The Wall by William Sutcliffe

away, and look in the other direction, and never talk about it, a person – a dead person – will not disappear. An absence can be as vivid as a presence, and to me, Dad’s absence is almost like a pair of glasses I never take off – it is something I look through, rather than at, changing everything I see, always visible yet invisible.
    Eventually we let one another go, and she pulls me into the house.
    ‘Where were you? What happened?’ she gasps.
    I have my story ready. I tell her a football went into the building site, but having climbed in and jumped down to retrieve the ball, I realised I couldn’t climb out again. I tell her I shouted for help, but no one heard me, and I only escaped by using my bare hands to build a platform out of bricks and junk.
    ‘Why did you climb in there?’
    ‘To get my ball,’ I say.
    ‘But . . . you can’t do that! You mustn’t do things like that!’ She’s trying to be severe, but her voice is still filled with hugs, and one hand is stroking my neck.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, smiling up at her. A strand of hair is stuck to her left cheek, glued into place by tears. I push it free with my index finger and tuck it behind her ear. I can’t remember the last time I touched her hair, which is so dark that is shines. When Dad was alive and we lived by the sea, her hair was short and spiky. Or sometimes it was. Every time she got it cut, she came back with something different. Now it’s long, and she never seems to go to a hairdresser, and whenever we leave the house she covers it up.
    ‘It’s just a football,’ she says. ‘We’d get you another one. I was so worried. You scared me!’
    ‘I won’t do it again.’ Her fingers are tickling me now, and I step back.
    ‘Well, just wait till Liev gets home,’ she snaps, but there’s still more honey than venom in her voice, and we both know it’s a weak threat.
    I smile at her, sort of kissing her with my eyes. She smiles back, then a thought seems to stop her. She puts a hand on each of my shoulders and shakes me, a jolt of tender aggression. ‘This isn’t an ordinary town,’ she says, with a pointed and direct stare. ‘Things happen here. We have lots of protection, but no amount is enough. There are people living very, very close who want to get us. They want us out.’ She’s holding me at arm’s length now, her forehead clenched into a frown. For the first time, she looks plausibly angry. She pokes me in the chest with her index finger. ‘If I worry when you disappear, it’s not because I’m some stupid, anxious mother; it’s because you hear stories all the time about people who find themselves in the wrong place, without anyone to defend them, and they never come back.’
    The jab of her finger and the sudden coldness in her voice jolt me upright, as if she’s dropped a sliver of ice down my back. My father-mother has slipped away again. She has disappeared in front of my eyes, and I don’t know when I’ll see her again. This is my Liev-mother, my Amarias mother, back again until some other crisis briefly pushes her aside.
    ‘Who? Which people?’ I say, stepping beyond the range of her poke.
    I can see her jaw muscles twitch as she clenches her mouth. ‘Don’t be smart with me.’
    ‘You said you hear stories all the time.’
    ‘Don’t talk back!’
    She has her poking finger ready again, but I’m poised to dodge away. ‘If it’s so awful here, why don’t we go back home. If it’s not safe, let’s go.’
    ‘This is home. I’m not getting sucked into that conversation.’ She turns and walks towards the kitchen.
    ‘I hate it here!’
    In the doorway she stops, swivels and stares at me, her head cocked on one side, as if she’s trying to decide how angry to be. ‘Well, we’re here,’ she says eventually. ‘And if you stop trying to hate it, you might discover it’s not half as bad as you make out. Do you think we could afford a comfy house like this anywhere else?’
    ‘Oh, it’s