Blue Like Friday by Siobhan Parkinson Page A

looks like it.”
    â€œHal!”
    â€œIt tastes sort of like curry paste,” Hal said, peering at the kite.
    â€œWhat does? Your mother not being there?”
    â€œNo!” he said, as if I should know that a thing like that wouldn’t have a taste. How would I know what tastes and what doesn’t in Hal’s weird world?
    â€œThe border around the kite,” he said. “That shade of red. Green curry paste. Funny, that, the way the reds and the greens get mixed up. Never thought of that before.”
    The kite, the kite, the wretched kite! He couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything else. That and his weird mixed-up senses of color and taste.
    â€œHal!” I said again, pretty thunderously, I have to admit.
    Hal’s shoulders seemed to collapse in toward his chest, and he had that caved-in look he gets when he’s upset. His face was like a snowflake that gets stuck on the outside of the window and you’re looking at it from the inside, and
you know it’s going to slither down any minute and then disappear.
    â€œSorry,” I said, meaning about shouting at him, but he didn’t seem to hear. “Er … did she ring or anything?” I asked. “Was she staying with a friend?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWell, did Alec explain where she was?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œDoes nobody ever talk in your family?” I could hear myself getting all psychological, like my mum.
    â€œHe isn’t in my family.”
    â€œOh, Hal!”
    â€œCan we go to the strand and fly the kite?” he asked.
    â€œNo,” I said. “I can’t, I’m not allowed. I’m grounded.”
    â€œWhy?” It sounded like the wind, the way he said it, the wind trapped between tall buildings. He must’ve really needed to go kite flying.
    â€œBecause of yesterday,” I said, “being out all day. My parents are furious with me. You’re lu—” I stopped myself just in time. This boy’s mother had … disappeared, it seemed. He was behaving oddly, but could you blame him? Poor Hal, I found myself thinking. Just like my mum is always saying.
    Hal’s face looked whiter than ever, if that’s possible. He’s in danger of turning into an angel, I thought, and flying away altogether.
    â€œWhen are you ungrounded?” he asked.

    â€œI’m afraid to ask,” I said.
    We didn’t say anything for a while. I admired the kite. Hal just sat there. It looked as if he were working on draining every last drop of blood out of his head and down into his feet. I suppose if you don’t know where your mother’s gone, it’s probably normal to look like that, but I didn’t like it. Hal didn’t look himself at all.
    â€œOlivia,” he said at last, in that tiny, insecty voice he had yesterday at the Garda station. “What if my mother doesn’t come home?”
    I had been thinking exactly that, but I didn’t let on to Hal.
    â€œOf course she’ll come home, Hal,” I said. “Mothers don’t just disappear. It’s in their job description: they have to stick it out.”
    â€œI shouldn’t have done that thing with the mortuary, should I? It’s all my fault. It was Him that was supposed to leave, not her. I wish …”
    â€œDon’t be daft, Hal,” I said. “There’s no connection between you playing a silly trick on Alec and your mother not coming home last night. It’s because of whatever is going on between them. Nothing to do with you, you’ll see. It’s just some silly row they’re having.”
    I don’t know much about how grown-ups think, only what I can work out from EastEnders. (I am not supposed to watch EastEnders, but, hey, I have to live in the real world, whatever my parents think of it.) Still, I’d say that it’d take
more than someone not going to a golf tournament to make a couple split up,