Free The Radleys by Matt Haig Page A

she rubs a soothing hand on her knee. “That boy provoked you. It brought out something. You know, this is why you’ve been il . Not eating meat. You see, this il ness, this condition, we passed it on to you. It’s hereditary, and it brings out a certain type of hunger which has to be very careful y managed.”
    The words jump to attention inside Peter’s mind.
    Illness!
    Condition!
    A certain type of hunger!
    Clara looks to her mother, missing something. “I don’t understand.”
    “Wel , it’s this strange biological—”
    Enough , Peter decides. He interrupts his wife and looks into his daughter’s eyes. “We’re vampires, Clara.”
    “ Peter .” Helen’s sharp whisper won’t stop him now, and he reiterates his point in a steady voice.
    “Vampires. That’s what we are.”
    He looks at both his children and sees that Clara seems to comprehend this better than Rowan.
    After what she’s done, he knows she might even find solace in this truth. But it has just smashed Rowan in the face. He looks dumbstruck.
    “That’s a . . . metaphor ?” he asks, trying to cling to the reality he’s known.
    Peter shakes his head.
    Rowan shakes his head too, but in disbelief. He backs out of the doorway. They say nothing as his feet climb the stairs.

    Peter looks at Helen, expecting her to be angry, but she’s not. Sad, anxious, but maybe slightly relieved too. “You’d better go and see him,” she says.
    “Yes,” says Peter, “I’m going.”

    Crucifixes and Rosaries and Holy Water

    For seventeen years Rowan has been lied to continualy by his parents. This means, he realizes, his whole life has been one long il usion.
    “That’s why I can’t sleep,” he says, sitting on his bed beside his father. “Isn’t it? That’s why I’m hungry al the time. And why I have to wear sunblock.”
    His father nods. “Yes, it is.”
    Rowan thinks of something. The skin condition he’d been told he suffered from.
    “Photodermatosis!”
    “I had to tel you something,” Peter says. “I’m a doctor.”
    “You lied. Every day. You lied.”
    Rowan notices there is some blood on his father’s cheek. In the mirror on the wal .
    “You’re a sensitive boy, Rowan. We didn’t want to hurt you. The truth is it’s not as weird as people believe.” He points toward the mirror. “We’ve got reflections.”
    Reflections! What difference did it make, when you didn’t know the person staring back at you?
    Rowan doesn’t speak.
    He doesn’t want to be having this conversation. Already, this night’s happenings could take him a century to absorb, but his father keeps on and on as if he’s talking about a minor STD or masturbation.
    “And al that stuff about crucifixes and rosaries and holy water is just superstitious rubbish.
    Catholic wish fulfil ment. The garlic stuff’s true, though, obviously.”
    Rowan thinks of the nausea he feels every time he passes an Italian restaurant or catches garlic on someone’s breath, or when he once gagged on a hummus baguette he’d bought from the Hungry Gannet.
    He real y is a freak.
    “I want to die,” he says.
    His father scratches his jaw and lets out a long, slow sigh.
    “Wel , you wil . Without blood, even with the amount of meat we try and eat, we’re physical y quite disadvantaged. You know, we didn’t tel you this stuff because we didn’t want to depress you.”
    “Dad, we’re kil ers! Harper! She kil ed him. I can’t believe it.”
    “You know,” says Peter, “it’s possible that you could go your whole life just living like a normal human being.”
    That real y is a joke.
    “A normal human being! A normal human being! ” Rowan almost laughs as he says this. “Who itches and never sleeps and can’t even do ten straight push-ups.” He realizes something. “This is why they think I’m a freak at school. They sense it, don’t they? They sense that, at some subconscious level, I am craving their blood.”
    Rowan leans back against his wal and closes his