Free When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman Page B

four-inch stiletto heel got caught in the precariously long extension lead that had started to fray at the edge of a mossy wall. Only the quick thinking and even quicker reflexes of my father prevented her cindered demise, when he shoved her gently onto a pile of beanbags and sent the remaining two inches of her skirt up to her exposed waist.
    ‘Oh, Alfie, you are naughty!’ she shouted as she rolled laughing into the gutter, and as my father tried to help her up, she pulled him down on top of her ripped fishnets and tiny leather skirt, which, Miss Gobb also noted, would have been more useful as a purse. My father stood up and brushed himself down. Tried to rid himself of her perfume, which clung like tired fingers to a cliff face.
    ‘Let’s try again, shall we?’ he said, as he lifted her to her feet.
    ‘My hero,’ she said, licking her purple pouting lips.
    My father laughed nervously. ‘Didn’t have you down as a royalist, Hayley.’
    ‘Still waters, Alfie,’ she said, reaching for my father’s arse and finding my mother’s hand instead.
    ‘Kate, didn’t see you there, love,’ said Mrs Penny.
    ‘Can you give Greg Harris a hand with traffic patrol?’
    ‘I’ll give him a hand with something,’ she said, and teetered off to our makeshift barricade that hadn’t as yet got the required police approval, as it temporarily blocked off our road from Woodford Avenue.
    Jenny Penny and I were on trestle-table duty, covering them in Union Jack paper tablecloths and placing paper cups and plastic cutlery at ‘sensible’ intervals along the edge. We laid out plates of jam tarts and chocolate rolls and Wagon Wheels, that immediately started to glisten in the rare, balmy sunshine.
    ‘I wrote to the Queen once,’ said Jenny Penny.
    ‘What did you write?’
    ‘Asked if I could live with her.’
    ‘What did she say?’
    ‘Said she’d think about it.’
    ‘Do you think she will?’
    ‘Can’t see why not.’
    A car beeped angrily behind us. We heard Jenny Penny’s mother shout, ‘Oh, fuck off. No I’m not. Go on, back up. You’re not coming through.’
    Beep! Beep! Beep!
    Jenny Penny looked pale. Someone turned the music up – my mother probably – to drown out the louder expletives.
    ‘Oh, listen,’ I said, raising my finger heavenwards. ‘This is my favourite.’
    Jenny Penny listened. She smiled. ‘Mine too. I know all the words. I’ll start. “I see a little silhouetto of a man. Scary mush, Scary mush, will you do the fandango?” ’
    ‘You’re not coming through!’ screamed Mrs Penny.
    ‘ “Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening. MEEE!” ’ I sang.
    Mr Harris ran towards us. ‘Where’s your dad, Elly?’
    ‘ “Galileo, Galileo, Galileo.” ’
    ‘ “Fig Roll!” ’ screamed Jenny Penny.
    ‘Your father, Elly? Where is he? This is serious. I think there’s going to be a fight.’
    ‘ “I’m just a poor boy, nobody loves me,”’ I sang.
    ‘Oh, fuckit,’ said Mr Harris, walking off.
    ‘And that’s what I think of your cousin in the police!’ shouted Mrs Penny as she exposed her jiggling breasts.
    ‘Yikes,’ said my father, running past us, rolling up his sleeves. ‘Trou-ble,’ he said in that broken-up, annoying way of his.
    ‘ “Let him go!” ’ sang Jenny Penny.
    ‘ “I will not let you go,”’ I sang.
    ‘It’s just a simple misunderstanding,’ said my father.
    ‘Let me go!’ shouted Mrs Penny.
    ‘We can sort this out over a cup of tea,’ said my father calmly.
    ‘ “I will not let you go!” ’
    ‘ “Let him—” ’
    ‘WILL YOU TWO SHUT THE HELL UP NOW!’ screamed Mr Harris, pulling the plug from the record player. He led us by the arm to the dappled shade of the large plane tree.
    ‘Now sit down and don’t move until I say so,’ he said, wiping away the sweat that had formed under his nose. Jenny Penny moved.
    ‘Don’t you dare,’ he said before unscrewing his pewter hip flask and downing at least half of its contents.