‘What?’ he says.
‘I don’t know. You think of something. Bye-bye now, I love you, bye-bye.’
‘I don’t want to go to the museum,’ Isaac says flat out.
I don’t want to be having this conversation. I try a bit of reverse psychology, ‘OK. You tell Daddy and he’ll see if you can stay with Penny or Sebastian. Daddy and Finn can go on their own.’
There is a long pause, then he makes a huffing sound. ‘They won’t know what to get,’ he says.
‘What to get where?’
‘From the shop,’ Isaac says irritably.
Ah. The highlight of any visit. ‘That’s true – and they’ve got some cool models there, and pens and stuff.’
‘When are you coming home?’ he says.
‘In a couple of weeks. And we’ll do something special then, whatever you like.’
‘Bye,’ he says, and I hear scuffling. I imagine him thrusting the phone at Nick.
‘Tell him I love him,’ I say to Nick. ‘Will do.’
‘And I love you.’
‘Love you too,’ he says.
* * *
As I lie in bed my mind roams over the conversations from the evening. We should talk to Oliver in the morning, see if he was the first subject for her project. But wouldn’t he have said so? He was there when we explained about the last sighting and the message to Shona. Then again, his English isn’t brilliant. We need to ask him directly. I think of how he slipped away so quickly, of his reticence, the fact that he didn’t answer his phone.
It takes for ever to fall asleep.
Waking in the night with a start, I’m wondering what roused me, when a great whoomph shakes the building and drives me out of bed. Earthquake. There was one here not very long ago, with dreadful loss of life. Another whoomph vibrates through the air, travels though my belly, my chest. My heart bangs hard. Then I hear the clank and grind of construction vehicles. Or, in this case, demolition. From the window, I can see one of the long sheds has been razed to the ground. A cloud of dust hangs over the rubble that is left as a bulldozer backs away. Across the site, two trucks are waiting in position, headlights on, close to the pile of metal, and a grabber with lights on the arm of its scoop swings round, claws filled with a tangle of the stuff. Nothing goes to waste here. I’ve seen people collecting plastic water bottles and others on scooters piled high with cardboard for recycling.
I watch, sitting in the dark, until my eyes grow heavy and my pulse slows, the trucks have been filled and left in convoy with their loads of scrap. And the lights on the grabber are switched off.
