When he was finished he washed his hands using a wafer-thin slice of soap with a few greying pubic hairs embedded. Then he made his way out the front door, along the garden path to his car. ‘So, are we ready?’ he asked his father.
‘I’ve been waiting.’
Moy looked at Patrick. ‘How are your muscles this morning?’
‘Okay, I guess.’
Moy had hired a twelve-foot trailer from the local BP. He’d spent the previous evening (as Patrick kept him supplied with coffee) loading it with bed-slats and boxes, drawers and a few pot plants. He’d loaded his two wardrobes, fridge and washing machine using a sack truck from work. When he’d finished he tied the whole lot down with a too-short rope that had come loose on the journey.
‘The big day,’ he said.
‘What?’ George replied.
‘The prodigal son returns.’
‘Who?’
‘Me. Don’t I get a welcome home? It’s been a long time.’
George didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘What, you think I bought champagne?’
‘Did you?’
‘Christ…Where do we start?’
Moy loosened the wing-nuts on the tailgate. ‘You’re not doing anything,’ he said.
‘My arse. I’m not useless.’
‘I didn’t say you were, but I got it all on, so I can get it all off.’
He dropped the tailgate and unhooked the wire doors to the cage that surrounded the trailer. Then he used a board to make a ramp. ‘How about you supervise?’ he said to his dad. ‘Give Patrick the small boxes and tell him where to put them. I’ll take the big stuff.’
‘Nonsense, I can help. My brain might be shrinking, but I’ve still got muscles.’
Moy opened the boot and retrieved the sack truck. ‘I don’t want anything broken, or strained. Let’s just keep it simple.’
‘Come on,’ George said, shaking his head.
‘Listen, Dad, now I’m back you can take it easy. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?’
‘I thought it was so you could stop paying rent?’
‘No, it’s to help you. What’s the point if you’re gonna…’ He stopped. ‘You need to listen, Dad.’
‘It’s my house.’
‘Ours.’
‘My rules.’
‘No.’ Moy lifted the first box onto the sack truck. ‘Compromises.’
‘I’m not changing a thing. What’s in that box?’
Moy read the words Patrick had scribbled on the top. ‘Utensils.’
‘In the kitchen.’
‘Some of it we can work out for ourselves.’
‘You asked.’
‘Fine.’ He turned to Patrick. ‘Maybe you could start with the bed slats. Two at a time.’ He pulled two lengths of wood from the trailer and balanced them in the boy’s arms.
‘The back bedroom,’ George said, and Patrick walked down the drive, carefully avoiding a wind-chime hanging from the porch.
When he was gone George said, ‘You never told me there was another kid.’
Moy loaded a second box. ‘Where did you hear that?’
‘I just did.’
He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t take long, does it?’
George didn’t seem surprised. ‘You’re the one going around asking people.’
Moy wondered who: Rebecca Downey, Mrs Flamsteed? Perhaps Jason’s wife or girlfriend. Any one of a dozen people who’d let something slip in the café, the Wombat Inn or Fred Hoyle’s yoga group at the Institute.
‘His name is Tom,’ Moy said. ‘Patrick won’t tell me anything else.’
‘Why don’t you make him?’
‘What, smack him around the head with a phone book?’
‘You say, I need to know, and I need to know now.’
Moy adjusted the sack truck. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’
‘Tell him if he doesn’t help you’ll send him to town, and they’ll find a place for him to stay.’
‘Dad…’
‘What?’
‘He’s screwed up. We don’t know what happened.’
‘All the more reason.’
Moy studied his father’s face, but couldn’t work him out. ‘His mother’s dead.’
‘So?’
‘He knows we found her, in the house. Listen, if you’re gonna live with him you’ll have to show some compassion.’
George looked surprised. ‘I do show compassion. Plenty of it.’
‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.’
‘You wanted to do it.’
They stared at each other. Eventually Moy said, ‘I’m trying to think of you.’
‘I’m all right.’