Hotel Midnight Read Free

wreckage?’
    ‘I told you. I haven’t broken anything.’
    ‘Sounded like it.’
    ‘Count the plates if you don’t believe me. Right, can you get some cans from the fridge?’
    ‘Beer?’
    ‘I’m working, Jake.’
    ‘No, I meant for me.’
    I shook my head, smiling despite a generally crap day.
    ‘You’ll get me shot by your mother.’
    ‘Aw, Dad, it’s Friday.’
    ‘Just one, then. And not a can of beer, get one of the small bottles.’
    ‘Meanie,’ he called, good-naturedly, from the room.
    ‘You can feed the goldfish while you’re at it as well … Paula?’
    But it was Jake’s voice I heard, not Paula’s. ‘She’s still at Kay’s.’
    ‘Well, I can’t wait. I’ve got to be away by five.’
    ‘Stick hers in the fridge, Dad.’
    There comes a time when your kids start giving you the orders. At thirteen Jake was no exception. I didn’t see any let up in the situation. In forty years it would be ‘Take your pills, Dad. You shouldn’t be driving the car at this time of night, Dad. Time for bed, Dad.’
    As I topped off the sandwiches with mayonnaise I sang out, ‘OK. Come and get it.’
    Jake appeared at the kitchen door. The bristling razored scalp made me itch to try striking a match on it. As always, his eyes were boyishly bright, while his lips were full, almost swollen-looking : I’m told the bee-stung effect is typical when all those hormones begin cascading through teenage veins.
    Glancing across, I said, ‘I thought we’d eat al fresco.’
    ‘I thought we were having sandwiches?’
    ‘Oh, very funny. We are.’
    ‘But I thought you said we were eating al—’
    ‘Al fresco is French for eating outside.’
    ‘Oh….’
    He collected the drinks. I put the sandwiches on the plates, added kitchen roll in lieu of serviettes and headed for the back door.
    Jake opened it for me and grinned. ‘Oh, by the way, Dad. Al fresco is Italian for “in the open air”. Not French.’ Kids get to that age too: when they think they’re smarter than their parents. Trouble is, they generally are.
    That was the shape of the afternoon. In fact, the shape of most afternoons. I made sandwiches for the family before Kathy got home from work. While I did that I traded a fair deal of good-natured banter with Jake. Paula was a little more distant these days. She was seeing a boy in a ‘significant’ way, and when she wasn’t somewhere canoodling under a tree she was working part-time to finance driving lessons, or chewing the fat with hip friends.
    As I headed for the door with the sandwiches Jake said, ‘Want me to tape anything while you’re at work?’
    Before I had chance to reply there came a sound like rubble being dumped into metal skips far away. A deep thundering sound felt deep in the bone as much as heard by the ear.
    ‘Hey.’ Jake grinned. ‘That was the sound I heard before.’
    ‘At least I’m in the clear about the plates.’
    ‘Looks as though Mum won’t have your nuts for pudding after all.’
    ‘Jake.’ I automatically delivered the fatherly reproach for slightly off-colour language.
    Meanwhile, however, something had caught Jake’s attention. I looked back in the direction he was frowning. ‘What’s wrong?’
    ‘I hadn’t noticed that before.’
    ‘Noticed what?’
    ‘That crack by the sink.’
    I looked. People talk about crack-ups. Or cracks appearing in society. In its way this crack was going to be as profound. The effects as far reaching. Yet this crack was in the wall. It was new. No doubt about that. I’d not noticed it a moment ago as I stood rinsing tomatoes in the sink. Thin as a pencil line, it ran a jagged path from sink to window. A powdery deposit of white paint lay dustily on the aluminum surface of the sink as if freshly fallen from the wall.
    ‘Remind me to buy some Polyfilla tomorrow,’ I told Jake. Then I smiled while giving a parental (not to say stoic) shake of the head. ‘Didn’t I say to get a bottle of beer, not a