In The Fields By My House:

the final episode

One day, about a month later, I was picked up from a friend’s house by my babysitters. They said Mummy was going to phone tonight and she wanted to talk to us. Jesse and Basti got back home just after me. We were asked to sit on the sofa in the drawing room. A man, one of Mummy’s cousins, walked in. We hadn’t seen him since Christmas. He said Mummy had something important to tell us. When he came back into the room he was holding Mummy by the arm. She could hardly walk. Jesse and Basti jumped up and helped her sit down. I stayed where I was. All I could do was say ‘no’.

I’m nearly thirteen now, it’s almost a year since then. I’m on summer holidays. I love summer. Everything’s so much brighter. I’ve just been helping Mummy paint the drawing room. It was yellow, now it’s white.
Everyday I walk through the fields to meet my friends at the crossroads. The grass is up to my ribs. I brush my hands over the top. There’s one of those old planes, bi-planes, flying above me. It’s white. It does loop-the-loops. In a minute it will land beside me in the field and my Dad will get out and wave. Then he’ll go and I won’t see him again until tomorrow, when I’m walking through the fields. I love the fields. They go on forever.

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