Breaking the Chain by Maggie Makepeace

really a vampire either, you see. He only sucked blood when there was no Coca-Cola available. He –’
    ‘No he didn’t,’ Rod said with authority.
    ‘Yes he
did!
And the guy that shot him was trying to kill the werewolf, but he missed because the vampire had just seen a can of Coke and made a grab for it and …’
    ‘That was
before,’
Rod said scornfully.
    ‘NO IT WASN’T! … And then the … now you’ve made me forget where I was!’
    ‘Never mind,’ Rick said. ‘It sounded as though you’d got to the end anyway.’ He wished Pete would just keep quiet, or at least learn to tell a tale half competently. At present estimation, he had all the makings of a prize bore. Body language seemed to be a complete mystery to him; even in its grossest form. People might yawn quite openly in the middle of his discourse, but Pete would ignore the signs and plough on grimly, oblivious. He must have inherited it from his mother, Rick thought. Poppy had never known when to stop either!
    ‘Oh yes …’ Pete said, gathering strength again. ‘I remember now. The werewolf was only a werewolf after dark, and when the guy who wasn’t a baddie really – remember I told you? -went and shot him, it was just at sunrise and the werewolf was changing back into a rhino, which is what he was in daytime, and the bullet was designed to kill werewolves not rhinos, and it bounced off the rhino’s extra thick skin, because he wasn’t a werewolf by the time it hit, you see, and ricco … ricco … bounced off again and hit the can of Coke and … No, that was later. Anyway then the –’
    ‘Oh shut your head!’ Rod said, turning to him irritably. ‘You’ve got it totally arse about face, and it’s boring Dad to infinity and back anyway.’
    ‘It’s not, is it, Dad?’
    ‘Well, not quite as far as infinity,’ Rick said absently, concentrating on passing a Mercedes.
    Pete subsided into a sulk and began pulling at a bit of interior trim which was coming loose. A blessed silence took over. Rick wondered if everyone’s sons niggled each other as much as his did. He wished he liked them both, or either of them, more. The main thing was, they were his and he had the custody of them. That was what mattered.
    Earlier that day the boys had banded together in an unlikely alliance to protest about going all the way to Somerset to spend Christmas in that gloomy old house in the boring country, with their grandmother who was mad and their grandfather who was okay but not worth the long journey. Rick had read them a lecture on families and duty, and how it was only for three days so they needn’t whine about it. It looked to him like being three days of hard work. He sighed. Then he remembered the expensive presents he’d got for them, all wrapped up in the boot of the Range Rover. They would be putty in his hands when they’d opened those!
    Phoebe allowed herself a double ration of diary on Christmas Eve, knowing that there would be no chance to read much for the next few days. She had decided that she really must read them in chronological order, so she had started again, this time at the beginning in 1946. Not every day had an entry. Nancy appeared to write only when there was something that she considered worth saying. Phoebe felt a growing admiration for her, and an increasing sense of privilege at her own fortuitous opportunity to read the diaries. It made her feel as though she was being taken into Nancy’s confidence, as though she were a special friend. She felt for her in her miseries, triumphed with her over her adversities, and identified strongly with her in her infrequent moments of joy. Phoebe had been there too. She knew how it felt, and knowing the end of the story lent it an added poignancy.
    Phoebe assumed, of course, that Nancy’s ‘P.’ and ‘H.’ were Peter and Hope, and it gave her a thrill of satisfaction to be allowed to spy on their early lives. Nowadays when she was with Peter and he outwitted her with his