It's been a strange weekend.

Miranda, unsure whether I’d accepted her invitation, came to the house to see me on Saturday. Norman hid himself in the attic and Angela stayed in my room, where she could listen to the radio. Angela likes Radio 5, because she likes to hear voices.

You’d think it was a date, not dad’s ex-girlfriend. I spent the first half hour in a frantic chat-tidy, hiding traces of Angela and Norman’s residential status. I don’t know why I hid that from Miranda, after all, all my friends know. I wouldn’t want her to feel protective against them - and she’s more likely to recognise Norman. She did see all the dishes in the sink – but I said my friends had been over. She thought it was odd we’d been eating Norman’s creamy potato stuff rather than McDonalds, but she bought it.

I liked seeing her, which I didn’t expect. Maybe she broke up with dad because his behaviour was strange, or else he smelt of brimstone, but she doesn’t know about the side of him that dwelt in the study – she talks about him like a normal person.

Angela’s stories never stop. Norman egged her on all last week, and I was glad we spent the day apart. She talks about magic all the time, like the same way I’d talk about a bad song. She told us about a man who wanted his kitten to never grow into a cat, but he forgot the tail – so it grew longer and longer until twenty years passed and it just fell off. Or the man who made a woman to keep him company – just made her out of sticks and stones – but he couldn’t make her love him. She ran off with another man, and cried every day because he’d programmed her to miss him, like a drug. Angela can’t explain why that’s not the same as love. And then there was the man who fought a demon, just because it was a demon, but they were both trying to protect the same woman from each other. Angela loves telling stories about demons – not even stories, just rubbish information, like how demons see starlight much brighter than we do. And I think it’s very convenient that all the people who get the magic wrong in her stories are men.

Miranda talks about the past like it’s a maze on a puzzle page, and you can retrace your path to start again from the choices you had earlier. She says the past is better if you don’t think of it as over, but be glad that it ever happened. I don’t get it, but it made sense when she said it.


She also said there was a job for me if I wanted – she runs an art gallery nearby. I told her about the will and how it’s left me pretty much sorted. We drank coffee – it was very civilised.

Saturday night I went out with my friends, into town, to see where we couldn’t get served. Not many places as it turned out. We got back in the morning and sat up talking about what was right with the world.

Angela said Jo, Cobb’s girlfriend, came looking for him while we were out, which explains why he’s always inviting himself over, if he’s trying to avoid her. She’s pretty, but constantly in a mood – like she’s got tight high heels and a septic toe.

On Sunday, when I was fit for it, we drove to Bradford – Angela, Norman and I. It was Angela’s idea. Miranda had asked why dad’s car was in the driveway and Angela reasoned it was only a matter of time before neighbours remembered to the police that they’d seen Norman’s car in the street.

We went over the peaks, avoiding the motorway, and got there just after dark. Angela said to find a rough neighbourhood, but none of us knew where that might be. We just drove around until we saw a gang of twelve year olds smoking and then parked close to them. Norman gathered up any last personal belongings. Angela and I wore gloves and hats because of a whole CSI conversation we'd had. The keys were left in the ignition.

What we hadn’t thought of at the planning stage was that to get from the car to the train station and home, we had to walk through the dodgy area we were relying on to trash the car.

There’s already a divorce between myself and kids. I can see it in their eyes; I’m just surplus information in their world – like a drifting road sign, or nutritional stats. A few years ago I used to aspire to be my age – I used to respect me. Now it’s like their brains are all wadded up, and I get why we used to get dirty looks in the park, why adults would go quiet as they passed us – because they didn’t trust us to have morals. And now I’m the same. Already I look at kids like the ones we walked past in Bradford, and I look at all the things on them that shine, and I think they are capable of anything. Don’t look them in the eye.

There are cameras on buses, so we walked all the way down to town, but not before Angela got the jitters that the kids couldn’t be relied upon to be bad enough. Norman had left a can of petrol on the back seat and reckoned that would seal it, but Angela went running back to the car. She says the kids were nowhere near it, that they’d gone home for their chips. We’ll have to take her word for it, since we turned round and headed back, but before we saw the car again Angela was running towards us, steam engine style. There was an orange glow behind her, and then Boom.

She kept running right past us, not even a look or a break in her pace. Norman looked at me and farted. In a couple of days I might find that funny, but at the time it seemed the perfect thing to say. We pursued her, Benny Hill style.

Sirens started up the hill towards us and we legged it down a side road. Fire engines and a police car went past. I could taste blood coming up from my lungs and Norman spewed. Angela sort of skipped until we were moving again.

By the time we reached the station, the last train had gone: it took two hours to get there, via dead ends and car parks. Angela swears that no one saw her, and that kids like those don’t talk to the police.

Then the really bad part started. Norman started to pick at Angela for the plan in the first place, let alone going back to fire the car. Angela said he ought to be grateful, or was he just sitting around waiting to get arrested. I wonder if he’s told her more than me. Then they bickered all night as we walked around the city centre, trying to keep warm, not to get mugged, not to get noticed by the police, not get lost, not feel hungry. I suggested we go back to the scene of the crime, just in case it was still burning.

We got back today. Norman and Angela still aren’t talking.

Cobber, Top and Fuzz came around this evening. They think Angela’s gorgeous, but Norman’s weird – or that he’s still here is weird. I wanted to tell them what we’d done. I wanted to tell Fuzz that I’d experienced that buzz of criminality – but it would open up too many questions. I had to wait until two for them all to go home.