It’s obvious Cicely likes the new horse man. She kept patting his arm when she introduced him to Mum and me in the kitchen, and do you know what her other hand was doing? I’ll tell you: its long fingers were winding themselves round the necklace which came in that blue-velvety box. The one Lizzie unwrapped. Well done, horse man, good gift! Cicely likes it nearly as much as Lizzie enjoyed tearing off the paper. Time for another whinny!
And Lizzie likes the horse man, too. Some birds perch on water buffaloes, and there’s even a type called a plover which pulls strips of rotting meat out of the gaps between crocodile teeth. I’ve never heard of an owl sitting on a horse before, though. But while we had our healthy boring snack Lizzie sat on his lap, very contented, using her slow owl blinks. Like Dad, I’m not a huge fan of humorous, particularly not with strange knobbly crackers. But I ate the snack up so that Lizzie and I could go and play because everything changes and I wanted to see whether my experiment might finally have worked.
And it had!
I said to Lizzie: — Isn’t it strange. Normally when I’m here I have a dad with a lap to sit on, not you.
And she looked at me and slow-blinked and said: — Yes.
Yes! She spoke!
She didn’t stop there. She asked: — Where’s yours gone?
And even though I think I may have heard her saying something behind the front door before Cicely let us in, it still feels like Lizzie’s started speaking because of me, which means all the running comment trees I did for her helped. So I do some more.
I explain that Dad isn’t here today because he’s copulating. He’s been doing it for a while now, ever since we came back from the white cliffs.
— It’s called jumping before you’re pushed, Son. They can’t order me out of my own house if I’ve already upped and gone.
Everyone was very pleased with him for taking this wise precaution. Even Giraffe. She told Mum, — Despite the recent setback, so clear a signal of Jim’s new constructive attitude toward the process can only be favorably interpreted, which sounded nice, whatever it meant.
Either she or Butterfly comes round for a chat quite often. Last time it was Butterfly and we watched Life in Cold Blood —The Dragons of the Dry episode — together. I drew a picture of two skinks fighting. She liked it a lot: in fact she said it was really very helpful, so I gave it to her. I didn’t mind: the legs were wrong anyway.
This second block garage is much better than the first one. While Lizzie keeps on adding new bricks willy-nilly I’m doing very careful adjustments here and there to keep the balance without her noticing. It’s called using subtlety, and while I’m using it I carry on telling her everything, not just about how it might be better to use what we’re making as a zoo for plastic animals rather than a boring car park, but also explaining about Grandma Lynne, who left our house when Dad did, but only so she could make up her own spare-room bed for him to sleep in until he found his feet. He’s still there. They’re on the ends of your legs, Dad! It’s all right, though: I can go round to see him more often there because Grandma Lynne is allowed to use her super vision on us both, just until we’re able to put this whole sorry episode behind us, Son, okay?
I stop.
Lizzie’s heels squash out pinkly as she sits back on them. She smiles because she’s pleased with what we’ve built. It’s okay. We do nothing for a moment. There are normal car Cheerio noises outside and the smell of coffee from across in the kitchen pushes a feeling of Dad into me. The doctors took off his plaster cast the other day, so neither of his arms is warning-red anymore. His bad hand is still oddly thin. I try to pass Lizzie one last brick. She lets it skiddle between her knees and sits there blinking from me to the garage-zoo with her marmalade eyes. Bicycles also have spokes. Mine sparkle in the sun when I’m riding magnificently along the pavement behind Dad without even nearly falling off.
I’m Billy Wright.
I’m six, not finished.
Here is the real ending.
About the Author
Christopher Wakling grew up in California and England. He won a scholarship to Oxford University and has since worked as a travel writer, farm hand, and litigator. He now lives in Bristol, England, with his wife and children. What I Did is his sixth book.
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PRAISE FOR WHAT I DID
“This is family life today at its most believable: warm and messy, bored and raging, and above all, self-conscious. What I Did is every parent’s nightmare, but will make you burst out laughing too.”
—Emma Donoghue, author of Room
“Gripping, hilarious, tender and a whole lot more, this is, without doubt, one of the books of the year.”
—Daily Mail (London)
“A powerful, poignant and funny novel perched on the precarious line between protecting children and destroying families.”
—Melbourne Age
“Amusing and unsettling . . . What I Did lets us into the mind of a child who is comically literal and utterly at sea in the world of adults.”
—The Guardian (London)
“Horribly plausible . . . [What I Did] brilliantly captures parent-child relations in the raw.”
—The Independent (London)
“Wakling creates believable conflict from the everyday facts of a child going just too far and a parent losing it. . . . The novel is a strong depiction of a family in crisis.”
—Sunday Age (Melbourne)
“A powerful parable of twenty-first-century society . . . a fine, challenging novel.”
—Mail on Sunday (London)
“I loved it! Staggeringly good. Terrifyingly good.”
—Lisa Jewell, bestselling author of Ralph’s Party
“Hugely impressive, gripping, funny, and thought provoking.”
—Emily Barr, bestselling author of Backpack
“Excellent. . . . Dark but uplifting.”
—Alex Preston, author of This Bleeding City
Also by Christopher Wakling
The Devil’s Mask
The Undertow
Beneath the Diamond Sky
On Cape Three Points
Towards the Sun
Credit
Cover design and illustration by James Iacobelli
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
WHAT I DID. Copyright © 2011 by Christopher Wakling. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
FIRST U.S. EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-212169-1
Epub Edition © JULY 2012 ISBN: 9780062121707
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