Dead Tired by Kat Ailes

Author:Kat Ailes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

CHAPTER 22

I IMAGINE THERE are families who all sit down around the breakfast table together, with glasses of orange juice and cereals in those glass decanters you get in posh hotels. Our family is not like that. Not least because in our shoebox-size kitchen there’s only realistically space to squeeze one person plus a highchair around the tiny table. There is definitely not space for Helen to squeeze under the table and yet somehow she managed it without fail. She was currently fielding any Wheaties that Jack sent flying—which is to say, most of it. Joe was sitting on the kitchen counter eating peanut butter and Marmite on toast, a combination I do not approve of. I took the spoon off Jack and tried to get some Wheaties into his actual mouth.

“How was London then?” asked Joe.

“Weird,” I said, truthfully.

I filled Jack in on the overall weirdness of Leila’s funeral, the weirdness of Sam and Raven, and the weirdness of the exhibition. By the end, Joe was looking almost wistful.

“I dunno, sounds kinda fun,” he said. “Do you remember that warehouse party we ended up at in Hackney once, when Maya found the fuse box and thought it would be funny to plunge everyone into darkness?”

“And everyone just carried on partying like nothing had happened.”

“And then she made friends with that fiddle player and decided she was going to learn the tin whistle and join a folk band.”

We both sighed nostalgically and gazed two whole years into the past. Yep, a lot had changed in two years.

“I think she had a pretty similar night last night to be honest,” I said. “She stayed at Sam’s exhibition long after we left.”

I had received a text from Maya at 3 A.M. which simply read:

We all need to start wearing and eating bamboo, and recycling our pee

I showed it to Joe. He snorted. “She’ll be joining my dad’s commune next.”

I laughed, although I did also wonder at what point Joe had started referring to Camran as his dad, as opposed to his usual pedantic “my biological father.”

“And did any of your high-level detectoring pay off?” asked Joe, slightly mockingly I felt. “Worked out who did it yet—Watch where you’re putting that spoon.”

I turned back to Jack and realized I was posting Wheaties into his hair.

“We are following up on various leads,” I said with dignity. “Chuck us a cloth.”

“What are you doing today?” Joe asked, flinging a cloth my way. With my customary dexterity it hit me in the face.

“Gonna head over to Fox Hollow Farm,” I said, sponging half-heartedly at Jack’s hair. It would have to do.

Joe looked blank.

“Where Maryam lives? And Raven? And sometimes Sam?” I clarified.

“Oh yes, this year’s hobby,” said Joe dryly.

“It is not a hobby!” I retorted. “It’s taking an important stand for the environment and”—what was it Ailsa had said?—“preserving the integrity of our delicately balanced local ecosystem.”

Joe didn’t dignify this with a response. “Well at least take Helen.”

I looked down to where Helen was picking Wheaties out of her tail, and eating quite a lot of her own fur as she did so.

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