Girl A(70)

Without Father, it was a strange, quiet evening. I divided the pie into six precise slices, and we ate in the living room, gathered at Mother’s feet. Evie curled in my lap, feline with contentment. We prayed into the night, with full bellies and bowed heads. I could feel the jitters of a smile on my face. I didn’t know what to pray for. I had the kind of ideas that I knew landed you in hell. Father’s van was upturned on the moors, with a Father-shaped hole in the windscreen. Father was hanging from the bracken. We would eat well for the rest of time.

Amen.

Some time after midnight, headlights swung through the window.

Father came in the door breathless and pained, like the last survivor of some bloody crusade. He called for Mother, and she went to him. They staggered together to the kitchen, and she served him tea and crisps, tenderly, beneath the bright electric lights. While we were waiting for him to talk, I brushed down the empty pie plate and returned it to the cupboard.

‘I’ve been,’ Father said, ‘with the police.’

They had picked him and Jolly up from Dustin’s, mid-breakfast. The food had just arrived. Full English, with extra black pudding. When the officers approached the table, Jolly set down his knife and fork, and sighed. Father narrated this part of the story with the kind of hushed awe which he usually reserved for the Old Testament God. ‘At least,’ Jolly said, ‘let us finish our fucking breakfast.’

The inquisition happened at the station. They were charging Jolly with money laundering and fraud. The fraud related to Jolly’s use of religious donations from the residents of Blackpool, and was, of course, a complete fucking fabrication. I thought of his congregation, their faces turned up to catch some of his light. They would have counted out precisely what they could afford, and pressed the notes into his warm, damp hands. The police asked Father how Jolly spent his money; where Jolly kept his records; why Jolly hadn’t shared his proceeds, if they were such close friends. Once Father had prayed for them, he knew exactly how to answer. ‘No comment,’ he said. He no-commented all afternoon.

They released him in the late evening. When they returned his belongings, the officer flicked a few thin coins onto the floor, so that Father had to stoop to collect them.

‘Don’t spend it all at once,’ the officer said.

Father gathered us to him, then. ‘There’s persecution out there,’ he said, ‘for people who desire to live the life that we do.’ I thought of the laughter in the school corridor, as Mother and I had left it. Father lay a hand on my neck, still cold from the drive home, and I warmed it with my own.

That night, for the first time in many months, Ethan wanted to talk with me. He called to me from his room as I passed to go to bed, so softly that I thought I had only hoped for it. He called again, and this time I knocked on his door and went in. He was lying on his bed in his school trousers with the Bible held above him. As soon as I was inside the room, he threw it at me, too fast for me to catch it. It hit me in the chest, and stung. ‘So,’ he said, and laughed. ‘Thou shalt not steal.’

‘We don’t know anything yet,’ I said, and he laughed again.

‘What do you think he spent the money on? I bet it was something really dark. Old Jolly. He was always a complete lunatic, but I wasn’t expecting this.’

‘Do you think Father had anything to do with it?’

‘I doubt it. I don’t see Jolly as a man who would have shared his proceeds. But – put it this way – I don’t think that this will help with Father’s state of mind.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, and because I couldn’t resist it: ‘Like you’re his great confidant.’

‘At least I have a seat at the table.’

Ethan stood up. He had always been taller than me – even Delilah was taller than me – but in the last year his body had acquired a new power. There were cuts of muscle in his arms and across his chest. I heard him exercising in the evening, the noise of each odd movement repeated again and again, accompanied by his breath. He was beginning to refine himself. He stopped a foot away from me. I held back my shoulders, as Father had told us that we should, and adjusted my face so that I wouldn’t look afraid.

‘I think that he’s losing it,’ Ethan said. He spoke so softly that I stepped closer to him still. ‘He already thinks that the world conspires against him. He talks of creating his own kingdom, right here in this house. This thing with the police – it just confirms what he’s always suspected.’

Ethan still revelled in the transmission of knowledge. Part of the deal was your gratitude, which he looked for to confirm that he was cleverer than anybody else. I nodded, as though the information was taking some time to process, and asked the only question which seemed to have any worth. ‘Then what do we do?’ I said.

‘You look after yourself, Lex. I won’t be able to do it for you.’

I suspected that Ethan had requested my presence with this conclusion in mind. He was resigned to our fate and had no interest in an alliance. As I turned to leave, I recalled the one thing that I knew, and he didn’t.

‘Why weren’t you in school today?’

‘I was.’

‘You weren’t. Mother came to collect us, and I couldn’t find you. You haven’t been in all week.’

‘Maybe there’s nothing left to learn.’