move my head up and down.
Dad’s supposed to know best because he says he’s older and wiser than me. The problem is, whatever Dad claims, it still feels wrong.
I pull out a photo from beneath the book on my bedside table. It’s a new one. Not new, as in someone just took a picture of Mum, which would be impossible. She died when I was nine. I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral because Dad said I’d find it too upsetting. I haven’t seen this photo before – not in the albums or in his bedside drawer. I found it at the back of the filing cabinet in his study.
I stare at the six people standing in a line. ‘Which one’s Mum?’
‘What?’ Dad’s checking his watch. I’m keeping him from important FBI business. The plots are complicated. He’ll never catch up.
‘Which one’s my mum?’ I repeat. ‘In this photo?’
‘Let me see that.’
I hold the picture up but don’t let him take it off me. He might leave a smudgy fingerprint, which would ruin it.
‘God, I haven’t seen that photo in years. Where did you find it?’
‘Er, um.’ I don’t want to admit I’ve been rummaging in his filing cabinet again and the drawers in his study.
After the parakeets and painting, my next favourite hobby is rooting through all Dad’s stuff when he’s not around.
‘It was stuck behind another photo in the album.’ It’s only a small lie in the grand scheme of things.
Dad’s eyebrows join together at the centre. ‘Wow. This brings back memories. It’s Nan’s seventy-fifth birthday party.’
Interesting, but he hasn’t answered my question.
‘Which woman is Mum?’
He sighs, smooth light ochre button shapes. ‘You honestly don’t know?’
‘I’m tired. I can’t concentrate properly.’ It’s that useful lie again, a trusty friend, like dusky pink number six.
‘She’s that one,’ he says, pointing. ‘At the far right of the photograph.’
‘She’s the woman in the blue blouse with her arms around that boy’s shoulders.’ I repeat it to myself to help memorize her position in the photo.
‘Your shoulders. She’s hugging you. You’re both smiling at the camera.’
I stare at the strangers’ faces.
‘Who’s that?’ I point at another woman, further along. She’s also wearing a blue top, which is confusing.
‘That was your nan. She passed away a month …’ His muddy ochre voice trails away.
I finish the sentence for him. ‘A month after Mum died. Her heart stopped beating from the grief and shock of losing her only daughter.’
Dad inhales sharply. ‘Yes.’ His word’s a jagged arrow, whistling through the air.
I bat away his unprovoked attack. ‘She knew she couldn’t replace Mum. That would have been impossible.’
‘Of course she couldn’t replace Mum. You can’t replace people, like possessions. Life doesn’t work like that, Jasper. You understand that, right?’
Deep down, he must know he’s a liar, but I don’t want to think about that now.
‘What colour was Mum’s voice?’ I say, changing the subject.
Dad checks his watch again. He should have pressed ‘pause’ on the remote before he came up to say goodnight. He’s missed six minutes and twenty-nine seconds of Criminal Minds. A serial killer has probably struck already.
‘You know what colour she was. It’s the colour you always say she was.’
‘Cobalt blue.’ I pinch my eyes shut, the way I did in the police station. It doesn’t work. I open my eyes and stare at my paintings. I’ve lined them up under the windowsill, below my binoculars. They stare back accusingly.
‘Mum’s cobalt blue. That’s what I want to remember about her. Shimmering ribbons of cobalt blue.’
‘That’s her colour,’ Dad says. ‘Blue.’
‘Was she? Was she definitely cobalt blue?’
His shoulders rise and fall. ‘I have no idea. When Mum spoke, I saw …’
‘What?’ I bite my lip, waiting. ‘What did you see?’
‘Just Mum. No colour. She looked normal to me. The way she looked normal to everyone else. Everyone apart from you, Jasper.’
He turns away, but I can’t let Mum’s colour go.
‘I used to talk about Mum being cobalt blue when I was little?’ I press. ‘I never mentioned another shade of blue? Like cerulean?’
‘Let’s not do this now. It’s late. You’re tired. I’m beat too.’
He means he doesn’t want to talk about my colours again. He wants me to pretend I see the world like he does, monochrome and muted. Normal.
‘This is important. I have to know I’m right.’ I kick off the duvet, which is strangling my feet.
‘What am I thinking? Of course she was cobalt blue.’ Dad’s voice is light enough to be swept away by a gentle summer breeze. ‘Don’t get het up about this before bedtime. You need to go to sleep. It’s school tomorrow and I’ve got work. I can’t take another day off. You have to stop thinking about Bee and start concentrating on school. Your stomach looks a lot better, but you need to get your head straight. OK?’
He comes back, leans down and kisses my forehead. ‘Good night, Jasper.’
Four large strides and Dad’s at the door. He closes it to the usual gap of exactly three inches.
He’s told yet another lie.
This isn’t a good night. Far from it.
I wait until I hear the dark maroon creak of the leather armchair in the sitting room before I leap out of bed and snatch up the paintings of Mum’s voice again.
Her exact shade of cobalt blue doesn’t come ready-mixed in a tube. It has to be created. I’ve tried to change the tint by adding white and mixed in black to alter the shade, but everything I attempt is wrong.
If these pieces of art are misleading me, are my other paintings a series of lies too? I sift through the boxes in my wardrobe and retrieve all the paintings from the day Bee Larkham first arrived and onwards. There are seventy-seven in total, which I sort into categories: the parakeets; other bird songs; Bee’s music lessons; everyday sounds.
I’m not worried about these pictures. Their colours can’t harm me.
Not like the voices, which I arrange into separate piles to study their colours in more detail: Bee Larkham. Dad. Lucas Drury. The neighbours.
All the main players.
I painted them to help remember their faces.
Some paintings refuse to get into order. The colours of conversations bleed into each other and transform into completely different hues.
That’s when I finally see what was never clear before. It’s where my problems began and it’s why I can’t get Mum’s voice 100 per cent right: I no longer know which voice colours are right and true, which are tricking me and which are downright liars.
I need to start again. I’ll never know what happened unless I get them right. Until I sort the good colours from the bad.
I wet a large brush and mix cadmium yellow with alizarin crimson paint on my palette.
I feel