A Window into Time (Novella) Read Free Page A

mind,” I told him loudly. “It’s not right. It’s Monday tomorrow, and I haven’t got Monday socks.”
    When I say stuff like that, about how things should be ordered properly, people look at me like I’m a stupid, not them. Uncle Gordon didn’t. He looked upset, because he knew it was important to me. “I’m sorry, man,” he said and came and sat down beside me.
    “It’s Monday,” I told him. I thought I was going to cry.
    He put his arm around my shoulder. “Tell you what. Tomorrow morning, you go all reckless and wild. Be sockless! I’ll do it, too, okay? The pair of us together, that’ll be matching, see? And we’ll take a trip into town and see if we can find some Monday socks. Hell, we’ll find a whole week of socks. That way you’ll be covered.”
    I leaned in against him, and he gave me a gentle pat. Nobody understands me as good as Uncle Gordon. I know that’s a fact, because I remember how everyone treats me.

Chapter 3
New Start
    Dad didn’t get a flight back for three days. Every plane out of Malé was all booked up, apparently. The flight took a day, so he didn’t land at Heathrow until really late Thursday, so he and Rachel stayed in an airport hotel that night and then came up to get me the next day.
    There weren’t many people at the funeral. Eleven of us, actually. Me, Uncle Gordon, Dad and Rachel, and some of Mum’s friends from Yaxley, like Chan’s mother. It was at Marholm cemetery just outside Peterborough. At the end of the service, they played “Jerusalem” by K. D. Lang, which Mum liked, and the curtains closed around the coffin.
    I had to sit down then. I was crying so hard it made my legs weak. And I knew everyone would be looking at me, which made it even worse—like they were all crowding around me the way people did with Victorian freaks at the circus. I could hear these noises coming from my mouth, as if an animal were dying somewhere. I hate doing that, but I couldn’t help it. I hated being me. I hated the world for what it was doing to me.
    I hated everything.
    The rest of the service was one of those memory gaps. After it was all over, it was just me and Dad sitting in the front row of the chapel. Everyone else had left.
    Dad looked at me and said: “You okay?”
    I told him: “Yes.” Even though I wanted to throw up.
    “We’ll scatter her ashes in Burghley wood. She always liked the park there.”
    “Okay.” I didn’t tell him they wouldn’t be her ashes, not really; it might upset him. Crematoriums don’t burn coffins individually. They wait until the end of the week and burn them all together, because that’s more cost-effective. And even then, the remains they give to families in the urns are mostly wood ash from the stack of coffins, because a body is 90 percent water. It’s on the Internet.
    —
    Dad’s flat was on Tottenham Road, Islington. It was a two-bedroom flat in a nice-looking old house, with a big (for London) lounge, and a kitchen diner that cost as much as a car.
    Mum always called it his playboy pad. I don’t know why; it’s not like it looked out over the Thames or had a helipad or anything. Dad said it was very expensive, and Islington was a premium address. I thought the more money you spent on property, the bigger it was. I worked out the floor space; it was less than half of our house in Yaxley, but apparently it cost twice as much.
    Dad should know all about that. As well as owning five properties in London, he’s a partner in a real-estate agency, which he started with two friends. He says his business plan is to own half of Islington by the time he’s fifty-five, then he’ll hand it all to me and retire. It was going to be when he was fifty, but the recession and austerity pushed it back five years.
    The second bedroom was supposed to be his home office, but they put an Ikea bed in there for me. I brought some of my stuff down from Mum’s house, but I had to keep it in a stack of plastic storage boxes, as there was no