‘I just feel so bloody helpless,’ he mutters.
‘Join the club.’
‘She’s not stupid,’ he says, as we part.
‘I know. But she can be caught up in the moment…’ Twelve days.
We leave it hanging. Go our separate ways.
Isaac complains that the pictures on Lori’s wall are spooky and horrid. He’s right about some of them.
‘We can move the wardrobe and drawers to that side,’ I suggest to Nick. ‘That’ll cover most of it. And put some of their posters over what still shows.’ It feels odd to be reorganizing the rooms when everything with Lori is up in the air. Normal life should be suspended, paused, until we know where she is, but it doesn’t work like that.
I’ve an irrational urge to tell him to move it all back, put everything how it was, as if by rearranging the furniture we can return to some time before 2 April. Put Lori back in place where she should be posting a new blog about her escapades: So I am sticky and itchy and STILL having an amazing time. Lxxx
Finn wants to help but is just getting in the way so I give him the pile of posters and tell him to take them downstairs: he and Isaac can pick three each to go up on the wall.
I empty the wardrobe of the boys’ clothes, which are on the shelves at the right-hand side. Neither of them has anything that needs hanging up. Between us, Nick and I lug the wardrobe over to the wall. As we edge it into the corner, I try to see the collage afresh, look for surprises in it, but I’m too familiar with the components: the family wearing gas masks, her landscape photos from Skye, the cityscapes of Glasgow and Manchester, the picture of a skeleton draped with feather boas.
Nick removes the drawers from the chest and puts them on Finn’s bunk, then hefts the carcass over and puts it next to the wardrobe. The bedroom door will only open ninety degrees but that will have to do.
There’s a wail from downstairs. Finn. I find him standing disconsolate, holding two halves of a poster.
Isaac has a beetle brow, mouth pursed with defiance.
‘He tore my picture.’
‘I did not,’ Isaac yells. ‘You snatched it.’
‘It’s mine,’ Finn says.
‘I was giving it to you.’
‘Isaac-’ I say.
‘I was! He shouldn’t pull.’
‘We can fix it,’ I say, ‘with some tape.’
‘It’ll still be torn,’ Finn says.
‘Put it there.’ I nod to the table and fetch the Sellotape from the basket on the shelf. The rip is more or less straight so it’s easy to repair. When I turn it over, Finn inspects it. ‘It’s still torn. You can see the mark. I want a new one.’
