Me and Mr Booker Read Free Page B

the stuff they had brought with them from England was still packed up.
    I sat down at the dining room table and waited for Mr Booker to finish helping Mrs Booker into bed. She kept apologising to him. I could hear them through the half-open bedroom door.
    ‘I’m sorry, my darling. I’m so useless. I’m no good to anyone.’
    ‘Don’t be daft,’ he said. ‘Just go to sleep.’
    ‘Kiss me goodnight.’
    I heard the sound of him pulling the curtains shut and then there was no sound at all for a moment, except the cars going by in the street below. I went out on the balcony and watched them. When Mr Booker came out to join me he put his arm around my waist, which I hadn’t expected, and we stood there together staring at the view. It was nothing much, just the street and the car park opposite and on the other side of that the shopping centre, which was the middle of town but just looked like every other suburb.
    ‘At least you’re close to everything here,’ I said. ‘Not miles away like we are.’
    He turned to look at me and there was something faraway in his expression, as if he had lost his train of thought. I knew he was going to kiss me because his arm pulled me closer to him and he leaned in so that his mouth was next to mine.
    ‘Do you mind?’ he said. ‘I’ve been wanting to do this all day.’
    ‘Do what?’ I said. I wasn’t trying to sound stupid, but I didn’t know what else to say.
    It wasn’t my first kiss. I had kissed two different boys from my school before, David Simmons and Luc Carriere, just to see what it was like, but their kisses were nothing like Mr Booker’s. Mr Booker’s kiss was frightening. It was like he was trying to swallow me whole. When I couldn’t breathe any more I pushed him away.
    ‘Do you think this is a good idea?’ I said. I could feel my whole body going faint from lack of oxygen.
    ‘Do you have a better one?’ he said.
    In the car on the way back to my mother’s place he turned up the radio and we drove along with Dionne Warwick blaring out the windows. He said he remembered Motown from when he was still wet behind the ears like me. When we pulled up outside the house he turned off the engine. I waited while he lit a cigarette then I reached over to take it from him so he had to light another for himself.
    ‘What do we do now?’ I said. I wasn’t used to smoking. I wasn’t used to the sickening kick it gave me in the bottom of my chest or the way it made my hands shake.
    ‘Act as if nothing has happened,’ he said. He was smiling. I could tell he was still drunk from lunch, which is why he had driven so slowly. He had to think about everything he was doing. Even the sight of his smoking cigarette seemed to make him stop and wonder what to do next. Then he remembered and made a little chuckling sound in his throat.
    ‘Do you think you can do that?’ he said.
    ‘I can try,’ I said.
    ‘Jolly good,’ he said. ‘Pip pip.’
    I laughed.
    ‘What’s so funny?’ he said.
    ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’m just easily amused.’
    ‘That much is obvious,’ he said, taking my hand and lacing his fingers through mine. Then he told me I should go inside before he did something stupid. But I didn’t want to move because he still had my hand and he was holding onto it so tightly.
    I sat there beside him in the car and smoked my cigarette and told him that he shouldn’t go round kissing people at random because it would get him into trouble.
    ‘You think so?’ he said.
    ‘It’s a definite possibility,’ I said.
    And then he said that he would try to control himself in the future because the last thing he wanted was trouble.
    I watched him take a last swig from the hip flask he carried with him wherever he went. He shook it and held it upside down to lick the rim. He showed me how to blow perfect smoke rings. They drifted across in front of me and out the window where the breeze made them ripple and snake away.
    ‘Do you know any other tricks?’ I