The If Game by Catherine Storr Read Free Book Online Page B

haven’t got a mum now. You’ve got me.’
    It was difficult after this, to say any more. But Stephen knew that there was a lot more he wanted to know. He said, ‘I wish you’d tell me straight out what happened. Did my mum die? Or did she go off somewhere?’
    There was a long silence. Then his dad said, ‘I’m not going to say any more.’
    â€˜It’s not fair! You’re treating me as if I was a baby! Why do you have to keep secrets like this? Whatever happened to her, I want to know!’
    â€˜Can’t you trust me to know what’s best for you?’ his dad asked.
    Stephen cried out, ‘No! I can’t! She was my mum. Everyone else has a mum, why don’t I?’
    â€˜You’ll understand when you’re older,’ his dad said.
    It was the sort of remark that always made Stephen see red. He stood up. ‘That’s how you always are. “You’ll understand when you’re older.” You’ve been saying that all my life. I’m sick of being told I’m not old enough to understand. Why don’t you try me?’ He was standing over his dad now. He wanted to hit him, to take him by the shoulders and shake the answers out of him. He must have looked threatening, because his dad stood up too. He spoke very quietly.
    â€˜There’s no point in screaming at me and behaving like a spoiled child. I have told you that you haven’t got a mother any more. That’s enough, Stephen. Please try tocontrol yourself.’ After which, his dad walked out of the room.
    Stephen stayed where he was. He could have cried with frustration. He was furious with his dad and he was furious with himself. It was true. He had behaved like a child. He might have known that this sort of confrontation was never going to get him anywhere with his dad. He’d seen it before, with other people mostly, that the more someone shouted and raved, the quieter Dad became. It was as if he was saying, though not in words, ‘Look at you, losing control like that! You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to, because I am always master of my feelings. I never give anything away.’ Hot angry tears forced themselves out of Stephen’s eyes. He wiped them away quickly. His dad must never see him cry. That would only make him even more sure that Stephen was still too young to be trusted with a secret.

9
    It was a long time before Stephen had calmed down enough to begin to think in bed that night. He was still too angry to sleep, and he lay on his back, trying to sort out what he knew and what he didn’t about his mother.
    He couldn’t remember her. He had a vague idea that he could recall once being very small, so small that he knew the underside of the kitchen table better than heknew its top, and being coaxed out from behind the same table by a woman. She had called him Deedie, the baby name which he had rejected before he was five years old. She had been tall—but that proved nothing, he was so much smaller that she could have been any height—and she had worn something red. She could have been his mother. But so could she have been any other woman. He was sure she hadn’t been his gran, because she never wore skirts that short. It could have been his Aunt Alice, but he didn’t think it was. So that was as far as his own memory went, and it didn’t help at all.
    He tried to think back to his babyhood, but he couldn’t remember anything except for a few pictures which didn’t hang together and told him nothing. There was a room full of other children. Babies too, and a woman carrying a huge teddy bear, which had somehow frightened him. It was too big. Someone playing a piano very loud and knowing that he was supposed to be joining in a song. A plate of something horrible that he didn’t want to eat. He had been sat in front of that plate for what seemedlike hours, and then his dad had somehow appeared and