It seemed ages until Elizabeth came. He heard the front door open and close, and then murmuring voices. He imagined Tom taking Elizabeth’s luggage from her, and perhaps her jacket, and offering her a glass of wine or something. They’d probably go into the kitchen and talk for a bit, while Tom got started on their supper – he hadn’t done anything about it while Rufus was downstairs – and then Elizabeth’s feet would come running up the stairs, and she’d sit on his bed and he might be able to hint, at last, at some of the things that troubled him, about finding Dale there, about the feeling in the house, the oddness in his father. He picked up a Goosebumps book that he’d left lying on his duvet earlier. Tom didn’t like him reading Goosebumps, he’d said they didn’t stretch his mind enough, but sometimes, Rufus thought, his mind didn’t in the least want to be stretched; it wanted to be treated like a little baby mind that didn’t have to worry about anything.
‘Hello,’ Elizabeth said.
She was standing in his open bedroom door, wearing a navy-blue suit.
‘I didn’t hear you,’ Rufus said.
‘Perhaps these are quiet shoes—’
He looked at them. They were so dull, they certainly ought to have been quiet. Elizabeth came over and sat on the edge of his bed. She didn’t kiss him, they never did kiss, although Rufus thought sometimes that they might, one day.
‘I’m sorry I’m so late.’
‘I kept yawning,’ Rufus said, ‘so I thought I was sleepy. But I’m not.’
She was wearing something white under her suit and some pearls she nearly always wore which she said her father had given her. The microscope her father had given Rufus sat on his desk in a black cloth bag. Rufus had promised to take it back to Matthew’s house, to show Rory.
‘How are you?’ Elizabeth said.
Rufus thought. Usually he said, ‘Fine,’ to ward off any more questions, but tonight he felt that questions might almost be welcome. He jerked his head towards the wall behind him.
‘Dale’s living there.’
‘I know.’
He sighed.
‘Does she have to be my sister?’
‘I’m afraid so. She’s Daddy’s daughter, just as you are his son.’
‘But it feels funny—’
‘I know,’ Elizabeth said again.
Rufus began to riffle through the pages of his Goosebumps book.
‘Will it be long?’
‘Dale being there? I think it might be. I don’t think she likes living alone.’
‘And I,’ said Rufus with some energy, ‘don’t like living with her.’ He glanced at Elizabeth. Her face was very still, as if she was thinking more than she was saying. ‘What are you going to have for supper?’
‘I don’t know—’
‘Isn’t Daddy cooking it?’
‘No,’ Elizabeth said. ‘He offered, but I’m going round to Duncan’s.’
‘Why?’
‘Because — because I’m not staying here.’
Rufus stopped riffling.
‘Why?’
Elizabeth put her hands together in her lap and Rufus noticed that she was clenching them so hard that the skin on her knuckles was greenish white, as if the bones underneath were going to push through the surface.
‘Rufus—’
He waited. He stared at Batman’s hooded face, spread across his knees.
‘Rufus, I don’t want to say this to you, I don’t want to hurt you and I don’t want to hurt myself or Daddy or anybody, but I’m afraid I can’t marry Daddy after all.’
Rufus swallowed. He remembered, briefly, the registry office last year and the registrar with gold earrings and the picture of the Queen.
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘I would like to explain everything to you,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I’d like you to know all the reasons, but for one thing it wouldn’t be fair, and for another, I expect you can guess most of them.’
Rufus nodded.
He said kindly, ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Doesn’t—’
‘There’s people at school whose parents aren’t married. It doesn’t matter.’
Elizabeth gave a small convulsion. For a second, Rufus wondered if she might be going to cry, but she found a tissue in her pocket and blew her nose instead.
‘I’m so sorry—’
He waited.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, and her voice was unsteady. ‘I’m so sorry, Rufus, but I’m not even staying, I’m not going to live here any more. I’m going away. I’m not marrying Daddy and I have to go away.’
He stared at her. She seemed to him suddenly very far away, very tiny, like something seen through the wrong end of a telescope.
He heard himself say loudly, ‘You can’t.’
‘Can’t—’
‘You can’t go away’ Rufus said, just as loudly. ‘You can’t. I know you.’
She blew her nose again.
‘Yes. And I know you.’
‘Where are you going?’ Rufus demanded. His throat felt tight and swollen and his eyes were smarting.
‘Oh, just London,’ she said. Her hands were shaking. ‘I expect I’ll buy a house with a garden and then my father can come and stay with me at weekends.’
‘Can I come?’
Tears were now running down Elizabeth’s face, just running, in wet lines.
‘I don’t think so—’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it wouldn’t be fair – to Daddy, to you even—’
‘It would!’ Rufus shouted. He hurled the Goosebumps book at the black shape of his microscope. ‘It would! It would!’
‘No,’ Elizabeth said. She was scrabbling about in her pockets for more tissues. ‘No, it wouldn’t. It might make you think things were going to happen, when they weren’t. It’s awful now, I know it is, but at least you know, and it’s better to know.’
‘It isn’t,’ he said stubbornly. He put his fists in his eyes, like little kids did. ‘It isn’t!’
He felt her get off the bed. He thought she was looking down at him, and he couldn’t bear that, not if she was going to London and wouldn’t let him come, too.
‘Go away!’ he shouted, his fists in his eyes. ‘Go away!’
He waited to hear her say, ‘All right, then,’ or, ‘Goodbye, Rufus,’ but she didn’t. She didn’t say anything. One moment she was there by his bed and the next she had gone and he could hear her quiet shoes going quickly down the stairs and, only a few seconds later, the front door slamming, like it did when Dale went out.
Slowly and stiffly, Rufus took his fists away from his eyes and eased himself down in bed, on to his side, staring at the wall. He felt cold, even though it was summer, and rigid, as if he couldn’t bend any more. The wall was cream-coloured, as it had been for ages, for ever, and on it Rufus could still faintly discern where he had scribbled on it, in black wax crayon, and Josie had scrubbed at the scribble with scouring powder and been cross with him, not just for scribbling in the first place but also for not doing a proper picture, or proper writing, but just silly, meaningless scribble. The thought of Josie made the tears that had been bunching in his throat start to leak out, dripping across his nose and cheeks and into his pillow; and with them came a longing, a fierce, unbidden longing, to be back in his bedroom with Rory, in Matthew’s house.