Chapter 8

 

Elliot and Millie left just after half one and for once, Alex wasn’t gleefully happy that they were departing. He was pleased, but in a strange way. He was already missing the biscuity smell and the calm that the child brought with him.

 

Lara left not long afterwards. She said that she was meeting Emma from work but he’d already got a text from Jude saying that he was going to meet Lara at half two for coffee. She was lying to him. He knew for a fact that she wasn’t telling the truth. What should he do? Should he follow her to make sure? Or should he trust that she wasn’t deceiving him?

 

He was sitting at the table pondering. He took off his glasses like he often did when thinking and rubbed the bridge of his nose. His eyes began to wonder and then caught on the oven. It was filthy. No, obscenely encrusted in grime was more accurate. That glass was meant to be dimmed, not black.

 

Alex began to feel sick just looking at the cooker and so decided that he was going to do something about it. He was going to ‘do the housework’. Well, cover the oven in cleaner then sit at watch Heroes on Sky+.

 

Where did Lara keep the oven cleaner? His mother kept it under the sink. Up until he was 15, he had no idea where it was. Then she found his magazines. All of them. And she said she was going to keep them with the bleach to make them cleaner. He searched the house while she went shopping.

 

He looked under the bed but found nothing except dust bunnies. He looked in the loft but the Christmas tree and his childhood toys stopped him 4 ft in so reasoned that Mum probably wouldn’t have hidden them there. The cupboard was the last place he looked. And, sure as sugar, his stack of Playboys were right next to the bleach and the oven cleaner. Luckily Attitude hadn’t fallen out.

 

There was no oven cleaner. Nothing specifically for ovens anyway. Cif would have to do. Alex picked up the bottle and began examining the instructions on the reverse. It didn’t say anything about ovens but apparently it could lift stains. The oven had quite a few stains.

 

He would need lots of Cif.

 

The white foam came out of the bottle with alarming speed. It missed the cloth Alex was holding completely and went in the fruit bowl. He decided that using a cloth wasn’t the best idea and so aimed the nozzle at the back of the oven.

 

A small circle of solid black had become white and foamy. It fizzed for a few seconds and then the grey froth slipped down to the base of the oven. It seemed to have worked.

 

He decided to cut his losses and embarked on a Cif-spraying frenzy. Within a few minutes, the whole oven was white. It was like looking inside a cloud. It began to bubble again. It began to bubble a lot. Some concerning fumes were beginning to creep out of the foam. This was not good.

 

“S**t.”

 

After staring wide-eyed and biting his lip for a second, he shut the oven door and hooked a tea towel on the top so it covered the little window.

 

“Out of sight, out of mind.”

 

Alex got last night’s leftovers out of the fridge and went to sit down in the living room. In front of the television was a small brightly coloured object. He couldn’t make out what it was. His glasses were still on the table. In the kitchen. With the vapours.

 

He picked himself up and scampered in and out of the kitchen holding his breath. When his vision had returned, he could see that the object was a small ball with something written on it in permanent marker.

 

‘Elliot’

 

He smiled and turned the T.V. on. He watched two episodes of Heroes but Claire Bennet didn’t seem to be doing it for him today. Neither did Peter Petrelli.

 

Because every 30 seconds, his eyes flitted to the child’s toy on the floor.

 

He wanted to pick it up. He wanted to go out and sit cross-legged in the garden rolling it to and fro. But he couldn’t. He was a grown man and to sit playing a child’s game with no child could be considered insanity. Was he insane?

 

He didn’t think so.