The sooner you tackle this thing, the sooner you’ll all be back together again.’

I sit at the opposite end of the table.

‘Where will Tommy go?’

‘With me.’

‘And Lara?’

‘She’ll just have to understand.’

‘So you haven’t told her?’

He looks miserable. This could be a huge problem for him. He looks down at the table, swipes a crumb off it, gets up, goes to the sink, gets a cloth, runs the water, returns to the table and wipes.

‘Dad, seriously, think this through. Lara probably won’t allow it.’

He holds the cloth up, studies it like it’s something he’s never seen before.

‘There is no other way, Sonya. Mrs O’Malley has said that she’d call the guards tomorrow, and if they do nothing, the social workers. She’s not kidding.’

‘Stupid bitch.’

He looks directly at me. ‘No, Sonya, she’s thinking of Tommy.’

A silence falls. I break it with a whisper: ‘And Herbie?’

‘The dog? We’ll have to find him a temporary place. Boarding kennels or something.’

The thought of Herbie curled up in a dark kennel, in strangers’ hands, strangers who wouldn’t care for him the way I do – until today. I have to remind myself: until today.

‘Tommy wouldn’t survive without him.’

‘That’s unnatural, Sonya. That level of bonding with an animal.’

My animal hackles rise, in sympathy with Herbie.

‘I won’t do it unless I know they can be together.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

At least he hasn’t followed this up with a ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Sonya’, which used to sting more than any amount of slapping.

‘Tommy can visit after the first two weeks.’

Resistance hits now, a hard wall. Two weeks without seeing Tommy. No way, no fucking way.

‘I can’t do it, Dad. I can’t leave them.’

‘If you don’t do it this way it’ll be much more traumatic for you all.’

‘What will Lara say if you arrive home with a dog?’

‘I’ll see if Mrs O’Malley will take the dog. She sounds fond of the thing.’

That scenario sets up such conflict that I can’t sort through the jumble of images that accompany it. At least Herbie knows her, and seems to like her, but he’d be looking every day at his empty house opposite, and no one could explain to him that it’s only temporary and Mrs O’Malley would probably make him sleep on the back porch on his own and he’d pine and she wouldn’t like his loud whining and she’s too fat to walk him and she’d give him way too many treats and I can’t bear the thought that he might like her and my son will break in two without his big shaggy beating comfort blanket. And.

‘Maybe she’d take them both?’ The words escape me before I’ve had time to process them. My father looks relieved, instantly, as if this is something he hadn’t even thought of. He could do the right thing by sidestepping the issue and Lara won’t need to be involved.

‘You could pay her’ slips out of my mouth. I quickly zip my lips, like my father taught me to when I was being particularly rowdy. He’d mime closing a zipper over my mouth and the action of it would have me feeling stitched up for the day.

‘I could,’ he murmurs. ‘Of course I could. I would keep a close eye.’

I wish I hadn’t planted that image of our neighbour as a witch in Tommy’s impressionable mind. I want to see him like he was yesterday morning in Mrs O’Malley’s kitchen, with his book, his dog and, hell, his milk. His little contented face. He could even eat animals, if he were lied to.