Dark Tides by Chris Ewan Page A

world around him.
    At work, he spent his days moving families into new homes where they’d embark on new lives together, filled with optimism for the futures that lay ahead. Looking back now, I can see that he must have had to bite his tongue to stop himself from telling them how quickly and savagely those futures could be snatched from them, for reasons that might never become clear. I wonder how he didn’t erupt with rage or walk away from the job, and it scares me to think that perhaps he almost welcomed the pain, that each time he witnessed the happiness of somebody else, he felt the loss of Mum anew, and maybe feeling something – anything – was what kept him going.
    I’d been told that things would improve some day. My grandparents on Mum’s side of the family were both dead long before I was born, but my paternal grandmother had taken special care of me since Mum had gone. Nan was a formidable woman. From a very early age I understood that she was the poster girl for battleaxes everywhere. But she was always devoted to me, and several months ago she’d pulled me aside and told me that although Dad still loved Mum very much, and missed her terribly – as we all did – eventually the pain in his heart would heal. Mum would always be here in some way, never forgotten, always spoken about, but Dad would begin to feel less sad, just as Nan had recovered from the loss of Grandpa when I was small.
    How, though, I wondered? What would trigger this magical transformation? And in the meantime, how would he react tonight if some kids showed up at our door, unaware of our loss, singing gleefully about mothers never coming home?
    The Coco Pops I was eating had congealed in my throat. I couldn’t swallow, almost choked. I lowered my face and dribbled chocolatey milk into my bowl.
    Dad leaned out from behind the newspaper he was reading to frown at me.
    ‘What are you going to do this morning?’
    I shrugged and stirred my cereal with my spoon. Truth was I had no idea. It was a school day but Nan had told Dad to telephone them to say that I wouldn’t be coming in. Part of me was glad about that, but a small and not very virtuous part was a little disappointed. I was pretty sure that my teacher, Mrs Henderson, would have fussed over me. The other kids would have noticed, too.
    ‘Your nan thought we could do something this afternoon. Drive to the south, maybe. Walk around Port St Mary. Your mum liked it there.’
    His voice caught at the end and he thumped his chest, coughing into his spread newspaper. It was last week’s copy of the Manx Independent . He’d read it at least once before.
    ‘Do we have to?’
    ‘Your nan thought you’d like it. Maybe we’ll take some flowers. Say a few words.’
    Like a funeral, I thought. Nan had been badgering Dad to hold some kind of family memorial. She thought it would help him to move on.
    But he didn’t want to move on. Neither of us did. Mum had fallen into some kind of crack in the world was all. She’d disappeared for a time. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t come back. Not if you wanted it badly enough. Not if you wished for it hard.
    I pushed my bowl aside. ‘What about this morning?’
    ‘Somebody’s coming here to talk to me.’ Dad ducked behind his newspaper, as though I was interrupting his precious reading. ‘You’ll need to play upstairs.’
    But with who? Or what? I didn’t have any friends that I could call on, even if they weren’t at school. And all of my toys were tainted in some way. Every one of them had been touched, at one point or another, by Mum. Playing with them risked unleashing all kinds of memories.
    I slid down off my chair and tiptoed out of the room. But as I was creeping upstairs, I made the mistake of glancing back into the kitchen and I saw that Dad’s head was bowed, his shoulders quaking, the newspaper rustling in his hands.

Chapter Eleven
    I was lying on my bed with my ankles crossed, flicking through my battered copy of The