Barbara and I left Boots and hurried through the shopping centre, looking through windows, checking behind displays of cut price advent calendars and Christmas cards. The shopping centre is built like a wheel on two floors – with a round central area that encircles an indoor fountain, artificial plants and a café. The shops are ranked along the spokes of the wheel and we worked through them methodically: John Lewis, Sweetens, Menzies, Bon Marché. The malls were busy with families out returning unwanted presents, spending their gift vouchers or examining the sales racks. We moved slowly, always peering around heads or jostling for space between bags and buggies and elbows. Whenever we reached the centre, I huddled into Barbara’s wake, hiding from the boys sitting around the edge of the fountain. They were leaning over in brand-new sports tops and trainers, close to the water – fishing out coins or blowing the paper off straws in a private competition. We passed them, rode the escalators upwards and waited outside the men’s on either side of the door like two stone lions. Barbara asked a man to go in and check the cubicles. We waited.
        ‘He was all right this morning, wasn’t he?’ I said.
        ‘Fine. Fine,’ said Barbara.
The man we asked to help took ages. I thought about urinals, rows and rows of them lined up like seats in a white porcelain auditorium. And rows of men, too – standing with their hands in front of them, moving the weight from one foot to another, the way I sometimes saw them in the bus-station alley, or down the back end of the park. The idea was dirty and exciting and my cheeks tingled and without meaning to, I thought about Chloe and Carl.
        ‘We should check the library,’ I said, ‘he’ll have gone to the library; his research.’
        Barbara didn’t say anything, but rapped on the door with her knuckles and used a voice like Margaret Thatcher – pretend posh – to call through the crack. The sound echoed inside, rattling along the tiles with the smell of piss and yellow disinfectant. I peered over her shoulder but there was nothing to see except torn scraps of toilet paper sticking to puddles on the floor.
        ‘He’s been pestering me to take his books back,’ I said, ‘and I haven’t done it yet. I bet he’s worried about the fines. He’ll have gone in to see about it.’
        ‘You shouldn’t encourage him,’ Barbara said quickly, ‘it isn’t fair. His projects! All those books. The papers.’
        ‘What do you mean?’
        Encourage. It was a new idea. I had thought Barbara and me had a kind of agreement about this. She took charge of the practical things. Changed his bed in the middle of the night, checked on him during the day when things went too quiet. Took care of the bills and his razors, complaints from the neighbours about things he tried to build in the garden. His meals and prescriptions.
        I typed. I did research with him. I listened to his stories and sorted out library fines. Stuck pictures into scrapbooks. Taped things off the telly. I took it all very seriously, accepted token and sometimes not-so-token payments for my services, and it wasn’t my fault I liked my part of the deal better than Barbara liked hers. We were supposed to keep each other’s secrets, Barbara and I. I’d say nothing about the occasions when I’d come home from school and Donald would still be in his pyjamas, distressed and ravenous. Barbara would put on a video and close the door on him when Chloe came round. It was a deal.
        ‘I don’t encourage him,’ I said.
        ‘This report he’s writing. Three typewriter ribbons in a month. He tried to oil the thing with a lump of lard and I’ve had to send it to be repaired.’
        ‘I said I’d type it up for him at school. When we go back. I’ll do it for him at lunch time, on the computers.’
        ‘That isn’t the point,’ Barbara said. She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. A strand of hair fell over her face and she did nothing to tidy it away. ‘You’ve got to stop condoning him. Joining in. I know you think you’re helping, but you’re not. Do you understand?’
        She stood upright and looked at me. ‘Lola? You know it’s all in his mind, don’t you? This trip he thinks he’s going on. Making money out of his idea? Glow in the dark shrubbery? You know it isn’t right, don’t you?’ She looked frightened.

5

  

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