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later?’
    â€˜Your dadda has ringed.’
    â€˜Dad? It was him?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Didn’t he want to speak to me?’
    â€˜He offer a message to say he will pick you up tomorrow.’
    â€˜He’s coming here?’
    â€˜He taking you to him place.’
    â€˜To his house for the night? Is it that Mum’s given permission?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Did he say what has happened to him? Is he all right?’
    â€˜No. No more enquiry. Pack your vest and underpant.’
    It would be the first time he had stayed with his father. Gabriel had been hoping for this.
    â€˜Sleep well,’ said Hannah. ‘Peace for me, tomorrow then.’
    â€˜Get lost.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜An English expression: may you get lost in sweet dreams.’
    â€˜I get. Thanks. Get lost to you and God bless you fresh cheeks all night.’
    â€˜And all your fresh cheeks, Hannah.’

Chapter Two
    After school the next day Gabriel was waiting at the living-room window with Hannah behind him. He shut his eyes, and when he opened them his father was at the gate.
    â€˜Yes!’ Gabriel shouted. ‘Yes, yes!’ He turned to Hannah. ‘See, he did come.’
    â€˜No noise,’ said Hannah. She was watching Dad warily.
    Even though he knew Gabriel’s mother was out at work, Dad didn’t come into the house but stood on the step with his back to the door, tapping his foot as Gabriel packed his drawing things and art books into his rucksack.
    Dad was unshaven, wore dark glasses and had his woollen hat pulled down. Gabriel remembered Mum saying to him, ‘Careful: people will take you for a burglar. A police record is the only recording you’re going to make!’
    â€˜I’ll burgle your arse in a minute!’ he had replied, grabbing her.
    On good days he would be affectionate, always touching, kissing and hugging. But Mum said he was clumsy, and didn’t know how to touch.
    Under his hat Dad was balding; the hair he did have was pulled back by a rubber band he picked up off the street. The rest was straggly and frizzy. His jeans were ripped – ‘ventilation’ he called it – and he wore plimsolls, which gave him ‘uplift’. His idea of dressing up was to pull a fresh pair from a number of similar boxes he kept in the cellar.
    â€˜Let’s get going,’ Dad said, hurrying Gabriel away from the house.
    Hannah stood at the window, mouthing, ‘Get lost!’
    Gabriel said, ‘I’ve been excited all day. Two houses instead of one. I’ll be like other kids now.’
    Gabriel was thinking of children whose absent parent felt so guilty they became eternally indulgent, and couldn’t stop giving them presents.
    â€˜It’s a kind of flat, not a house,’ said Dad.
    To Gabriel’s surprise they didn’t go straight to Dad’s place, but to the V&A in South Kensington, walking around the old jars and pots in an agitated silence that Dad called ‘meditative’.
    Gabriel was used to his father taking him to see the latest work – the strangest stuff – by young artists working in squats, lofts and abandoned garages. Gabriel had looked at heads made of blood, hair and old skin; he had seen dissected animals, and strange photographs of body-parts. The only canvas he saw was Tracy Emin’s tent. Gabriel had learned that anything could be art. His father had no shame about knocking on the door of young artists he admired, and going in for ‘a chat’, since he knew they had been keen to talk about their work. Today, however, he wasn’t feeling ‘inquisitive’.
    Gabriel had started to draw seriously two years before, when his father hardly worked and was at home much of the time. There were no artists in the family, but perhaps Gabriel had turned to art and making films because it wasn’t something Dad had ever thought of doing.
    Unlike most musicians, Dad could