Half the World Away - страница 15

But endless, interminable cloud. Chengdu is known as the city where the sun never shines. Great bumper sticker. Mugs, anyone? Tea towels? It’s in the Sichuan basin surrounded by mountains. This traps the cloud. Swampy best describes the summer I am told. Today it is just sticky. Sticky and airless. The cloud seals in the heat and the pollution. Imagine using a wallpaper steamer on a very old doormat in a confined space. That smell. What’s not to like? The humidity is about a million per cent. Perfect for mosquitoes. So I am sticky and itchy and STILL having an amazing time. Lxxx

I’m in the office, printing off letters and appointment slips for parents’ evening, which is the week after next. The staff are up to their eyes writing reports on each child, charting their progress in their key stage and the core subjects. Sheaves of paperwork, much of it to be done at home in their own time.

I break off and check Lori’s blog hasn’t been updated: it’s still the post about the weather. Nine days since she put it up. A week since I sent my last message. Perhaps she’s hard at work, keeps meaning to reply and hasn’t had time. Or she’s been away. Or ill. Perhaps she’s just being Lori, letting it slide, too caught up in her exciting new life. There could be problems with the Internet – the service is a bit patchy at times. I dither over whether to send a new message, and in the end I do. OK, maybe she’ll resent me nagging but I can live with that. She might just need a nudge.

It’s raining as we walk home from school. Isaac stops every so often, his attention drawn to a pile of litter or something in the hedge. I hurry him along. Finn walks through the puddles. ‘You’ve not got your wellies on,’ I say.

‘I don’t mind.’

‘So your trainers’ll be wet.’

‘Soon dry,’ he says.

The rain is heavier, cold by the time we reach home. ‘I’m soaking,’ Isaac says on the doorstep. ‘Can I stay here?’ Walking Benji is not usually something they can opt out of.

‘We won’t be long,’ I say.

‘But if Daddy’s here…’ Isaac goes on.

‘Daddy’s busy.’

We get inside. I call, ‘Hello.’

Nick answers from the dining room.

‘Daddy, I want to stay here,’ Isaac says. I motion him to stay in the hall – he’s dripping all over the floor. He shudders.

I put my head round the door. Nick’s on the computer. ‘Is that OK?’ I say. ‘He looks a bit peaky.’

‘Sure.’

Finn has Benji’s lead and the dog is jumping up at him, ecstatic.

‘Go and get changed,’ I tell Isaac, ‘put your wet things in the basket and don’t bother Daddy.’

‘I know,’ he says. He gets one bug after another at the moment and most of them make him throw up.

Finn and I walk partway around the park, then retrace our steps. The rain never lets up. My knees are damp, my trousers sticking to them. Blossom on the cherry trees is battered; half of it lies on the ground, a soggy mess already turning brown.

‘My nose is wet,’ Finn says. There’s a drip of water hanging off the end. He sticks his tongue out, shakes his head and catches it.

‘Come on,’ I say. ‘I’m wet inside out – even my knickers are wet.’

He chortles. We walk back, his trainers squelching.

‘You take Benji around the back,’ I say. ‘He can do his shaking dry in the kitchen.’

Inside I am met with the unmistakable acid pong of vomit and Nick is on his hands and knees with a cloth and a bucket.

‘Not again,’ I say, peeling off my coat.

‘He’s up in bed.’

‘Maybe it’s an allergy,’ I say.

‘Wouldn’t he swell up or get a rash?’ Nick says.

‘Possibly.’

Finn comes squelching out of the kitchen.

‘Go back and take your shoes off,’ I tell him.

He pulls a face. ‘Urgh – that stinks.’

‘Off you go… I’ll make an appointment,’ I say to Nick, ‘get him checked out.’

He sits back on his haunches, looks up at me. ‘Fine.’

‘Any luck?’ He has been waiting for a reply from a job application. It’s similar work to what he has been doing but down in Walsall in the West Midlands.

‘No.’ He gets up, lifts the bucket. ‘I’d have heard by now. Not even a bloody interview.’ He walks away.

The smell lingers. Nick has cleaned the floor but there’s a splash against the wall, speckled liquid, that he’s missed.