With My Lazy Eye by Author

Author:Author
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

I was afraid the guests would notice that my eyes didn’t match. That I couldn’t make my lazy one look at them even when I tried, and that I couldn’t help it if my bad eye went off, right over their shoulders when they spoke, out of the window and away.

I imagined stretching that knobbly wart on Mr. Barnham’s chin, as far as it could go, then letting it ping back just to see what everyone would say. “Absolutely divine” would become “Absolutely disgusting!” And the way they’d say disgusting would be like this: diz ghust ing, the way Percy the gardener said it when the Blue Peter garden was vandalized.

As I snuck past the drawing room, I could hear my father telling Genevieve a joke. Something to do with the King being dead—they were still going on about that. I squinted around the open door, with my back pressed against it, private-detective style. His hand touched her bracelet as she laughed, all lipsticky sweet. He laughed too and held on to her arm, making out that he needed to just to stay upright.

Mum was back in the kitchen biting her bottom lip as she beat the new profiterole mix. She told me what she was doing the way she does when you come into a room that she’s in. “You must beat it briskly, it’s all in the wrist.” A piece of hair fell over her face as she beat; she pinched her fingers round it and put it back in place. It fell over her face again, but this time she left it there, held on to the bowl and beat harder.

All the guests had gone but the air was still thick with the mix of cooking, Chanel and cigars. Someone hadn’t liked the steak and kidney pie; they’d scraped it to the edge of their plate and had covered it with a napkin. An unopened box of After Eights lay on top of a discarded purple scarf.

Into the dining room I crept, over to the sideboard and down to the cupboard that looked locked but was secretly open. I put my hand in the box of Lemon’s sweets, felt around for the ones I wanted and washed them down with some soda water. Father Christmas was laughing on the front with silver snow all around him and sleighs flying through a purple sky.

On my way back to bed I saw a strip of yellow light coming from under the drawing room door. Someone must have forgotten to switch the Christmas tree lights off. I snuck in to see if any of the guests had left presents for me.

When I slid my hand under the branches there was a sudden kerfuffle. My father was sitting on the sofa in the dark with Genevieve; she seemed delighted to see me and slapped her hand down in the space that spread swiftly between them.

My father liked me best at these times—when his friends were with him or after dinner parties when he was happy.

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