Finally, a door to the reception area opened and a man in a suit put his head around. His tie was undone, the knot hanging way below his chin.
‘Ms Delaware?’ he said. Mum stood.
‘Yes.’
‘Come this way, please.’ We both followed him through the door and along a corridor to a small office. The cop didn’t ask who I was and I didn’t volunteer the information. I was half expecting Summerlee to be in there, but the room was empty. The man motioned to a chair and then sat behind a desk. There was only one chair so Mum took it. The place was pretty much like the cubicles I had imagined out there in the waiting room. The only thing missing was the takeaway sandwich. The man picked up a thin manila folder and examined a page. He glanced up at Mum.
‘At one-thirty this morning we received a call from the night manager at the Hyatt Hotel in the city. He reported that there was a disturbance in one of the rooms and asked for assistance. A patrol car was sent out and, as a result, your daughter and two other people were arrested.’
Mum sighed. It could have been worse, I suppose. A disturbance was better than an assault. Then again, the word ‘disturbance’ covered a multitude of possibilities.
‘What has she done?’ Mum asked.
The cop turned back to the folder.
‘At present, the charge sheet reads affray, possession of illicit substances, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer,’ he said. It turned out the disturbance was an assault. He put the sheet down. ‘In addition, Ms Delaware, your daughter trashed the hotel room. That was the reason the police were called in the first place. Apparently, she and her guests made a real mess. Smashed the television, destroyed the bed, tipped up the bar fridge, broke tiles in the bathroom . . .’ He picked up the sheet again, clearly thought about listing more of the damage, changed his mind and put the sheet back. ‘Let’s just say that there wasn’t much in that hotel room that could be broken that wasn’t. I imagine the Hyatt will be hitting your daughter with a substantial bill for damages.’
‘She can afford it,’ said Mum. I didn’t know if the police officer would pick up the irony, the weary resignation, in her words or interpret the remark as dismissive.
‘Yes,’ said the cop. ‘Summerlee Delaware, multi-millionaire.’ Did he intend the rhyme? I almost laughed. ‘I read all about it. Saw the news. But that doesn’t give her the right to destroy other people’s property or assault police officers.’
‘I know that,’ said Mum. ‘Believe me, I know.’
The cop stared at her for a few moments. I was really tempted to break my silence. The guy was looking at Mum as if she was a shit parent. Just another one in a long line of shit parents he had had to deal with in his career. Your daughter didn’t just turn out this way. You made her. How about taking some responsibility? But Mum had tried. She was the only one who had. She’d fucked up, sure, with all of us, but which parent doesn’t? In the end, she didn’t deserve this. This was Summerlee’s crime and it was painful to watch Mum being invited to share it.
‘Anyway,’ the cop continued. ‘Your daughter is an adult and will be charged as one. We are prepared to release her tonight. But she is still very drunk and I require the presence of a sober adult to take responsibility for her.’
‘Keep her in a cell overnight,’ said Mum. ‘Might do her some good.’ I could only imagine the despair that led to that suggestion. It wasn’t like Mum at all.
‘No. We want to be rid of her. Though it’s interesting you should say that. Your daughter also didn’t want to be released to you and suggested the same thing. But, frankly, no one here has the time or energy to clean up her vomit or watch her constantly to make sure she doesn’t choke on it. To be honest, Ms Delaware, we are tired of her. Take her home.’
Mum nodded. She seemed so worn down, shoulders sagging as if in some way she welcomed the burden. Or, at least, recognised the inevitability of carrying it.
‘Come with me,’ said the cop.
This time we were led to a room that did contain Summerlee. She sat on a bench, her head dangling between her knees, and she looked up as we entered. I have seen Summer in various states of drunkenness and most times she looked like shit, but she had outdone herself this time. Her top was torn and dirty and she didn’t even have the energy to hitch it up to conceal grimy bra straps. The rest of her clothes, such as they were – Summer never considered herself decently dressed if she was decent – were in a similar state. Not dragged through a hedge backwards, but repeatedly forced through it on considerable occasions. But it was her face that shocked me more than anything. Cuts and scratches, make-up smeared, hair in a disastrous tangle. And her eyes. They seemed dead somehow, a window to misery. I actually wanted to go over and hug her, but I didn’t have the guts. She would have recoiled anyway. Her gaze took us in, but it was uninterested, and she turned her eyes back to the floor. I noticed that they had taken her shoes.
