Candelo Read Free Page A

disadvantaged families into adulthood. It’s for kids who are about to look after themselves
.
    She picked up the bottom sheet and started reading out loud.
Ideally, the program will work as a give and take experience. It’s not only the adolescent who will benefit from their stay with the placement family, but the family themselves
.
    We looked at her.
    Do any of you have anything you’d like to say?
    Simon looked at his watch. He wanted to get back to theStewarts’ house.
Sounds okay to me
, he said, which was how he responded to most of Vi’s proposals. Evie said she needed to go to the toilet, and I said I didn’t want a stranger on our holidays.
Not at all
, I added, in case I hadn’t been heard the first time.
    And I didn’t. I wanted us to have time with Vi. Away from her work.
    I’m disappointed in you
, and she poured herself another glass of red wine, and pushed the bottle towards Simon and me.
In fact, I really wouldn’t have expected it
, and as she looked at me through her reading glasses, she cut herself a piece of cheese from the stale block she always brought out for these meetings.
Why?
she asked.
    I could not think of a valid justification. Not a single one.
    Well, not in her eyes anyway.
    I think we’re all agreed, then
, she said, and it was clear that the decision had been made.
    When I told my father about the holiday, he made little effort to hide his disinterest.
    Really
, he said, but I could hear him on the other end of the telephone telling his new girlfriend, Jane, that he didn’t want any salad with his meal. Not yet, he liked it afterwards, on a different plate.
    You’re not listening
, I told him.
    I am, darling, I am
.
    But he wasn’t.
    You know what your mother’s like
, and he tried to reassure me.
Just humour her. Let it be. It won’t be so bad
.
    He had given up on Vi’s passions a long time ago. I doubtwhether he was ever really that interested, although she assures me that he was.
    He changed
, she tells me with some disgust.
    Bernard is a QC. When they met, he was instrumental in setting up the first community legal centres.
God knows what happened to him
, Vi says, and it is clear that she wants to change the topic.
    Simon, too, didn’t care. Not all that much.
    It’s no big deal
, he told me.
    I tried:
But if you came with me, and said you didn’t want him, then it would be two of us. Against one. We could ask for a revote
.
    He wasn’t interested.
    And Evie was too young.
    There was no point.
    So, that was the way it stacked up.
    That was the way it always stacked up.
    Mitchell was dead and Simon wanted me to go to his funeral.
    Why?
I asked him and he did not answer.
    I could only guess that it was some act of forgiveness. A gesture. A peacemaking. And I did not want to participate.
    I stood in my doorway, listening to the clatter of plates from the flats next door, dinner being prepared, the low hum of television from the flats behind them, the sound of a car pulling out from the flats on the other side, and, from above me, from our own block, silence. I turned to go inside and then, faced with the emptiness in front of me, found myself stepping back into the garden, back to where the stairs down the cliff oncebegan, and still were if you hacked your way through the knotted vines and sticky lantana, back to where I could see up to their windows. Lights on, curtains open, and the strain of the rusted sashes with each faint stir of breeze.
    Evening
. Mouse raised his hand in greeting as he walked past, his smirk just visible in the dark. He knew what I was doing.
    I did not bother responding.
    He had locked himself out again and I watched as he forced his window open and started climbing through, head first.
    I willed him to get stuck.
    Or at least fall, hard, onto the floor below.
    Lost your key?
I asked him.
    There’s no rule that says you gotta use the door
, and he slammed the window behind him,