A Bit of Earth by Rebecca Smith Read Free Book Online

would be there to meet him.
    Several times a week Felix would bring home notes. Often the teachers wrote Guy messages on sticky labels and stuck them to Felix’s sweatshirt so that they could not be missed. Perhaps they suspected him of wilfully ignoring the notes.
    Clean non-leading water bottle required!
    No dinner money! Send in on Mondays for the whole week please!
    Plimsoles too small. New ones ASAP!
    20p required for biscuit-making!
    Small packet of tissues needed for Felix’s tray!
    Occasionally the notes were complimentary.
    Felix made a lovely junk boat today!
    â€˜Well done, Felix. Those Chinese boats are beautiful, aren’t they?’ Guy said. ‘How did you do the sails?’ Felix just looked at him.
    And all these exclamation marks! Were they meant to emphasise what was being said, or an attempt to make it appear less bossy?
    One day the sticker said,
Please check Felix for little visitors!
    What the hell did that mean? Guy accosted the nearest playground mummy.
    â€˜He’s probably got nits!’
    Oh hell.
    But it turned out that this was an eventuality Susannah had planned for. There was an unopened bottle of special herbal shampoo and an electronic combing device on top of the bathroom cabinet. As he stood there electrocuting the tiny parasites, he begged Felix:
    â€˜Please, Felix, tell me when you need something. Tell me when I am meant to do something I don’t know about. Just ask! Please! I won’t be cross. If they say you have to have something, just tell me. I’ll do it. I promise to do it.’
    Felix was silent. They both listened to the buzzes of the nit-nuker.
    â€˜Isn’t it a bit cruel, Dad?’
    â€˜We have to do it.’
    â€˜If I’ve got them, you might too.’
    â€˜Were you listening to me just now, Felix?’
    â€˜Yes, Dad.’
    â€˜Say you promise to tell me, and to ask when you need things.’
    â€˜OK. I promise.’
    â€˜Thanks.’ Guy kissed him on the shoulder.
    â€˜Well, can you cut my toenails? They keep breaking and hurting. And can we have the video of
Atlantis?’
    When Guy sat there late at night, looking and looking at the photos, searching, dredging for clues, it seemed there was nothing. What a dolt he was. A bloody dolt, his dad would have said. And too bloody lazy to have taken many photos. They were nearly all of Felix and himself in locations, and of the locations themselves.
    Occasionally he had said, ‘Here let me take one of you.’ Sometimes he’d remembered, but usually Susannah had had to ask him to take one of her. The only photos he had taken on his own initiative had been of trees and plants. And these he had kept separately in his own private, selfish little albums. What on earth had he been thinking of? That was how he had recorded holidays and outings. The names, pictures, habitats and exact locations of plants. And he hadn’t even needed to write any of it down. He would have been able to recall it all perfectly anyway. He still had all of these notebooks; hateful, self-indulgent little notebooks with waterproof covers.
    Back then, Susannah had laughed at him.
    â€˜You are a gatherer, I think, not a hunter.’ How he had loved it when her speech had halted slightly, a sign that she was thinking in another language. ‘Your ancestors musthave been the magic herb-finders. Mine too, I expect.’ Yes, he thought, her dad was interested in plant chemistry, her brother was a botanist, and her mother had been a botanical illustrator. She must have loved botanists, and thought that they were normal.
    There had been a brief time when he had done his fair share of the photography. The albums changed and multiplied suddenly when Felix was born, as though when Felix arrived time had slowed down. From a few films a year there were suddenly dozens. He had taken the ‘mother and baby in the hospital’ shots, and those of the very first days, and of when Felix