Living with Strangers by Elizabeth Ellis Read Free Book Online Page B

void that is his room. I creep in there sometimes and sit on his bed, soothed by the smell of his work – of linseed oil, paint and smoke. His art things lie untouched, his pictures propped up around the walls. A ghost room.
    At Christmas Adam comes home, Paul and Sophie get over-excited and we barely touch the mountains of food that Molly has prepared. Adam takes parcels back to Manchester and we’re eating cold turkey for weeks.
    It helps that Saul is at school, that his job there means I can travel with him in the car sometimes, when I can’t face the bus, the questions, the inquisitive eyes. This sick sadness I carry around is soothed a little knowing he’s nearby, a piece of home transposed, even though the place I knew as home no longer exists.

Eight
    10
th
October 1963
    Dear Joe
    I’ve just spent hours writing all this stuff about kings and dukes and some stupid battle and now I’ve managed to spill water all over it. This was extra homework too because I couldn’t find my proper work, the work I did at the weekend and was supposed to hand in this morning. I did take it to school because I remember double-checking my bag in the bus queue and it was definitely there. Then when we had history, it had gone. Miller went mad, like he does, banging the table and shouting, so of course I started crying, because I do that a lot now and the girls behind me started giggling so he had a go at them too, but I still got the extra work – he didn’t believe me that I’d lost it.
    I went into the loos at break to wash my face and wanted to stay there for the rest of the morning. Then Hannah came in with Frankie – you remember them? Hannah was my best friend and then she started hanging round with Frankie and they’ve gone weird now and don’t talk to me much. Anyway, I was doing my hair and they started whispering and giggling again, you know – great snorting noises. I just kept fiddling with my hair and looking in the mirror, then I went out and they followed, all the way down the corridor, right behind me. I know they were copying everything I did so I tried to walk so there wasn’t anything to copy but there always is, isn’t there?
    They sit together now, all the time. Not that I mind, not really. Anyway, that’s why I’m doing extra homework and now I’ve got to do it all over again.
    I’ll write soon, when I’m in a better mood. This won’t be much fun to read. Sorry.
    M x

    Over the months that follow Josef’s departure and into the first winter without him, I seem to sink further, my normal world a strange, alarming place. School is no easier. I hoped to find some kind of retreat there, a refuge of sorts, a distraction, something to fill up the long hours. But like so much else, the place just rings with expectations of Josef – hanging out with his friends at break, or mooching down the corridor, a subtle, condescending nod in my direction when we pass. But most of all, it’s the art room he haunts – his favourite place, leaning over a table, a huge drawing board in front of him, his art teacher hovering nearby. Anticipated sightings that never materialise. We have a special assembly when President Kennedy dies. We sing a morbid hymn about praising famous men and people talk in hushed tones, yet none of it really registers.
    Other episodes at school have begun to preoccupy me and history homework is the least of my worries. There are the cartoon graphics circulated in class, left lying on a desk then snatched away too late so that I just catch sight of them. A small girl, a mass of hair, a tragic face, water pouring from her eyes like spray from a hosepipe. My big feet, my hated, sensible shoes lampooned. Then the note is screwed up and thrown around the classroom, way above my head while I try to grab it – piggy in the middle.
    And the silences, the not speaking. I’m used to the silence at home – the passive, pointless silence that has grown from omission, from sadness and loss. But this