by Ian Mcewan
Then we heard Sue calling Julie’s name and pulling at the door. When Julie let her in, Sue threw her arms round Julie’s neck and hugged her. Julie led Sue to the bed where she sat between us, trembling and pressing her thin lips together. I held her hand.
“He’s smashing it up,” she said at last, “he found that sledgehammer and he’s smashing it up.” We listened. The thuds were not so loud now, and there were sometimes pauses between blows. Julie got up and locked the door and stood by it. For a while we heard nothing. Then there were footsteps down the front path. Julie went to the window.
“He’s getting in the car.” There was another long pause before we heard the engine start and the car pull away. The sharp sound of the tires on the road was like a shout. Julie pulled the curtains closed and came and sat down beside Sue and took her other hand. We sat like this, three in a row on the edge of the bed. For a long time no one spoke. Then we seemed to wake up and began to talk in whispers about Mum. We talked about her illness and what it was like when we carried her down the stairs and when Tom tried to get in bed with her. I reminded them of the day of the pillow fight when we were left in the house together. Sue and Julie had completely forgotten it. We remembered a holiday in the country before Tom was born, and we discussed what Mum would have thought of Derek. We agreed she would have sent him packing. We were not sad; we were excited and awed. We kept on breaking out of our whispers until one of us called “shhh!” We talked about the birthday party at Mum’s bedside and Julie’s handstand. We made her do it again. She kicked some clothes out of her way and threw herself upside down in the air. Her dark, brown limbs barely quivered, and when she was down Sue and I clapped quietly. It was the sound of two or three cars pulling up outside, the slam of doors and the hurried footsteps of several people coming up our front path that woke Tom. Through a chink in the curtain a revolving blue light made a spinning pattern on the wall. Tom sat up and stared at it, blinking. We crowded round the cot and Julie bent down and kissed him.
“There!” she said. “Wasn’t that a lovely sleep?”