The nursery was only five minutes from home, and Wesley hoped they wouldn’t have called Mum because he was late. It sat behind a doctor’s surgery, a short driveway leading around to a low-fenced playground and a colourful bestiary of animal-shaped climbing frames. The walls of the nursery building itself were a chaos of finger paintings. It was a good place, and no matter how much it stretched their budget Wesley was proud they could send Evie there a few times a week.
A woman spattered in a miscellany of stains came out to meet him, leading Evie – dressed as Princess Elsa – by the hand.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Wesley.
The woman – he had forgotten her name again – frowned. ‘She fell and tore her dress today.’
‘I didn’t fall over,’ said Evie, taking Wesley’s hand. ‘I was using ice powers and slipped on the ice.’
‘I bet you didn’t cry, either,’ said Wesley.
Her face scrunched up in disgust at the very idea, and Wesley ruffled her hair until she burst out laughing. On the walk home she detailed the mixed results of her ice power summoning, and insisted she’d have to watch Frozen again to perfect her technique.
The day had taken a couple of unexpected turns, and Wesley could practically hear his brain turning it all over. He had expected to find Kat, return her MacBook, and confirm that she was okay. Instead he had discovered that in all likelihood the things he had done against her had caused her to literally fade from existence. Craziest of all was that he believed it.
And there would be an email arriving from Luke and Justin. Nerves seemed to be boring a hole through his stomach.
A train was rattling over the bridge when they reached home. Parked underneath their flat was a long, silver Jaguar. Several neighbours hung out of their windows for a better look.
‘He’s such a flash git,’ Wesley muttered under his breath.
‘Git!’ mimicked Evie.
‘Don’t tell him I said that.’
‘Git! Git!’
They had a practised routine of going up the stairs together, Wesley swinging her around the turns on the end of his arm. He was already talking when he opened the front door.
‘You’ve got about three more minutes before that car gets . . .’
The words died in his throat. Mum was by the front window, Dave holding her around the shoulders like she would fall without his support. Beyond them, standing inside the kitchen door, was Jordan.
Behind him, Wesley felt Evie shelter against his legs.
‘Git?’ she said quietly.
It was habit for Kat to avoid the second and eighth stairs, the ones that creaked like seaside piers in the wind, and she wasn’t going to stop now. She could hear Dad setting up for the night in the front room. After everything she had heard that afternoon she still didn’t have the courage to see if the fade had removed her from his life for good.
She bolted her bedroom door and leaned against it, looking around the walls at her posters and books and collectibles.
‘I love this stuff,’ she said.
Crossing to the ceiling-high shelves behind her bed, she plucked a knitted Totoro from the middle shelf and cuddled it into her chest. With her free hand she ran her fingers along the spines of her DVDs, books and games, arranged in colour order to form a makeshift rainbow from left to right.
‘I don’t think I want to become somebody else,’ she told Totoro.
It had taken years to collect it all, and she had always felt proud at every new addition, like she was adding bricks to a podium on which she could proudly stand tall. She had never been ashamed of any of it, even though she knew it had kept her separate from everybody at school. Even when Suzy had called her Queen of the Nerds and told her to enjoy dying a virgin. This was who she was.
‘So why am I definitely-one-hundred-and-one-per-cent going to meet Safa tomorrow night?’ she asked Totoro.
She caught sight of her reflection in the window, the fade making it faint, like an apparition breathing fog onto the glass.
‘I don’t want to be nothing,’ she told herself.
It was the only truth she knew.
‘It’s been a while,’ said Jordan, pushing off the kitchen doorframe and stepping closer.
Wesley wasn’t sure if he was surprised or not how little his brother had changed. He was a bit leaner, and his tanned skin looked as if it had been baked brown in an oven, but everything else, from his perpetual bed hair to his swaggering steps, was the same.
‘What are you doing here?’ said Wesley, fighting to hold his voice firm.
‘I thought it was time to come home.’ Jordan glanced around the room, flicked a loose thread trailing from the sofa arm. ‘Though I guess you can’t call a place you’ve never been “home”.’
Mum crossed her arms. ‘I let you know where we were every time we moved. You never replied.’
‘I didn’t mean to leave it so long before I got in touch,’ said Jordan. ‘I wasn’t sure how welcome I’d be after . . . how we left it.’
Another moment of quiet descended, and nobody moved, as if each were carefully planning their next move. A stand-off, everybody looking for a way to draw their gun.
Mum broke the deadlock. ‘You can’t expect us to forget the things you said.’
Us. Gratitude at being recognised swelled in Wesley’s chest.
Jordan nodded slowly. ‘I know that, and—’
‘And you can’t just walk back in here like nothing happened.’
