22
22
T HAT NIGHT, YOU LIE in bed, staring at the ceiling. There are stars on the ceiling – your dad put them there when you were younger. The stars are glow-in-the-dark. You don’t know how they work, exactly. You just know that when everything is pitch-black, you can still see them on the ceiling. You count them. There are a hundred and five.
Even though it is very late, you don’t feel tired. For this reason, when you hear your mum pottering around downstairs, you decide to join her.
Your mum is in the living room, packing a suitcase. The suitcase is lying open on the carpet. It already contains clothes, shoes, and toiletries. She now seems to be in the process of choosing which books to pack.
‘Moving out, Mum?’
Your mum looks at you, presses a finger to her lips, and beckons you over to the window. Out the window, the lamp posts are bathing everything from your front garden to the wheelie bins of the house opposite in a warm orange light.
‘You see that car?’ she says to you, pointing to a van parked outside your house.
‘Yeah,’ you say.
‘It’s the police.’
‘Oh.’ You don’t think the van looks like a police van. In your opinion, it just looks like a normal van. You suppose it could be an unmarked police vehicle. Maybe your mum saw some police officers enter or exit the vehicle earlier. Or maybe she is mistaken and the van is just a van. ‘How do you know?’ you ask her.
Your mum looks at you and taps her right index finger against her right temple – a gesture that means she does not want to explain how she knows.
She walks back over to the bookcase, removes Psychopharmacology: A Short Guide and So You’re a Paranoid Person.
‘Which one should I pack, do you think?’
‘Um.’ You don’t know which one she should pack, largely because you don’t know where she’s going. Psychopharmacology: A Short Guide looks very long and complicated. If your mum is going to be away for a long time, then maybe this is a good option, as it will last her a while. That said, you think So You’re a Paranoid Person might be more relevant to her current state of mind.
‘I don’t know. I think it depends where you’re going.’
‘Oh, I’ll just lie low in a hotel for a few weeks.’
‘Right, OK.’ You make a small noise. ‘Why, though?’
‘Police,’ your mum says, as if this explains anything. ‘Did you not see them?’
‘The van?’
‘Yes, the police.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, then.’
You think about waking your dad up. He might be annoyed, you think, but then again maybe he would stop your mum from leaving. Then you think about distracting her. Maybe you could tell her some fun facts about the Voynich Manuscript. Tell her that it was passed around Europe for centuries – tell her that, before Wilfrid Voynich owned it, a Holy Roman Emperor owned it, a mathematician owned it, and a pharmacist owned it.
‘Mum.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I don’t think you should leave tonight. I think we should go to bed.’
‘OK, sweetie.’
‘Also, that van isn’t a police van. It’s just a van. I think it belongs to next door. The man that works there is a plumber, remember?’
‘Next door?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned. I thought it was the police.’
‘It’s not.’
‘I feel a bit silly.’
‘Don’t worry, Mum.’
In the end, neither of you goes to bed. Instead, you watch one film, then another. The first film is about a fish that goes missing. The second film is about a lion whose dad dies. They are pretty good films. They take you all the way to morning time. At seven a.m., your dad comes down and makes you both a cup of tea. At eight a.m., the neighbour opens up his van, gets in his van, and drives away.
Further reading:
Psychopharmacology: A Short Guide
So You’re a Paranoid Person