The Year of the Rat by Clare Furniss Page A

hat to my face. It’s soft and smells very faintly of washing powder.
    I place everything carefully back in the tin and go to put it in the box. As I do, I notice a strip of passport pictures, slightly creased, lying at the bottom of the box. I pull them out.
They’re of two teenagers, a girl and a boy, not much older than me I’d guess. The girl is Mum, but I don’t recognize the boy. On the back it says:
With James
. I look at
them in wonder.
James
. I say the name out loud.
    It’s my father’s name. My real dad. These pictures are of him.
    I’ve never seen any photos of him. He’s always just been a name: James Sullivan. Mum told me his name when I was a little kid. She told me he knew about me, but that they’d
agreed from the start that he wouldn’t be involved. She’d said if I ever wanted to know anything more I could ask, or if I wanted to contact him we could talk about it. But even then I
sensed that really she hoped I wouldn’t. And, anyway, I was never interested. Molly asked me about it once. ‘Aren’t you curious?’ she’d said. ‘He might be a
billionaire or something.’ But I had a dad, one who took care of me and comforted me when I was upset and was always there when I needed him. Why would I care about some stranger who had
never met me?
    But now I’m intrigued. I study the pictures closely, trying to work out what kind of person he is. He looks fun, I decide. Kind of mischievous. Interesting too, with his punky goth
haircut. In two of the photos he’s smiling and it’s a real smile, you can tell: it goes right up to his eyes. In the next one he and Mum are doing serious faces, gazing off at different
angles, as if they’re looking into the distance and thinking very deep thoughts. In the last one you can’t really see their faces because they’re laughing so much. James is bent
forward, his hair flopping forward over his face, and Mum’s thrown her head back.
    Does he look like me at all? I squint a bit, focus on his eyes then his nose and his mouth, but he just looks like some guy I don’t know.
    I’m starting to feel cold and sleepy, so I put everything back in the box. Everything except the passport pictures. I take them with me back to my bedroom and I put them in the drawer of
my bedside table. And when I switch the light out and close my eyes I don’t see Dad and The Rat curled up together in the room next door.
    I see James.

 

 
    ‘Are you listening to me?’
    ‘What?’ I hadn’t even realized Dad was there; I’m watching a story on the news about a man who was struck by lightning walking his dog in the park. I never really paid
much attention to this stuff before. But now . . . I imagine the man in the blurry photo on the TV putting on his raincoat, getting the dog’s lead off the hook in the hall, grumbling about
how, when they got the dog, the kids had promised they’d walk it and now here he is, every night, whatever the weather. He never even wanted a bloody dog. ‘
Paying tribute to Mr
Davies today, his wife said, “He was a loving husband and a wonderful dad.”’
    The world can tip at any moment—
    ‘Pearl! Switch that off, will you? This is important.’
    I do as he says and turn round to look at him. The Rat is in his arms, her dark eyes fixed on him as he speaks.
    ‘Look, Pearl,’ he says, coming to sit down on the sofa. ‘The thing is – well, the thing is money.’
    ‘What about it?’ My mind is still on the lightning man.
    ‘Well, basically, we haven’t got any. I don’t know when we’re going to see any of Mum’s insurance money. That’s if we ever get it at all.’ He rubs his
head as if it’s aching. I’ve heard him on the phone going on about forms and liability and cover. It made me angry to think of a bored call-centre person talking about Mum.
    ‘What does it matter?’ I say. ‘No amount of money is going to bring Mum back.’
    ‘I know that, Pearl,’ Dad says, trying to keep his voice calm. ‘But we