The Flask Read Free

inkwells,” says Si in passing.
    I can see dark stains which could have been ink. People writing at this desk long before Aunt Edie. I imagine a quill pen scratching out a love letter. And suddenly those faraway people who sat at this desk, family or strangers, they don’t seem so faraway at all. They seem joined to me by the desk and all the things that have been written and thought here. And then I think about Edie herself, and how maybe she loved this desk. Sun-bright Edie, maybe coming here to be quiet, to be still, to unfurl her own dark heart.
    Then I know I want to claim this desk after all.

But I still don’t put anything in the desk. Not until the morning my mother is to deliver the babies. This is going to be a long day, a difficult day. “We’ll need to keep busy,” Gran says; “you and me.”
    Gran has agreed to stay in the house with me so that Si can be in the operating theatre with Mum.
    “It’s an elective caesarean, Jess,” says Si. “The operation itself is quite safe.”
    They have to go in the night before, as Mum is first on the list. Si stands in the hall holding Mum’s suitcase.
    “Don’t worry, Jess,” Mum says, and stretches out her arms for me. But I can’t get close, because of the babies. “I’ll bring them home safe,” she whispers into my hair. “I will.”
    “Time to go,” says Si.
    I lie awake a long time that night. Keeping vigil. Watching. I imagine Mum being awake. And Si. And probably the babies too, waiting.
    In the morning I skip breakfast.
    “You’re growing,” said Gran. “You have to eat.”
    But I can’t.
    I go to my room and start on the desk. I have decided that I will put in some homework stuff, but also some private things. In one of the cubbyholes I lodge my English dictionary, my French dictionary, my class reader. I pay attention to the height of the books, their colour, shuffling them about until I am sure that I have the correct book (the stubby French dictionary), in the middle. In the inkwell space, I put pens, pencils, glue, sticky tape and my panda rubber with the eyes fallen off.
    Then I move on to more precious things. Behind the little arched door, I put ScatCat. He’s a threadbare grey, his fur worn thin from having slept in my arms every night for the first four years of my life. His jet-black eyes are deep and full of memories. I think I’d still be sleeping with him if Spike hadn’t arrived. More about Spike later. To keep Scat company, I add the family of green glass cats made as I watched by a glassmaker one summer holiday. Then I add a bracelet that Zoe made for me (plaited strands of pink and purple thread) and also one made by another good friend – Em – (purple and green) when we were in year 5. I once suggested we make a thread friendship bracelet for the three of us, winding Zoe’s colours and Em’s and mine (purple and blue) all together. Zoe laughed at me. She said friendship bracelets could only be exchanged one-to-one. That’s what Best Friends meant, Zoe said. Didn’t I understand about Best Friends? I close the little arched door.
    Next I select my father’s ivory slide rule. Not Si’s slide rule, but one which belonged to my real father. Gran thrust it into my hand one day.
    “Here,” she said, quite roughly. “Your father had this when he was about your age. You should have it now.”
    “What is it?” I asked.
    “A slide rule, of course.”
    I must have looked puzzled.
    “It was how people did maths,” said Gran. “Before calculators.”
    Before calculators sounded a bit like Before the Ark . It made my father seem further away not nearer. Or it did until I held the slide rule. Carefully crafted in wood, overlaid with ivory (“I know we shouldn’t really trade ivory,” said Gran, “but this elephant has been dead a long, long while”), it’s bigger and deeper than a normal ruler with a closely fitting sliding section in the middle slightly broader than a pencil. Along all its edges carved numbers