Mum, to her credit, didn’t launch into anything resembling a sermon. Just as well, because Summer might have found herself facing further charges. Instead, she jangled the car keys again. ‘Time to go home, Summerlee,’ she said.
Summer stood and walked past both of us, staggering slightly and banging her hip against the door frame. The cop led the way to the front desk and Summer was given back her possessions. Shoes, mobile phone, handbag, twenty-six dollars and twenty cents in cash. Summer counted it out carefully.
‘I had more than this,’ she said. ‘I had at least fifty bucks.’
‘You didn’t,’ said the guy in the suit. He had never given us his name. That was okay. I wasn’t particularly interested. ‘You had exactly what it says on that sheet. Twenty-six dollars and twenty cents. You signed. Here.’ He pointed out Summer’s scrawl at the bottom of the form.
‘Yeah, well, I was pissed,’ she replied. ‘I woulda signed anything. I had more than a lousy twenty-six bucks.’
‘Are you accusing us of theft?’ said the guy. ‘If so, there is another form that you will need to fill out.’
‘Oh, sure,’ said Summer. ‘That’s gonna work, isn’t it? How fuckin’ dumb do you think I am?’
For a moment I thought the cop was going to accept the invitation and spell it out for her, but he didn’t. He kept his mouth shut and his eyes hard.
Maybe it would have been better to let Summer talk herself back into jail, but in the end we got her out of the station. You could feel the mood of the constabulary lifting as we went through the door. It was distinctly possible they would have had a whip-round to raise the twenty-four dollars to bring her cash up to the fifty she claimed. That would have been a blast. Giving twenty-four bucks to someone who was worth seven and a half million.
Summerlee shivered in the cool night air and wrapped her arms around her front. I couldn’t imagine that would provide much warmth, but there was nothing to be done about it. She looked up at the night sky, teeth chattering gently. Mum opened the rear door of the car.
‘Despite everything, Summerlee,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you got the police to call me.’
‘I didn’t,’ she replied. She didn’t even glance at Mum. ‘They got your number from my phone. Isn’t there some law against that? You can’t just go searching through someone’s mobile. That’s invasion of privacy. I should sue the fuckers. Maybe I will.’
Mum sighed. I realised she was bone weary and not just because of the lateness – the earliness – of the hour. It was five-fifteen and the sky had taken on that quality that said night’s dominance was ending. Stars were fading on the horizon. So too, closer to home, was Mum’s resilience.
‘Get in the car, Summer,’ I said. ‘You must be cold.’
‘Nah, I’m right.’ She pulled out her phone from that ridiculously small bag and punched in a number. ‘I’ll get a taxi.’
‘Where to?’ said Mum.
‘There are other hotels.’
‘Come home,’ said Mum. ‘You can sleep properly. I’ll cook you breakfast. You can have a hot shower.’
> ‘Maybe we could sing a song together in the car,’ said Summer. ‘Play happy families. Speaking of happy families, Dad couldn’t make it, I see.’
‘One of us had to stay and look after your sister.’
‘Yeah. He’s good at that, is Dad. Doing fuck all.’
Mum’s hand clenched against the car keys. I saw the blood drain from her knuckles.
‘Come home, Summer,’ she said again.
‘Nah, I’m right.’ Summerlee turned her head away from us. ‘Yeah, I need a taxi right away. I’m outside the police station in Gordon Street. Going to the city . . . Summerlee Delaware . . . ten minutes? Right.’ She hung up.
‘Summerlee . . .’
‘Leave it, Mum,’ I said. I took her by the arm. ‘You’re not going to get anywhere. Let’s go.’
‘But . . .’ There was a puzzled expression in her eyes. I can’t just leave my daughter alone in the street at five in the morning. It’s dangerous and I have to protect her. It was only yesterday that she would giggle when I tickled her and hug me and give me a big sloppy kiss on my cheek and draw me pictures, outrageously bad pictures, that I would proudly stick up on the fridge, and she’d get so wound up on Christmas Eve that she could never sleep but would sometimes make herself sick with excitement, and her first day of school . . . I can’t leave her. It’s what being a parent is about. It’s hardwired. ‘Please, Summerlee,’ she added.
