Free Disappearing Home by Deborah Morgan

while it rushes away from me. I ride standing up on the pedals until my legs ache, the seat a soft place to rest.
    I ride through an old puddle with the front tyre, draw an S over and over, until there’s a chain of them the length of the square. Lift the handlebars up, ride with just the back wheel on the ground, until it slams down like a horse refusing a fence. Pedal backwards round and round again and again in a complete circle, until I’m dizzy.
    Use the tip of my sole to spin down one pedal fast, listen to the
whirr
and watch the edges blur. Make it go fast without using the pedals. Bum off the seat, run it down a hill, jump back on, legs out to the side screaming
wheeee wheeee.
Trace the way thick rubber zigzags across the tyres.
    When I get back, I lift the Chopper up the stairs, careful not to bash it against the walls when I turn a corner. I get to our door all out of puff. Before I can knock, the door is flung open. He grabs the bike into the lobby and turns on the light. Slams the front door shut. Gets down on his knees, feels the tyres, spins the wheels around and checks the yellow paintwork. Licks the tip ofhis finger, rubs away dark splashes. Spins the pedals forwards and backwards, pulling the brakes hard.
    He looks up at me, his dark eyes small. ‘You’ve hammered this, you ungrateful bastard.’
    I look down at the floor. He stands, pushes his face too close to mine. I can smell beer and smoke on his breath and it makes me feel sick. ‘You don’t deserve to have it. It isn’t even paid for yet. Get to bed now.’
    In the last year of junior school, we get to go on a trip away from home, for a whole week in May, to a place called Colomendy. Mr Thorpe gives us all a letter to take home, saying a small deposit is needed as soon as possible. We will be given a payment card and we can pay whatever we like off the trip, as long as it is all paid two weeks before we go. The classroom buzzes with the news. Outside, letters are waved high at the gate.
    When I get home Dad puts my letter on the mantelpiece. ‘What have you been up to?’
    â€˜Nothing.’
    â€˜What’s all this then?’
    â€˜Don’t know,’ I lie.
    Mum takes the thick glossy catalogue off her knee and puts it on the floor. ‘I’ll open it,’ she says.
    She tells him it’s about a trip away for a week.
    â€˜How much?’
    She tells him and he says bloody schools and their bloody money. ‘If she carries on wrecking that bike the way she has been doing, she’s got no chance.’
    Mum shouts at Dad. ‘Don’t dictate to me what Robyn can and can’t do. She is going, and I’ll make sure of it.’ I’m going away soon, I’ll be able to tell Nan. A tiny balloon painted rainbowcolours swirls in my chest. It fills me, from my toes right up to my head. I rub my hands together and feel it inside them. This, I think, is what happy feels like.
    The next time I take the bike out I ride it through to a square I have never been in before. This square is darker than ours, calmer, with less wind. It smells stuffy, like a slept in bedroom. I sit on the seat and look up at the early morning washing lines. A couple of shirts wave their arms at me; a skirt flips up a whoops-a-daisy hem.
    On the top landing, last door on the right, heavy jeans in three different sizes with their pockets hanging open touching the wind. Cream sweaters, with three brown stars on the front and knitted collars. Three lads I’d say: a toddler, one a bit younger than me and a bigger one.
    Going into this new square is like entering a different country. Heads above the landings are familiar but different. Reading the washing lines makes me feel like I am visiting a relative. I don’t have any aunties or uncles. The only homes I have ever been in, apart from our flat, is Joan’s house, Angela’s house and Nan’s new flat. It is a perfect way for me to find out