Sleight of Hand

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Authors: Nick Alexander
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see,”
I think, as I head back to the house. From alcoholic father to cocaine-trading-stealer-of-boyfriends in less than ten minutes.

Sliding
    I return to the house and pull a salad bowl filled with pasta, tomato sauce and ham from the refrigerator. I reckon that I can fish the lumps of ham out and that, tonight, I actually don’t care if I miss one or two. I stick the bowl straight in the microwave.
    I sit in Jenny’s mother’s kitchen and look out at the darkened garden, and think that I don’t want to be here, that I don’t want to be here at all.
    But these moments of sheer emergency leave no room for manoeuvre – they simply
require
that you do this and then
require
that you do that, and you’re left just batting away random balls as they fly at you. It’s like being in a car sliding across the ice. I can do little but wait to see how far it will skid before my steering wheel gains some traction again.
    In spite of my tired state, I barely sleep that night. Perhaps it’s because not feeling able to lay claim to Jenny’s bed, and not wanting to sleep in her dead mother’s room, I opt for the sofa. Maybe it’s just unknown house syndrome: the place is full of unfamiliar shadows and strange noises. Nothing truly sinister – just a coat hanging here, a branch moving in the moonlight, the grunting and groaning of a building at sleep, the tinkering of radiators and the wheezing of a gas meter … I’m jet-lagged and stressed as well, of course, but it’s mainly the noises and the shadows that keep me awake.
    At six, precisely, a milk float enters the close, and that sound, the whirring of its electric motor, the clinking of bottles, is one that is so familiar, soreassuring … I yawn, and think that I haven’t heard a milk float since I was a child. I’m so glad they still exist.
    When I reawaken, I feel like I have merely dozed off for a few seconds. Initially I’m confused as to where I am, in which country even, but then I remember.
    The VCR is showing nine-fifty-four which strikes me as unlikely so I switch on my phone to check the time and realise that I can now phone Ricardo.
    A quick scan of the house reveals no signs of broadband – Jenny’s laptop has an old fashioned modem plugged into a phone socket – so I text Ricardo with the house number and while I wait, I head through to the kitchen and scour the cupboards for breakfast options. In the refrigerator, hidden behind a pack of chilled toilet roll (does someone have haemorrhoids? I wonder) I find butter, Marmite, and joy of joys, crumpets. And that’s what I’m eating when Ricardo phones.
    He declares that he can’t talk for long, but then patiently remains on the line for over an hour as I tell him about Jenny and the hospital, and then in reverse order of urgency, about the funeral, and Tom, and Sarah, and the neighbour. Finally, I ask him what he thinks might be causing Jenny’s fits.
    â€œIf it is epilepsy,” he says, “it could be anything … tired, stress, flashing lights …”
    â€œBut wouldn’t she know if she was epileptic?”
    â€œProbably,” he says. “But, you know, you don’t know you’ve got that kind of things until you know. And it might be cause by something else, some other illness.”
    â€œLike?”
    â€œBest to wait for the results,” he says, sounding suddenly doctorly. “No point speculating.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œNow I really do have to go, Pumpkin. I’m meeting up with a friend downtown and I’m late.”
    â€œYou’re still in Bogotá?”
    â€œYes. Going home tonight. I wish I was with you Chupy.”
    â€œI’d rather be there with you, I think,” I say.
    â€œIt’s no fun on either side,” he says. “Believe me. OK. Gotta go. Bye.”
    And it’s only once the line is dead that I remember that his mother

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