Long Story Short by Siobhan Parkinson Page B

carrot, or possibly for murder.
    I’d give him sad, I would, if I met him.
    Oh, sweet Jesus, is it ever going to let up?
    I told Kate all that the next afternoon, when I saw her. She said, Yeah, you’re right, I never liked Antonio, bit of a moaner. Spoiled.
    I like her attitude.
    All the same.
    â€œWhat about that Paudge?” I said. “He’s trying to get you to winkle stuff out of me, isn’t he? That’s why you’re here.”
    â€œIt is not,” she said. “Listen, Jonathan, I am on your side. I don’t owe Paudge anything. Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s okay, it’s just…”
    â€œI liked him too, until he started accusing me of murder,” I said. “You’d be amazed how a little thing like that changes the way you feel about a person.”
    Kate threw back her head and gave this long laugh. Her throat was all exposed and creamy. There’s something very healthy about this person. I can’t put my finger on it.
    â€œJonathan, your sense of humor will save you.”
    â€œOh?” I said. “Not Shakespeare?”
    â€œShakespeare’s dead,” she said, “like a lot of people in your story. Now, listen. First off, I want to say, I am very sorry about your mam.”
    The lights started going on and off in my head again.
    â€œDon’t!” I said. “Don’t call her that. That’s what I called her when I was a little boy. I don’t want to think about that.”
    Mam, Mam, help! I’m falling! I’m falling, Mam!
    That was me, on my first bicycle, terrified. Ma was running along beside me, shouting, “You’re all right, you’re all right, keep looking ahead, concentrate, pedal, Jonathan, pedal . If you keep pedaling, you won’t fall off. Pedal like crazy, Jono, pedal, pedal, pedal!”
    But I kept looking back, to check that she was still holding on to the saddle, and every time I turned my head I lost my balance and she righted the handlebars with her other hand, and she screamed, “Don’t, Jonathan. Just look ahead and pedal like the bejaysus.”
    But I didn’t trust her, and in the end, one of my twistings-around knocked me so far off my center of gravity that I came down with a bang. I hurt the side of my face, I scraped my shins, and I caught my foot in the spokes and sprained a toe. I sat there crying in the middle of the bicycle—it seemed to be lying all around me—and I yelled at her, “It’s all your fault, it’s all your fault.”
    She pulled the bicycle up and wheeled it away. She left me in a huddled heap, crying and shouting and hurting.
    â€œI couldn’t stand the noise,” she explained afterwards. “I couldn’t take the yells and shouts. And you were blaming me, it wasn’t fair.”
    Of course it wasn’t fair. But I was bloody six years old.
    â€œSorry,” said Kate, about using that word, mam . “I won’t. What I want to say is, I know this is very tough for you, but we have to face up to it all if we are to make any progress here. Okay? You with me?”
    God, she was going all social-workery again on me. But what choice did I have? She was the only person I could talk to.
    I looked out the window. There was some kind of a five-on-five thing going on in the garden. And on the windowsill was this blade I’d found in a cabinet in the bathroom of that hamburger place we’d gone to, me and Kate and Paudge. God knows how it got there. It was weird, finding a thing like that, so weird, I had to take it. It was like a gift, I thought. So I’d wrapped it up in toilet paper, layers and layers, and I’d put it in my pocket and then I’d walked very stiffly for the rest of the day, in case it worked its way out of the toilet paper and started to do damage.
    Once I got it here, I put it on the windowsill in the sitting room, just at the end, where it was hidden by the