The Taming of Lilah May by Vanessa Curtis

on television, and concerned with getting their performance just right. I want to scream at them that this isn’t some soap opera, it’s our real family life that’s happening, and we don’t want to be on the television, we just want the missing part of ourfamily back. But I don’t say any of that, even though I’m wrecked with anger all the time.
    The camera crew hang around our kitchen and Mum makes them cups of tea.
    Her eyes have purple shadows underneath them from broken night after broken night, and she’s stopped going to work and hired somebody else to take over her children’s parties.
    Dad’s still going to the zoo, but he says his heart’s not in it and he rings home several times a day to see how Mum is, and employs a new member of zoo staff to take over a lot of his duties.
    I carry on going to school like a robot, but I can’t take in a word of what’s going on and only Bindi can get through to me.
    A lot of the other kids whisper and point at me, but I’m beyond caring.
    Our house has become so sad, like a hard shell full of bits of stuff that don’t mean anything. The rooms feel cold and empty and just smell of furniture polish instead of spliffs and guitar-strings and trainers and junk food.
    I watch the actor playing Jay as he does another take, walking out of our front door and down the street towards the tube station, and I wish harderthan I’ve ever wished for anything in my life that it was really Jay and not some strange boy, and that I could run after him and grab him by the arm and say, ‘Sorry, I’m sorry, Jay, I didn’t mean to tell Mum and Dad and make you run away,’ and persuade him to turn around and walk back into the house. But I know that’s stupid, so I hang around the front garden with Dad, watching in silence and answering the odd question from the film crew. They carry on for the whole afternoon and I watch as the police talk to my parents while the filming drags on, and still I can only think of the one question that’s been haunting me day and night ever since he went.
    When will Jay come home again?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    Two years and two months after the day he went missing, the police reckon that they might have found Jay.
    Dad’s holding my hand in the kitchen.
    He talks in a very soft and steady voice, not like his usual loud bark. It’s the voice he uses when he has to climb into an enclosure of lions and break up a fight, or rescue a trapped cub, or give an injection.
    Except that he doesn’t need to tame me on this particular day.
    I’ve lost the power of speech and I’m the quietest I’ve ever been.
    Even Benjie’s gone quiet and is huddled under my chair.
    Behind the dark bulk of Dad’s head I can see Mum leaning on the banisters in the hall and hiding her face behind her hand. There’s a policewoman standing next to her with one hand on Mum’s elbow and she’s bent towards Mum in concern. I make out the words ‘tea’ and ‘sit down’ and ‘when you’re ready,’ but I can’t make any sense of it, because I feel as if a big part of my side has been ripped off and left all the inside bits of me hanging out.
    Jay.
    Jay.
    I want Jay.
    Dad’s stroking my hair, and he has big tears rolling down his face. I’ve almost never seen Dad cry. Even when Jay went missing the first time, he didn’t cry. He just went grey and aged about twenty years in five minutes and ever since then he’s not smiled or laughed in the way that he used to.
    Mum’s been the one who cries.
    She’s crying again now, like her heart is broken.
    The policewoman comes into the kitchen and fillsup the kettle, hunts for cups and mugs and gets milk out of the fridge.
    â€˜We will need you to come and make an identification,’ she says to Dad, with an anxious look at me. ‘Your daughter should probably stay at