Quiet again, apart from Jordan blowing a sharp, frustrated breath from his nose. They both knew how stubborn Mum could be, and Wesley was glad she had decided to play it like this: cautious, but proving she wasn’t a pushover. If they let him come back he would walk all over them. He would try and force them back into their previous shape, where there was barely room for Wesley. Perhaps a couple of years apart had finally lent her the courage to stand up to him.
Small hands gripped the seat of Wesley’s trousers, and he reached back to place a reassuring hand in Evie’s soft hair.
‘What would you like me to do?’ said Jordan, clearly choosing his words carefully.
‘Tonight, nothing,’ said Mum. ‘Dave’s borrowed a nice car and he’s taking me out.’
At the sound of his name, Dave took her hand and squeezed it gently. Jordan fixed him with a long look, his expression unreadable.
‘Can I have a word with Wes before I go?’ he said.
Wesley’s nerves jangled, but he managed to keep himself from reeling backwards.
‘Hey,’ said Dave, catching his eye. ‘You’ll be all right?’
‘Yeah,’ said Wesley, pulling himself taller. If he was going to keep his new place in the family, it was up to him to sort this out. He had kept them safe for the last two years and he would do it now. ‘We should probably talk.’
Mum kissed him on the forehead as she passed, and Dave gave his shoulder a squeeze, before they both said goodbye to Evie and left them alone.
Immediately the atmosphere seemed to shift, a subtle change in the air pressure that made Wesley’s chest ache. He had to stand his ground. He took a step into the room, and Jordan took two.
‘Christ, you’ve grown,’ he said.
Wesley was still shorter, and they both knew it. ‘Well, it’s been two years.’
‘Too long.’
The feigned sentimentality was a disarming tactic. He had to ignore it. ‘I need to get Evie’s dinner ready.’
Jordan took out his phone. ‘I could order pizza?’
‘Pizza,’ said Evie firmly, and that settled it. A series of well-practised taps on the screen sent the order in seconds. Wesley couldn’t help but feel he’d lost the first exchange.
‘You got big too,’ said Jordan, squatting down and holding a hand out to Evie, like he was summoning a pet. She shrank away behind the armchair, wedging as many fingers as she could into her mouth.
‘Evie, why don’t you go and paint in the bedroom?’ said Wesley. And then once she was gone, ‘She doesn’t remember you.’
When Jordan had left, their half-sister was little more than a toddler. It had always seemed a blessing that she wouldn’t remember anything of what had brought them there, and would only have memories from when things were, if not good, at least settled.
‘I thought I should see where you’re living now,’ said Jordan, again casting his eyes around the room. ‘I didn’t think you could do worse than the last place.’
‘You never saw our last place, or the place before that.’ Wesley felt his cheeks growing hot. ‘We had to take whatever we could afford after you left.’
No matter where they had been or what they had been through, Wesley had done everything he could to care for his family. He wasn’t worth much, but he was proud of that. It was the only worthwhile thing he had ever done. He wouldn’t let Jordan walk back in and take that away from him.
‘Do you have any idea how hard it was?’ he said. ‘How hard it’s been to look after everyone?’
Jordan snorted. ‘Yeah, you’re clearly doing such a good job.’ He changed then, holding himself taller and moving a little too close. Wesley recognised the brother he used to know.
‘We needed you,’ he said, refusing to back down. ‘And you abandoned us.’
Jordan waved his words away. ‘I didn’t abandon you. It’s not that simple.’
‘It looked that simple from where I was standing.’
Jordan took a breath, ready to retaliate, before biting the words off. He turned away, cramming his hands into his pockets.
The words rose in Wesley’s throat unbidden, and he knew he shouldn’t let them out, knew he was winning and this would make him look weak. But these words had been waiting two years to be spoken and they wouldn’t be stopped now.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were seeing Dad?’
‘This again?’ Jordan turned back, face clouding with anger. ‘Why can’t you let it go?’
‘What you told me, after I found out,’ said Wesley. ‘Is that really why he didn’t want to see me?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I want to be part of the family again. Speak to Mum for me, you were always her favourite.’
If that was another way of saying he was soft, Wesley didn’t care. He squared his shoulders and pointed to the door. ‘You should go.’
‘It doesn’t have to be like this, Wes.’
‘Go.’
Jordan nodded, finally looking defeated, until he brushed past to reach the door and stopped in the threshold.
‘No wonder Dad didn’t want anything to do with you.’
Wesley wore his blank expression like a shield. He waited until Jordan banged the door shut behind him before collapsing onto the couch, gasping for air like he had come up from underwater. If he had won that battle, the war was going to be hell.