The Flask by Nicky Singer

roll up the sleeves and the trouser legs, I remember how this man, who is not my father, used to lift me on to his shoulders at the end of a walk too long for my toddler legs. I remember how he was never impatient with me when, with Mum already waiting in the car, I cried for him to take me back into the house so I could check on Spike. And, speaking of monsters, I also remember how he would make sure to close the door of my wardrobe at night because he knew I feared the things which lurked there in the dark. I return to Si looking like the Michelin man. I still don’t say anything to him but he speaks to me.
    “Thank you, Jess,” he says. “Thank you very much. I could really use some help today.”
    And he smiles one of those smiles like incense.
    “First up, the radiator then,” says Si.
    He begins by loosening the radiator hoses, talking as he goes, explaining what he’s doing and I’d forgotten this about his maintenance work, how very instructive it is, as though he’s passing on wisdom that will, one day, allow me to construct an entire engine from scrap metal and memory alone.
    I help him lift the radiator out.
    “Now for the crank pulley bolts,” he says. “Pass me the wrench.”
    And I do. Like I’m some junior doctor in an operating theatre.
    Which, of course, makes me think of the twins. Although, in fact, I’m never not thinking about the twins.
    “Mum told me,” I say, “about the tests. About how they share a liver.”
    “Yes,” says Si. “Not great news.”
    “So what do the doctors say now then?” I ask. “About the operation?”
    “Depends which one you ask,” says Si, as he puts metal to metal and turns. “At the last count there were about twenty-two of them.”
    “Twenty-two!”
    “Four surgeons, four anaesthetists… Can you pass me that hammer?” I pass him the little copper mallet and he begins a soft tap tap tapping. “Remember, always go gently on a crank pulley,” he says, tap tap tapping. “Although they won’t all be in the operating theatre at once. They have to work in shifts… Ah, here we go.” The crank pulley comes out. “Now for the timing chain cover. Ratchet please, and socket.”
    There are about twenty small tubular attachments in the socket tray. “What size?” I ask.
    “9/16th should do it, I reckon.”
    I pass him the relevant socket and he screws it on to the ratchet head.
    “But when are they going to do it?” I ask. “The op?”
    “Not for a few months yet,” says Si. His arm is deep inside the car engine. “It’s safer for the babies if they can grow a bit first. Hmm. I think I’m going to have to go at this from underneath.”
    I get out the jack for him and wheel it under a jack point.
    “Haven’t forgotten everything then, have you?” says Si. And he’s pleased with me, and right now, I like him being pleased with me.
    He cranks the car up and then goes to fetch the trolley.
    And with the trolley come the twins, of course, one underneath the car and one hopping about for a spanner.
    “And what,” I say, “what are their…” Only I can’t finish the sentence.
    “Chances?” says Si. “Good. Basically good, I think. But no one’s really prepared to stick their neck out. There are so many different factors to be taken into consideration.”
    He slips himself under the car and I go with him, elbowing my way along the oily cardboard so I’m lying right beside him. Almost as close, I think, as Clem is to Richie. But not quite.
    “If it was just their livers that were joined, that would be one thing. But it’s also the lower sternum and the ribs and some part of the abdominal cavity and…” He pauses to fit the socket head over the lowest bolt.
    “But the heart, they don’t share a heart,” I say. I hadn’t realised I’d been hanging on to this fact. “That’s the main thing, isn’t it?”
    “Well, apparently there may be a small joining of the pericardium, after all.” He begins to turn the wrench. “That’s