The Fahrenheit Twins by Michel Faber Read Free Book Online Page B

room carpet, goggling in amazement at the view through the window. He pointed, unable to speak. Finally, all he could manage was:
    ‘Mum, what are those birds doing there?’
    Jeanette laughed, wiping her eyes with her nicotine-stained fingers. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They’re just … they just live here.’
     



SERIOUS SWIMMERS
     
    There were a couple of hiccups between Gail and Ant before they even got to the swimming pool.
    For a start, ‘My name’s not Ant,’ the child said. ‘It’s Anthony.’ Now why did he have to say that, with the social worker right there in the car with them, listening to everything? For a few moments (none of Gail’s emotions lasted very long) she hated her little boy so much she couldn’t breathe, and she hated the social worker even more, for being there to hear Ant’s complaint. She wished the social worker could die somehow and take the knowledge of Gail’s humiliation with him; he deserved to die anyway, the parasite. But the social worker remained alive and at the wheel, noting Gail’s come-uppance in his little black book of a brain, and then – Jesus Christ! – Ant went and did it again when they were almost there, by asking Gail, ‘What was that little drink you had back there?’
    ‘What little drink?’
    ‘The little drink you had at the chemist. In the little plastic cup.’
    ‘Medicine, cutie.’
    ‘My name’s not cutie,’ stated the child. ‘It’s Anthony.’
    Then, as the car was drawing to a halt in front of the Melbourne public baths, this kid, this Anthony who had grown out of being the Ant she’d lost to the State five years ago, said to her,
    ‘Are you still sick?’
    ‘I used to be really sick,’ was Gail’s answer. ‘Now I’m a lot better.’
    The boy looked unimpressed.
    ‘Moira says people shouldn’t take medicine if they’re not sick.’
    Moira was Anthony’s foster-carer. He didn’t call her Mum. But then he didn’t call Gail Mum either. He was careful not to call her anything.
    ‘Your mum is only a little bit sick now,’ the social worker chipped in, his head twisted away as he parked the car. ‘The last bit.’
    Gail hadn’t expected this from him. She was glad the social worker was alive now, grateful. She was willing to do anything for him, anything he wanted, like for free. Although she’d better be careful who she slept with these days, if she wanted to get Ant back.
    ‘Two,’ she told the swimming pool cashier. ‘One child and one … ah … grown-up.’ She flinched at the stumble: years of addiction had half-dissolved lots of words she’d once had no problem coming out with. They were like things you leave in a box in the garage and then when you look for them years later you find the water’s got to them.
    * * *
    This visit to the swimming pool was Ant’s idea, as far as Gail knew. She didn’t know very far, though. The social worker would suggest an outing with Anthony, like going to the movies, and Gail would go to the movies with Anthony. Everything was arranged: which movie, which cinema, which session time. Who decided? Gail wasn’t sure, except that it wasn’t her. Maybe Anthony had told Moira he really liked swimming and Moira had told the social worker, and the social worker had taken it from there. Maybe it was the other way around.
    Gail had never been to this swimming pool before, had never been to any swimming pool since she’d been a schoolgirl, slouching in the audience at the water sports finals, distracted by nicotine craving. Those trials had been held in the open air, in a giant complex of pools. This place she and Ant were entering now was different altogether, an indoor place, like a railway-station-sized bathroom built around a railway-platform-sized bath. A combination of electric light and sunshine from the many windows and skylights made it a kind of in-between world, neither inside nor out.
    The water was warm, something Gail didn’t really believe until she dangled her