Free After Brock by Paul Binding Page B

step-dad and I literally bumped into each other and I nearly sent him flying, he asked: ‘Where the hell do you think you’re aiming?’
    And I replied: ‘At becoming a professional newshound! I’m a news-freak, you see!’
    â€˜Certainly a freak!’ he mumbled, ‘dead on the nail there!’
    â€˜Careful who you’re insulting!’ I called after him, ‘I’m the son of a quiz-show star who was an astonishing, precocious storehouse of knowledge.’
    He obviously heard. I waited a moment or two then crept along after him to where he met up with his wife. ‘Joanne, darling,’ he said. ‘What’s the name of that unappealing boy who’s a friend of Josh’s, who often hangs about our house? You know, the one with the grey eyes and greyish hair, and a crowded mouthful of teeth? He’s just been saying pretty loony things to me…’
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    Some time after this I sat myself down (with a bump and a thud) on the grass beneath the fine horse chestnut onto whose boughs, hours back, I’d tied the strings of red and green lights now indistin-guishable from any exotic flowers that might have sprung up on this very English, very London tree. Josh came over to me and sort of knelt down beside me: ‘You’re pretty tanked up, you know, Nat.’
    â€˜I’m pretty tanked up, you know, Josh,’ I said, ‘and what are you going to do about it?’
    â€˜It’s not me who’s going to do anything,’ said Josh, ‘if I were you, I’d take yourself to the remotest corner of the garden – keeping out of the way of any couples – and start sleeping it off. I’ll see to it you’re left alone.’
    â€˜Remote corner of the garden?’ I echoed, ‘that’s just given me an idea. There’s a nearby fox I’d like to visit. Lives under a garden shed four doors away. We saw him last week, remember?’
    â€˜How could I forget? You’re a bit of a fox yourself, Nat. Except a fox is quiet and stealthy and unobtrusive, whereas you’ve broken your usual party habits tonight. Badmouthing Rollo to his sister –’
    â€˜ Your sister. His stepsister.’
    â€˜Step, then, and that’s none of your fucking business, even if you do fancy her. A fox wouldn’t deliberately collide with our dad and talk about freaks either.’
    â€˜It was him who called me one!’
    Josh paused, crouched a fraction closer to me, and said: ‘This is all about Dr Pringle, isn’t it?’
    Have I already written in this journal that Josh is perceptive as well as understanding about feelings? In hard factual terms I’d recounted very little to him of what passed between Emily’s music teacher and myself in his Walworth Road flat. But I must have said enough for him to realise it’d had a strong effect on me. I quoted:
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    â€˜In other words I prefer Peter to stay up on his Heights, and not to drag him back down into the lows we all, sadly, have to dwell in.’
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    â€˜What’s that supposed to mean? Who’s Peter?’
    â€˜My dad. You and me know him as Pete.’
    â€˜Yes, I do. And Pete would give you the same advice as I just have, Nat. To take yourself off, and hide…’
    â€˜But I don’t want to do that just yet, I want to visit my friend the fox,’ I said, ‘preferably not alone. I’d like to go see him in the company of a beautiful girl just like the one standing behind you now, wondering just what a jerk you’ve got for a friend. But then your step-dad thinks I’m unappealing.’
    â€˜As if!’ said the girl – her name was Katey, I recalled. Josh had mentioned her to me long before tonight, which he’d spent talking to her for hours among the shrubs and even dancing with her on the lawn. She was not dark like Emily, she was fair, extremely fair, a blonde,