Phosphorescence by Raffaella Barker Page A

it’s getting late. My mum is in a real psych. Text me tomorrow. I’m missing you.’
    She is gone. I wonder whether to call back and ask how Josh is, but what is the point? I have to get on with my life in London now.
    It isn’t until I am in bed, drifting off to sleep enveloped in the fruit aroma of Blueberry Bubble Breeze, that I remember something awful – I haven’t called Dad or Grandma, and I promised I would.

Chapter 4
    The first day was the worst, and, in fact, I soon become grateful for the invisibility I feel at school. It gives me the chance to get to know my way around and to work out who is who without any attention focusing on me. Jessie becomes a real friend when I notice a photograph in her locker of a terrier, and speak my thoughts out loud.
    â€˜What a nice face that dog has got.’
    â€˜That’s my dog, Loopy.’
    â€˜Ooh, he’s sweet. He looks like Cactus. Is he a Border terrier?’
    â€˜He’s anything you want him to be. We got him from Battersea Dogs Home when he was a puppy. They found him in a dustbin with six brothers and sisters.’
    I lean into the locker to look at the picture more closely; there is a dark-haired woman holding the dog in her arms.
    â€˜Is that your mum?’
    â€˜Yup.’ Jessie slams the locker shut. ‘She’s a cow. She’s left me and Dad and my sister and she’s gone off with her yoga teacher. She’s on holiday right now.’
    Jessie’s sneer hides pain I can recognize, eventhough it is too new to have made an imprint on me yet. I slide my arm through Jessie’s as we walk towards the canteen for lunch.
    â€˜My parents have broken up too. That’s why I’m here.’
    The relief of telling someone at school brings a lump to my throat.
    All my physical boundaries have changed, along with the structure of my family. I am surrounded by buildings and pavements instead of the sea. Spring bursts out all around and I scarcely notice it – I am never aware of the weather any more. I haven’t once taken a coat to school; if it rains, I just run for shelter. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because it isn’t real rain like in Norfolk. And just as it is never really wet, it is also never really dark. Even in the middle of the night the street lamps glow orange, and I become used to sleeping through the restless city at night, only in my dreams experiencing the black silence of the nights at home.
    Dad calls, and when I speak to him, I realize how odd it is not to see him every day. The funny thing is, I probably say more to him now on the phone in the evening than I did when we both lived in the same house.
    â€˜Hi, Dad, I’ve got history and maths homework to do tonight and I haven’t even started.’
    â€˜Is it the same as you were doing at Flixby?’
    â€˜I can’t really tell because everything here is done so differently. We’re doing the French Revolution. I’ve never done that before.’
    â€˜Oh, Marat and Robespierre and what was that woman called?’
    â€˜You mean you know it?’
    I am ashamed by my own surprise, but then, I’ve never thought about Dad in any other context than on the marshes, knowing about birds and boats and ecosystems, but not about revolutions and politics and history. Mind you, he quickly reverts.
    â€˜I think one of them was a bit of a pervert. Was it Robespierre? I can’t remember, ask your teacher. When you come home, I’ve got lots to show you.’
    â€˜I can’t ask which of the leaders of the Revolution was a pervert,’ I protest. ‘Tell me about Cactus, and what’s happening in the village. And Grandma and Jack.’
    It is May now.
    Staitheley is still home. Our flat in Iverly Road is characterless and hot. I miss the familiar faces in the village, people I didn’t even realize I noticed, like the milkman, or Miss Mills, or Billy Lawson’s dad with his gnomic