The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan

we had put her in the trunk in the first place. At the time it had been obvious, to keep the family together. Was that a good reason? It might have been more interesting to be apart. Nor could I think whether what we had done was an ordinary thing to do, understandable even if it had been a mistake, or something so strange that if it was ever found out it would be the headline of every newspaper in the country. Or neither of these, something you might read at the bottom of your local paper and not think about again. Just like my picture of her face, every thought I had dissolved into nothing.
    The impossibility of knowing or feeling anything for certain gave me a great urge to masturbate. I put my hands into my pants, and as I glanced down between my legs I saw something red. I leapt up in astonishment. The stool I was sitting on was bright red. It had been painted long ago by my father and it belonged in the downstairs bathroom. Julie or Sue must have brought it down in order to sit by the trunk. Instead of being a comforting idea, it frightened me. We hardly spoke at all to each other about Mother. She was everyone’s secret. Even Tom rarely mentioned her and only occasionally cried for her now. I looked around the cellar for other signs but there was nothing. I left, and when I started up the steps I saw Sue standing at the top watching me.
    ‘I thought that was you down there,’ she said when I reached her. She had a plate in her hand.
    I said, ‘There’s a crack, did you see it?’
    ‘It’s getting bigger,’ she said quickly, ‘but guess what?’ I shrugged. She showed me the plate. ‘Someone’s coming to tea.’ I pushed past her into the kitchen but there was no one there. Sue turned out the cellar light and locked the door.
    ‘Who?’ I could see now that Sue was very excited.
    ‘Derek,’ she said. ‘Julie’s bloke.’ In the living room I watched her set the extra place. She took me to the foot of the stairs, pointed upwards and whispered, ‘Listen.’ I heard Julie’s voice and then, in answer, a man’s voice. Suddenly both talked at once and both laughed.
    ‘So what?’ I said to Sue. ‘Big deal.’ My heart was racing. I lay across an armchair and started to whistle. Sue came and sat down too and wiped imaginary sweat from her brow. ‘It’s lucky we cleaned up, isn’t it?’ I went on whistling, choosing my notes at random, in a kind of panic, and only gradually settling on a tune.
    Tom came in from upstairs carrying in his arms what looked like a large cat. It was his wig. He carried it to Sue and asked her to put it on him. She held him away from her and pointed at his knees and hands. She refused to let him have the wig until he had washed. While Tom was in the bathroom I said, ‘What’s he like?’
    ‘He’s got a car, a new one, look,’ and she pointed towards the window. But I did not look round. When Tom returned to Sue she said, ‘If you want to be a girl at tea, why don’t you wear the orange dress?’ He shook his head and Sue fitted the wig. He ran into the hall to look in the mirror, and then sat down opposite me and picked his nose. Sue was reading a book and I began to whistle again, this time more softly. Tom brought something from his nose on the end of his forefinger, glanced at it and wiped it on a chair cushion. I sometimes did that myself, but only when alone, usually in bed in the morning. It doesn’t look so bad when a little girl does it, I thought, and went to the window. It was a sports car, the old-fashioned kind with a running board and a leather hood that was folded back. It was bright red with a thin black line running its whole length.
    ‘You should go out and look at it,’ Sue said, ‘it’s fantastic’
    ‘Look at what?’ I said. The wheels had silver spokes and the exhaust pipes were silver too. Along the side of the bonnet were long, slanting cuts in the metal. ‘To let the air in,’ I heard myself explain to a passenger, and swung the machine