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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015
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Text copyright © Jenny Valentine 2015
Jenny Valentine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780007512362
Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008126230
Version: 2015-06-23
For my Dad.
Contents
At my father’s funeral, after everything, I lit a great big fire in his honour, built from stacked apple crates and broken furniture and pieces of a fallen-down tree. It towered over the scrubby piece of land I call the bonfire garden, and blazed, too far gone to fight, against the fading afternoon. On the lawn below me, my family gulped for air like landed fish. They clawed at their own faces like Edvard Munch’s Screamers, like meth-heads. His mourners poured from the house, designer-clad and howling, lit up like spectres by the flames.
My stepfather, Lowell Baxter, ageing pin-up boy, one-time TV star and current no-hoper, stood swaying, dazed and hollow-eyed, a man woken up in the wrong place after a long sleep. Hannah, my mother, crumpled on to the wet grass like a just-born foal in all her credit-card finery, her gorgeous face collapsing in a slow puncture. She clutched at her own clothes, sobbing violently, but she didn’t bother getting to her feet. I doubt she could remember how, she was so weighted down with debt.
I could have filmed them, preserved their agonies for repeat viewings, but I didn’t. I did what my best and only friend Thurston always told me. I savoured the moment because the moment was more than enough. I stood back and watched them suffer, feeding fistfuls of paper to the flames.
I wondered if they’d ever speak to me again. I’ve always longed for Hannah and Lowell to stop talking.
They didn’t behave that way when it was my father in the furnace.