Skellig

Chapter 8

WHEN HE CAME DOWN FROM HIS bath, Dad started moaning that there was no bread and there were no eggs, and in the end he said,

“I know. Let’s have take-out, eh?”

It was like a light went on in my head.

He had the menu from the Chinese round the corner in his hand.

“We’ll get it in for when your mum gets back,” he said. “What d’you fancy?”

“27 and 53,” I said.

“That’s clever,” he said. “You did that without looking. What’s your next trick?”

He wrote it all down.

“Special chow mein for Mum, spring rolls and pork char sui for you, beef and mushroom for me, crispy seaweed and prawn crackers for the baby. And if she won’t eat them, we will, and serve her right, eh? She’ll be back on boring mother’s milk again.”

He phoned the Chinese, gave me the cash, and I ran round to collect it all. By the time I got back again, Mum and the baby were there. She tried to make a fuss of me and kept asking me about the journey and about school. Then the baby puked over her shoulder and she had to get cleaned up.

Dad belted through his beef and mushroom and the seaweed and prawn crackers. He said he was all clogged up with Ernie’s dust and he swigged off a bottle of beer. When he saw I was leaving half of mine, he reached over with his fork.

I covered it with my arm.

“You’ll get fat,” I said.

Mum laughed.

“Fatter!” she said.

“I’m famished,” he said. “Worked like a bloomin’ slave for you lot today.”

He reached out and tickled the baby’s chin and kissed her.

“Specially for you, little chick.”

I kept my arm in front of the food.

“Fatso,” I said.

He lifted his shirt and grabbed his belly with his fingers.

“See?” said Mum.

He looked at us.

He dipped his finger into the sauce at the edge of my plate.

“Delicious,” he said. “But enough’s enough. I’ve had an ample sufficiency, thank you.”

Then he went to the fridge and got another beer and a great big lump of cheese.

I tipped what was left of 27 and 53 into the take-out tray and put it in the outside bin.