Candelo Read Free Page B

the glass rattling in the pane.
    I was alone again. There was nothing to see. Nothing to hear. And I suddenly felt foolish.
    Inside, I sat by my window and I tried not to think about Mitchell. The pages of the script were open in front of me, but I kept on looking out to the lights of the houses on the north point. Despite what I had said to Simon, the film was dull and tedious.
    I was being auditioned to play a heroin addict. This is the type of part that I am always offered. Probably because, like Violetta, I am small and thin with dark circles under my eyes. As I closed the script, I saw myself, there in the reflection of the window, and I looked away.
    It was not just Mitchell I was trying not to think about.
    It was myself. It was the situation I was in.
    I saw my reflection and I saw why the doctor had been concerned when I had gone to see her that morning.
    You need to make sure you get plenty of iron
, she had said,
if you’re going to go ahead with this
.
    She had given me a card for a clinic. And a letter of referral.
    Give yourself a couple of weeks
, she had said,
before you make any decisions
.
    I picked up the telephone and then, halfway through dialling Vi’s number, I hung up. I wasn’t ready to speak to her yet. I didn’t know what I would say, how I would attempt to explain the situation in which I had found myself.
    I dialled another number.
    Lizzie had friends over. I could hear someone laughing in the background, the clatter of cutlery falling to the floor.
    It was not a good time to talk.
    On the weekend
, she promised.
    And as I rolled myself a joint, I promised myself I would stop smoking if and when I made my decision.
    But until then, if I was going to sleep, I needed all the help I could get.

four

    Once, a long time ago, Simon had a lot of friends.
    Always late home from school, he would drift from a neighbour’s house to the corner, and then on to the park, perhaps the newsagency; unaware of the time, even with the first flicker of the streetlights, he would simply forget he was meant to be home.
    Vi would always tell me to go and find him.
    And I would.
    Always wanting to be where he was, to be part of whatever it was that the older kids did, I would know where to look for him. At the bowling green smoking cigarettes, his short pockets stuffed with stolen chalk, on the oval trying to throw boomerangs and get them to come back, out on the street playing handball, perhaps at someone’s house, stoned and listening to records; it never took me long to track him down.
    I would come in and tell him dinner was ready. Now.
    He would look up, surprised.
    But it’s only five
, he would say.
    I would roll my eyes and show him my watch.
    Unaware of how late it was, he would just be wherever he was. Completely.
    And that was what drew people to him. That, and the gentleness in his nature.
    You could not help but like him.
    Simon no longer has the friends he used to have. There is really only myself and Vi. And we are his family.
    I once asked Vi what she thought had happened to him. Why the change had occurred. But as soon as I articulated the question, I wished I hadn’t. I knew I had led us into a territory that neither of us had the heart to enter.
    I watched as she tried to light a match, as it splintered against the flint and failed to catch. She tried three times before she spoke, drawing back sharply on her cigarette and staring out the window, as she told me she didn’t know.
    It’s just the way he is
, she said and she did not turn to look at me.
    I did not press it any further.
    Because when it comes to Simon, it seems as though we constantly fail, as though inaction is the path we choose.
    The morning after he came to me with his news, I did not call Vi, dreading the prospect of mentioning Mitchell’s name but knowing it had to be done. I did not call my father and arrange to meet him for lunch that day. I did not ask him to speak to Simon.
    I did not do