Daniel looked him straight in the eye. ‘No, Dad. I promised, didn’t I? I said I would never do that.’
‘Yes, son, you did. I just need you to be careful, that’s all. You remember what happened to Perry, don’t you? And to Ewan?’
‘Yes, Dad. I remember.’
Daniel lowered his head again, and Scott hated himself for dredging up the past. But it was the only way to keep the need to remain in control lodged in his son’s consciousness.
‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘How about helping me out at the garage tomorrow?’
Daniel brightened. ‘Can I?’
‘Absolutely. And after that we’ll have lunch, and then we’ll do something in the afternoon.’
‘Ooh, ooh, what about ten-pin bowling?’
Scott recalled the havoc that Daniel had wreaked the last time he got his hands on a bowling ball. They’d had to close down two of the lanes.
‘Er, I was thinking the cinema. That new Disney film starts today – the one about the professor who uses science to pretend he’s a wizard.’
‘Kupp and Sorcery? Yes! Can we go? Can we?’
Scott briefly considered how much it would cost – the tickets, the petrol, the popcorn, the hot dogs, the drinks – but then he looked again at his son’s face and his mind was made up.
‘Course we can. It’ll do us both good.’ He stood up, buoyed by the sight of Daniel’s beaming smile. ‘Dinner will be ready soon. I’ll give you a call.’
‘Thanks, Dad,’ Daniel said. And then: ‘I love you.’
Something splintered in Scott’s chest. ‘I love you too.’ He started to turn away, then halted. He opened his arms for an embrace. ‘Come here, son.’
Daniel looked back at him with uncertainty. ‘Dad . . . The Rule.’
Scott beckoned. ‘It’s okay. Come on. Just be careful.’
The Rule was that Daniel should avoid physical contact with others as much as possible. It was a tough decree to enforce, but it was the safest option. The problem lay not so much in Daniel’s sheer strength, but in his inability to control how much of it he was applying, especially when his emotions were running high. Right now, though, Scott felt compelled to take a risk.
The hug was brief, and Daniel’s touch mercifully light.
‘Good lad,’ Scott said.
As he left the room, he decided not to tell Gemma about breaking The Rule. The last time Daniel had hugged his mother, he had fractured one of her ribs.
When he was alone, Daniel opened a drawer and took out a fistful of socks. He carried them across to the bed and lined them up.
For as long as he could remember, he had employed his socks as puppets. He would hold each one vertically, the toe end jutting upwards between his fingers and forming the head of a character. He would make them walk or run by bobbing them along the bed or carpet at the appropriate speed. Usually, he would have one in each hand and they would converse, Daniel speaking all their lines out loud. Sometimes he would make them fight, the bottom end of one sock being whipped into the ‘face’ of the other.
His parents had bought him all kinds of alternative puppets and action figures, but he always returned to his socks. Their stories gave him the comfort he struggled to find elsewhere, and acted as a vehicle for him to explore the confusing worlds of his imagination.
Right now, most of his puppets were naughty young lads. The sock in Daniel’s right hand – bigger and thicker than the others – was Adam-9, and he was standing for no nonsense from the cheap cotton scallywags confronting him. Within seconds he had laid several of them out flat and made the rest run away like the chickens they were.
To Daniel’s mind, this was not breaking The Rule. This was Adam-9, and Adam-9 was allowed to fight back. Daniel had never actually seen him kill anyone in the programmes or comics, but he was quite sure that people must have died. When Adam made that missile reverse back into the rogue space station, the people on board must have been blown to bits. How could they have escaped alive?
Yes, it was okay for Adam-9. The Rule wasn’t meant for him.
3
Hannah didn’t even bother to take her coat off. She went straight to the kitchen, where she dropped her bag in the middle of the floor. She took a glass from the shelf and a bottle of red wine at random from the rack next to it. She poured until the glass was full, then gulped most of it down. She didn’t savour it; she just wanted the hit of alcohol.
She heard a noise behind her, and turned to see Ben wandering into the room. As always, he looked so chilled, so at one with his universe, his universe being largely confined to this address. They’d built a studio in the garden, where he spent most of each day creating sculptures and listening to weird electronic music. He even took his breaks out there, drinking herbal tea or contorting his body into impossible shapes on his yoga mat. He was the total opposite of the men with whom Hannah shared her working day. She believed that was why their relationship worked so well. She couldn’t have stood being married to a bloody copper.
He smiled with his whole face and issued the brightest ‘Hey’, but his eyes were on the wine glass and it annoyed her, because why shouldn’t she have a drink after work like lots of other people?
Ben stooped to pick up her bag, then tossed his head to clear the hair from his eyes as he placed the bag gingerly on the breakfast bar. Hannah had always liked the way he kept his hair long, but even that was starting to irritate her. Everything irritated her.
‘Tough day?’ he asked, and she took it as a slight because the implication was clearly that she was resorting to alcohol as a solution to her problems, which may have been true but that wasn’t the point.
‘Par for the course,’ she said. She began to recharge her glass, and was convinced that Ben’s eyes widened at the rising wine level.
‘Need a hug?’ he asked.
‘What I need is work.’
He smiled again. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Some Botox, perhaps. And okay, maybe a slight boob job.’
She kicked out at him half-heartedly and he bounced out of range.
‘They don’t trust me,’ she said.
‘Who doesn’t?’