I felt anger at the abject pleading and a profound sadness at the same time. It was a curious emotional mixture.
‘Nah, I’m right,’ said Summer.
I grabbed my sister by the arm, and when she tried to wrench herself free, I tightened my grip, hissed close to her ear.
‘You’re a fucking bitch, Summer,’ I said. ‘Dad is worried, Mum has driven here to pick you up and all you can do is spit in her face. You don’t even have the decency to say thanks.’ She managed to finally free herself and her face was contorted in anger.
‘“Thanks”?’ she said. ‘For what? I didn’t ask you guys to come here, so you can fuck off if you want gratitude. This was about making yourselves feel good. All that family-sticks-together, blood-is-thicker-than-water horseshit. Mum’s neediness, Dad’s gutlessness, your overwhelming sense of fucking superiority. Well, I’ve had it, Jamie.’ Her mouth twisted and suddenly she was ugly. Not the kind of ugly that can be fixed with mascara or a brush through the hair. This ugliness was stamped in the flesh. ‘Or is it all about protecting the family interests, huh?’
‘What are you on about?’
‘Seven and a half million reasons to be nice to me.’
‘Fuck you, Summerlee.’ I didn’t try to hide my disgust. I couldn’t hide my disgust.
‘Yeah? Right back at you, little brother.’
Even then, Mum insisted on waiting until the taxi arrived. I was for getting the hell out right there and then, probably because I didn’t have her hard-wiring. Summer got in the taxi without another word and we watched as she disappeared into the gathering dawn. Mum closed the rear door of our car.
‘That could have gone better,’ she said. I could see her fighting back tears.
‘You did your best, Mum,’ I said. ‘Forget her. She’s screwed up and it’s not your fault.’
‘It’s always the parents’ fault,’ she said, though her voice was little more than a whisper.
‘That’s not true,’ I replied. But she looked at me as if I knew nothing at all. Maybe I didn’t.
We drove home in silence.
The money came through with a fanfare of publicity from the lotto people. We read about it in the papers.
Summer bought a mansion in the city for nearly two million dollars. Spider bought a car. We weren’t invited to see either of them. There was sporadic contact. Summer had taken to answering our calls occasionally, though they were invariably unsatisfactory. We were polite enough, but the conversations only served as reminders of the distance between us, the gap none of us, to be honest, struggled too hard to bridge. Apart from Mum, that is. She kept trying, but from my perspective at least, it was like attempting CPR on a body that was way past resuscitation.
Summer, from the age of thirteen, had always been moving away from us, slowly and inexorably. The lotto win accelerated the process. We had become a family polarised. It wasn’t just the money. In fact, it was mainly to do with personalities.
But, shit, the money didn’t help.
CHAPTER 10
This is what happened. This is when the real terror began.
I had a free, last lesson of the day, so I went to see Mr Monkhouse, my maths teacher. He’d set me additional homework a week ago (no one else got this – apparently, it was to keep my brain ‘fit’) and I reckoned I’d nailed it.
Mr M was in his classroom marking assignments, and judging by the speed with which he pushed them to one side, he was pitifully grateful for my interruption.
‘Mr Delaware,’ he said. ‘To what do I owe the honour?’
Mr Monkhouse was a brute of a man, about two metres tall and with a barrel chest. He kept his head shaved and his features were proportionately large and coarse. If you were designing a nightclub bouncer from scratch, Mr Monkhouse would make a perfect template. And yet his brain was beautiful. It often seemed to me that he taught not because it paid the mortgage, but because it allowed him to think about mathematics, and he could imagine nothing better to do with his time than turn symbols and ideas around in his mind, basking in their perfection.
‘The homework, Mr Monkhouse,’ I said. ‘Cracked it.’
He smiled and spread his hands. ‘Remind me.’
‘The spaghetti problem.’ I could tell Mr M had been pleased with this when he’d set it. Jamie, you drop a single straight strand of uncooked spaghetti onto your kitchen floor and it breaks randomly into three pieces. What’s the probability you could form a triangle from those pieces?
‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘Often called the broken-stick problem.’ He pointed a finger at me. ‘You didn’t look it up on the internet did you?’ I cocked my head. ‘Of course you didn’t,’ he continued. ‘I apologise. So. Amaze and delight me.’
‘Quick version,’ I said. ‘If you want the full proof I can do it.’ I picked up a whiteboard marker and drew an equilateral triangle on the board. I referenced the altitude theorem, added another equilateral triangle within the first and showed how, of the resultant four congruent triangles, it was only in the medial that the sum of the lengths of any two pieces exceeded the length of the third piece. ‘Therefore,’ I said, ‘the probability of forming a triangle from the three pieces of spaghetti must be one in four.’
Mr Monkhouse laughed. ‘One way of doing it,’ he said.
‘One way?’
‘All right, Jamie. It’s a good way. How about something more challenging? Never mind your spaghetti breaking into three. Now – impossibly, I might add – it’s broken up at n – 1 random points along its length, resulting in n pieces, obviously, where n is greater than or equal to 3. What’s the probability that there exist three of the n pieces that can form a triangle?’
This time I laughed. ‘You’re shitting me.’
‘Would I shit you?’
I thought.
‘Does the answer involve Fibonacci numbers?’
Mr Monkhouse smiled. ‘Maybe. You tell me.’
‘Has anyone ever told you that you’re the most annoying teacher in the school, Mr M? Possibly the world?’
‘I’ve heard the proposition before,’ he said. ‘But no one has yet provided the proof.’ He stood, stretched and rubbed at his eyes. ‘Mr D, I spend most of my time telling students how to solve problems, but you have a mind. Use it. Go think. It’s what you were put on this earth to do.’
‘It’s to do with Fibonacci numbers,’ I said.
‘How’s that older sister of yours doing, Jamie?’
Summerlee had been in Monkhouse’s class a few years back. Well, probably not often, come to think about it. God knows how he would have coped
with someone like Summer, who had zero interest in anything academic. It’s what teachers do, I guess. Part of the job.
‘Ah, you know Summer, Mr M,’ I said. ‘Same old.’
‘I’ve read about her in the papers.’ Everyone had read about Summerlee, it seems. It made me a kind of celebrity at school for a few days, before interest waned. Mr Monkhouse sighed. ‘Seven and a half million dollars, wasn’t it?’
I nodded.
‘That’s not far off what a teacher would make in a hundred years,’ he said, but it was like he was saying it to himself.
There was silence and it was kinda embarrassing. I didn’t really know what to say, but thought I should say something.
‘Life’s not fair, I guess.’
Monkhouse smiled and got to his feet. He picked up the pile of assignments and then tossed them back on the desk.
‘That’s pretty much the philosophy of my mortgage lender,’ he said. This was getting even more embarrassing. I didn’t know if I was expected to apologise for Summerlee, or say something about how much I appreciated what teachers did. Instead I shuffled a few paces towards the door.
‘I’d better get going, Mr M,’ I said. ‘Picking up my younger sister from school, doing some food shopping for Mum.’ I didn’t need to go this early, but for some reason I wanted to get out into the fresh air.
‘Of course, Jamie. I think I’ll go home myself.’ He pointed a finger at me. ‘Remember, n pieces of spaghetti. Don’t make a meal of it.’
Even the best teachers think they’re comedians.
It was a glorious day. The sky was a pale blue, dusted like a bird’s egg, and a few lazy wisps of cloud nestled against it. The air was fresh, tinged with the scent of cut grass. I would be early, but I walked to Phoebe’s school anyway. This is my job, picking her up after school, but it’s not really a job. It was a ten-minute walk and by the time I got there I still had forty minutes to wait. Sometimes, on days when I had a free last period, I’d go into reception and wait there. The staff knew me and there was one girl in particular – well, not a girl, a woman probably in her early twenties – who had wicked green eyes and a way of biting on her bottom lip when she was concentrating. There are worse ways of spending time, sitting in a warm reception area and reading faces when no one knows you are watching. But I didn’t feel like it today. I sat on a small swing in the school playground and tried not to look like a paedophile. I pushed against the ground with my legs, which wasn’t difficult since the swing was designed for someone half my height.
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