After Brock by Paul Binding

weeks,’ I said, ‘and, as I’ve only just arrived, this’ll be my first bit of business. I take it you’ve got your debit card with you, Darren. Just let me set our machine in motion, and then you can key in your PIN.’
    And less than two minutes later Dad had the welcome £600 in his system.
    Despite this little triumph (well, not so very ‘little’ really) I noticed that Dad was uneasy with me all day. I shouldn’t have tackled him so soon in my stay (within ten minutes of arriving) about his links with this once-famous quiz. Though why dissociate himself from something on which he’d been, as he did not deny, a ‘star performer’?
    That night I dreamed that I was back on top of those walls that stretched beyond my mate Josh’s house in Tulse Hill. It was night-time, as it had been in reality, but my surroundings were lit up by the yellow fiery eyes of the fox pursuing me. Each pad forward this animal made corresponded to a possible answer to questions I hadn’t yet precisely formed, even to myself.
    A violin tune moaned enchantingly through my sleep, but it wasn’t that Bach Chaconne, nor some plangent Cajun tune. ‘It follows the Kodály method,’ said Julian Pringle’s voice, ‘and you can hear it in the hills and mountains of the Marches.’
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    * * *
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    Reading through the Paperchase notebook now, It’s clear that, already exhausted by exams, Nat had used up any energies left by writing so full an account of my life immediately after them. So he abandoned journal-writing proper in favour of largely random-seeming jottings, in deteriorating handwriting (laptops are so much easier) not always dated and probably making no sense to anyone else.
    A great many entries concern the shop, its customers, its visitors who might, or should, or in some cases should not, become customers, its calling reps, its new stock, its actual sales. He also put these on a special computer file of his own, although he had Dad’s password and inspected his files rather more often than he realised – though Nat did tell him! The names of supplier firms – T.K.C. Sales of Steeple Aston, Wind Designs of Ely, Cambridgeshire, Spirit of Air of Newport, Gwent – occur many times. But his private thoughts still went in the journal.
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    â€˜Dad handled the rep this morning in a laid-back but pretty lazy way, I thought. Must have struck the guy as a pushover for anything he had to flog, and he didn’t complain as strongly as we agreed he should do about those two Sky Lanterns that never arrived (‘Romantic Chinese Flying Lanterns’, which are ace to let float off at the tail-end of a barbecue party – and it’s the barbecue season right now.) Why can’t Dad see all this for himself? Why does he need me to tell him? And then sulk when I do?’
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    The same querulous mood prevails in the following regularly repeated, and heavily underlined, sentences. (Handwriting becomes neat again for these):
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    Kids’ kites: single line. Average price £15-£30
    Power-kites (adults and teenagers) Average price £150-£300
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    Wouldn’t the obvious deduction from this be to concentrate on the latter?
    Pete Kempsey needs a really good shake up!
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    On the other hand…
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    â€˜Dad said he was really chuffed by my hard sell today of the swept-wing sports-kite in general and the Sandpiper model in particular. So I said to Dad, “I’ll take over the kitchen tonight, and I’ll make a Quorn shepherd’s pie.” I burned the Brussels sprouts I served with it, and I apologised, but Dad said he hadn’t really noticed, and anyway what did burnt veg matter. “It’s a real treat for me you cooking dinner, and I appreciate it.” 
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    â€˜July 18. Managed to Google a fantastically interesting