Campion's Choice

They dropped off the Coles and, just before five o’clock, Grampus turned into the driveway of number 51, Fen Street. He rolled the Toyota towards the underground garage.

When they stopped the Dadster clambered out of the car and disappeared through the rising garage doors. Grampus struggled with his seat belt and then skittered off in hot pursuit.

Jack walked across the front lawn. It was quicker than going through the garage. Crossing the burnt and patchy grass, he admired their house. It was a big and boxy, a glass and metal building which sparkled in the afternoon sun. His father had the place built and it was totally unique with all kinds of gadgets and gizmos.

Opening the door and stepping into the main hall he bent down to pick up an envelope on the doormat. It looked and felt like a birthday card but the writing was totally unfamiliar.

When he wandered along the hallway, he was so engrossed in trying to work out who the card was from that he failed to notice the house lights briefly flickering on and off.

Entering the kitchen he did look up but was unsurprised to see the doors of the fridge and the oven and the microwave all open and close at the same time. It was like being welcomed home by machines but it was no big deal. It was probably just a blown fuse. In the Campion household computers controlled nearly everything and quite often they went wrong. Like the time Professor Hawking came to visit and his speech machine switched on all the televisions in the house.

When the lights and the doors stopped flapping and flashing Jack opened his birthday card. Inside it read ‘Have a nice thirteenth birthday.’ It was signed, ‘From T. A Girl Friend’. Jack was confused. He didn’t have a girl friend. He frowned, put the card down and proceeded to warm up the pizza.

Ten minutes later the smell of burnt crust and hot tomato sauce wafted around the kitchen cabinets.

The Dadster sat at the table, staring at the mystery birthday card.

‘Girlfriend,’ he said.

Jack ignored him.

‘Can you guess what flavour it is yet?’ he asked, hopping from one foot to the other and flapping oven gloves. There was silence.

‘What do you think? Pineapple and Curry?’

The oven alarm beeped like a sick robot.

‘Off.’

The oven switched itself off.

Crossing the kitchen, to find a pizza cutter, Jack looked out of the large window and saw someone standing behind a bush in the house opposite, someone with a scraggy beard, wearing a Parka coat, all hunched up: a short, twitchy man with a mop of mousey hair. The man was holding a motorbike helmet and, even though he was quite a long way away, he looked oddly familiar.

‘Grub’s up,’ Jack called and, ignoring the man in the bushes, he turned from the window.

Using the silver-wheeled cutter he sliced into the steaming cheese, the blade satisfyingly cracking its way through the crust.

‘Can you guess what it is now? Chillied frogs’ legs?’

When the Dadster looked up and shrugged, Jack felt sick. Maybe his dad understood what was going on? Maybe not. Either way he was being cruel.

‘Sorry,’ he said and served the pizza slices.

The Dadster watched his piece go cold. Jack’s first bite stuck in his throat.

Suddenly he wasn’t hungry. He put his fingers into his pocket to search for the ban liang. When he touched it his mind flooded with feelings and memories.

The main feeling was how badly he wanted the old Brendan Campion, the Dadster, the tall, shambling man who loved tatty jumpers, back again.

And he wanted his mum back, the old Kimberley Laight.

His mum and dad were opposites. She was like fireworks: filling the world with whooshes and bangs. She was lively and noisy with a head of long red hair and a face always ready to smile.

They were chalk and cheese, his mum and dad, like people from different planets but they had been great together. Right up to the accident.

Jack closed his eyes.

On the night of the accident, just before Christmas, he was on his way to meet the Dadster. It was a thing they did: meet up on their bikes, near the railway line, and then race home. But this night was different. One minute Jack was racing along, pedalling hard because he was late, watching snowflakes falling through the orange glow of street lamps, the next second the world vanished. The lights went out in Redemere and he heard a noise: a kind of whump sound. He told the police that and he told them how, skidding to a halt in the darkness, his bike light picked out the Dadster’s body in the road.

At first his dad kept repeating the word ‘Deathstalker’ and then, just before he passed out, he said something that sounded like ‘maze’.

Oh, and Jack found a postcard, lying in the road: a picture of Isaac Newton.

He opened his eyes and jabbed angrily at the cold pizza crusts.

For a while, after the accident, it was okay. His mum stayed at home. She pushed the Dadster in a wheelchair and pulled Lettie in a buggy. She gave them both juice and mopped both of them up when they dribbled.

And then something seemed to snap. She said she had to go back to work. She said they needed money. She got a job, with a law firm, in London and Olga moved in to look after Lettie. Nance and Grampus looked after his dad. Now he hardly ever saw his mum. She only came home to dump stacks of files on the kitchen table and then she would drag herself to bed. Sometimes, late at night, she would go and soak in the bath for an hour, drinking white wine and quietly crying. The bathroom was next to jack’s bedroom. Maybe she forgot that.

Opening his hand he looked at the ban liang. He’d been clutching the coin so hard he half expected to see some kind of bruise or scar but his skin looked fine.

Who is this girlfriend then?’ Grampus asked.

The sudden appearance of his granddad made Jack jump. He stuffed the ban liang in his pocket and began to fuss around the table. Grampus headed towards the Dadster’s uneaten slices of pizza.

‘Did you read that card?’ Jack snapped. Grampus grinned.

‘No. Well, a bit. It wasn’t stuck down and I did happen to glance at the writing. Did you get a present from her?’

‘I don’t have a girlfriend!’

Jack threw the oven gloves on the table and stormed out of the kitchen. He hurried down the hallway and walked out of the house. When he got to the pavement at the end of the garden path his brain was a foggy jumble. He kept walking.

In a daze he reached the end of Fen Street and stopped to look around. It was the kind of summer evening that is warmish but grey. Night was starting to come on early.

He turned and headed back home, his head filled with questions. Was his mum running out of money? Would they have to move in with his grandparents? Why didn’t his rich American granddad just turn up and save the day?

He walked along, vaguely aware of sounds coming from parked cars, vaguely irritated by a chaos of voices and a confusion of music that followed him all the way home. It felt like everyone wanted to drive him mad.