Half the World Away - [3]

As we walk back from school Finn holds my hand, swinging his arm to and fro and singing. He loves to sing but he makes an awful racket.

Isaac runs ahead and back, like Benji, a sheepdog driving his charges. He stops to examine anything of interest, a sock in the gutter, conkers, a worm stranded on the paving. He always finds something to bring home for his special box (currently the one that our microwave came in). Today it is a throwaway lighter. I check it doesn’t work and is empty of fuel before letting him keep it.

Even though we have Benji, Isaac is scared of dogs. As we near what he calls the Dog House, he runs back and takes my free hand. The yappy terrier there barks furiously on cue and Isaac flinches, his fingers tightening around mine.

‘Wait at the lights,’ I remind him, once we leave the danger zone and he lets go. He zigzags along the pavement, holding the lighter out as if it’s a lightsaber or a remote control or a magic wand, muttering something I can’t catch. He’s slight and dark-haired, skinny like Lori, pale like me. Both he and Finn have inherited Nick’s deep blue eyes with those flecks of gold. I never tire of staring at them. Mind you, with the lads that depends on them sitting still long enough, which is especially rare for Finn.

We collect Benji and head straight back out. Stopping for a snack invariably descends into a rerun of the morning’s mission to leave the house intact – things unravel so quickly – so I leave the boys in the drive and fetch the dog and his ball.

Finn throws the ball over and over, not necessarily in the direction he intends it to go but that doesn’t matter to Benji. We stop at the playground and tie Benji up at the railings while the boys mess about on the slide and swings. Isaac wants to go on the stepping stones but he isn’t quite brave enough to leap from one wooden block to the next so he jumps down onto the mulch between them, then clambers up again.

‘See the heron?’ I say. The bird is almost overhead, coming from the pond. Isaac looks up.

‘Hey, Finn,’ I call across. He’s on his back, on the roundabout, his feet dangling over the edge onto the ground, slowly walking it around. ‘See the heron?’

We watch it fly out of sight. ‘Time to go,’ I say.

‘It flies high,’ Finn says, as I’m untying Benji.

‘Yes.’

‘Like Lori in an airplane.’

‘Aeroplane. That’s right. And where’s Lori gone?’

‘Thailand.’

‘Why’s it called Thailand?’ says Isaac. ‘Do they all wear ties?’

‘No. Nice idea but it’s a different spelling, a different word.’

‘I made a card for her,’ Finn says, ‘with all of us on, me and Daddy and you and Isaac and Lori and Benji.’ He grasps my hand. ‘Did she like it?’

‘She will. She’ll open the case and there it will be. And there’s a picture from Isaac, too,’ I say.

Isaac is crouched at the edge of the path. ‘A feather.’ He holds it out to me. Black with a metallic glint in the light.

‘That’s lovely.’

Nick gets back later than usual, staying at the office to make up the hours he missed the day before. I’ll wait to eat with him, feed the boys first. While the pair of them watch television and Isaac draws herons and pterodactyls over and over again, I go up to strip Lori’s bed.

The carpet is littered with scraps of paper, items of clothing, spent matches and torn Rizla packets. Several dirty cups stand on her bedside table, with a half-empty bottle of Coca-Cola and biscuit wrappers. I can smell the perfume she wears – Marc Jacobs’s Daisy that we got her for Christmas. The room is decorated in the deep green she chose a few years ago and one wall is a collage of photographs. Some of her own and others from magazines and websites. She’s built it up, sticking the pictures on with glue, and it now fills the whole wall. There’s never been any theme to it, as far as I know. It’s a mix of portraits, landscapes, nature photography and action scenes. I find it too busy, overwhelming the space, but it’s not my space. Not yet. If she moves out when she’s back from her travels then maybe we’ll redecorate. See what she wants to do with the photos. They’ll have to be stripped off the wall and they’ll likely be damaged in the process.

Finn and Isaac are happy with the bunk beds for now but eventually I think they’ll want their own rooms – at least, Isaac will. Before then it’ll be nice to have a guest room. But who knows what Lori will choose to do? Her plans extend only as far as Christmas when her travels end and it’ll be back to the harsh realities of job-hunting in a recession.

‘You got her text?’ The first thing Nick says when he gets back.

‘Yes.’

He studies me for a moment.

‘I’m OK. Just getting used to it. Hate goodbyes. And after my mum…’ The sadness is still there, close to the surface.

He nods, gives a small smile. ‘They asleep?’

‘Yes. And Isaac wants to know what feathers are made of. I’ll leave that one to you, something an environmental engineer should know.’

‘We know everything.’

I fetch the salad from the fridge, dole out lasagne. Nick pours wine.

‘She might not live here again,’ I say.

‘Jo, you said that when she went to Glasgow. If she moves out, new phase,’ he says, ‘that’s life.’ He raises his glass. ‘To life.’