Free Rocks in the Belly by Jon Bauer

out of my bedroom carpet.
    â€˜How’s your mum?’ she says, all earnest and serious.
    I lead them through the house rather than stand here being looked at. ‘We’re just clearing out the larder, actually. Most of the food’s from the Jurassic era.’
    â€˜Oh well, you can still eat that for years yet!’ Mandy says and Marcus adds some quip but I don’t catch it.
    Mum’s still in the chair clutching the porridge when we come in, her eyes lost to something out the window, far away.
    â€˜I’ll leave you guys to catch up,’ I tell them, unable to watch Mum fail to navigate the clear discrepancy between what she was and what she’s capable of now. These people knew her when she was that strong, forthright woman. Now look at her, whittled down to almost nothing. Threadbare.
    I shut the front door behind me and march up the hill, hell-bent on cigarettes. Enough is enough, this isn’t the time for martyrdom. Even the condemned get their smokes and their phone call.
    The cloud is low but intermittent, the sun peeking through, the light changing every few seconds and the temperature making me lament the absence of a coat. Just a t-shirt with flour all over it. I look like a cocaine addict who sneezed.
    Coming back out of the shop I put the change in my pocket and a cigarette in my mouth, take out a match. But now I’m finally about to give in, my mouth full of expectant saliva, I don’t need it so badly. So much of temptation is about the giving in rather thanthe actual pay-off once you’ve weakened. We just like to weaken.
    By the time I get back, Mandy and Marcus are shutting the door, grave expressions on their faces that are quickly discarded when they see me, the cigarette still in my mouth, still unlit.
    â€˜Forget your lighter?’ Marcus says, all smiles.
    â€˜Must have left it up a tree,’ I say then turn to Mandy, sensing Marcus dropping his face for a moment.
    â€˜Tell me,’ Mandy says, ‘what have the doctors said? What treatment’s Mary having?’
    â€˜She’s had all the treatment, I’m afraid. Now it’s just —’
    â€˜The poor love. Just
awful
.’ She sucks air in over her teeth. ‘Listen, I’ll stop by again. In the meantime you take care of
both
of you.’ And she’s tottering up the garden, the overgrown hedges forcing her from the path. She can’t get away fast enough.
    I ignore Marcus’ retreating face and go and stand on the doorstep, the light going out now as the clouds win the tussle — Marcus shutting the gate behind him then giving me a last needy look like I’m his long-lost brother rather than a kid in a foster home he terrorised.
    So many people have kids they can’t cope with. Kids who then get deposited in other people’s families. Sometimes it’s not the parents’ fault. Sometimes life is too much. But sometimes it’s not like that. Like Robert’s parents, the worst of all cuckoos, the way they left their offspring to be raised in the nest of another. And we know what happens to the offspring whose nest a cuckoo chick ends up in.
    I put the cigarette back in my mouth, reconnecting with a grim, old friend, a match in my hand ready. It’s amazing what a context can do, the way it can invite you effortlessly back into old feelings — old personas. This old anger and resentment, this old smoking habit. I look at the match, me stood on the doorstep between what I have to face indoors and the rain threatening out here. A car going upthe hill with its lights on already. Daytime darkness.
    There’s bad weather coming. I can feel it. Rain forecast and nothing but old habits for company.

8
    I thought I’d be in the biggest kennel but Mum and Dad went and steamed up the car for hours and the next day I got my own TV instead of having to go and see Mr Jaws Gale ever again.
    My OWN telly. In my room! Robert doesn’t have a