‘That mother of yours is an awful bitch,’ Dad says as he jerks the steering wheel back and forth. We’ve been stuck behind a Fiat Punto for ages now because the road is snakey. There was a straight stretch but a postvan had been coming. Dad exploded and wanted to know what in utter fuck a postman was doing on the road at this time.
     ‘What’s a bitch?’ Joey says beside me. His voice is thick. Baked bean sauce is smeared all up his cheeks, now dried and caked on like face paint, and I think there’s even a bean up his nose. Or he has the cold again. He always has the cold.
     ‘A girl dog," I say, looking down at him through my fringe, which feels weird because in Mum’s car he is usually up higher than me in his booster seat.
     ‘I know what she’s at,’ Dad says as he begins a rant. ‘I know what she’s at.’ He pulls the car over the white line for a moment before tucking back in as a red car appears around the bend ahead. The rant is interrupted by a loud, ye bolix, ye, before he picks up and goes on. ‘She’s fooling no-one, let me tell you. Yous mightn’t see it yet, but she’s trying to turn yous against me, poisoning yous.’
     Joey snaps his head to me, eyes wide, but I shake my head. I had explained to him before that he doesn’t mean that she is putting bad stuff in our food, that it was just something Dad says, because Joey had stopped eating for a while. I don't know what set Dad off this time. Don’t remember. Don’t care. I don’t even listen any more, haven’t for a while. So instead I look out the window at the buttery sky and wonder what it would be like to be a bird; the tickly wind on my wings, the sugary candy floss taste of the clouds, the going to anywhere, anywhen, anywhy. I wonder if it’s like being on a rollercoaster. Dad took me on the Big Dipper once when we went on holiday. Joey was too little to go on and Mum was too frightened. I got scared as it started to climb, the clunk clunk clunk sounding like a death knell. Dad was beside me, and I told him I wanted to get off, that I wanted it to stop, but he said everything was ok, that I was safe, and that he was with me, that he had me. The edge of the drop grew nearer and I clung to the safety bar. He took my hand in his and held it tight as we went over the edge, lifting my arm high above my head. The track disappeared in front of me and we fell, hand in hand. I squealed, first in fear, then delight, as I became a bird; light and free, as though the world held no power over me. Dad bought the photograph of us in free fall. It's hanging in the hall of the house; me with my arms wide and smiling, tassels of brown hair floating around my face, and him looking over at me. The two of us held together by our hands.
     The red car that passed us was an Accord, the old model, the same as Mrs Hendron had before she retired. I know all about cars because of Dad. He has a garage, used to sell to everyone round about. Used to. He had sold Mrs Hendron her Accord, said he gave it to her cheap because she was my form teacher, but she said it still cost an arm and a leg. I heard Mum saying that Mrs Hendron got bad news a month after she retired. And Mum’s friend said it was a shocking shame. And Mum said life is for living.
     ‘This food’ll be stone cold because of this asshole in front,’ Dad says, slapping the takeaway in the front seat.
     ‘Who’s a hole?’ asks Joey.
     ‘Don’t you be cursing,’ says Dad, and his eyes flash in the rear view mirror, but I can see the side of his mouth twitch.
     Joey looks to me for an answer.
     ‘The driver in front,’ I say low.
     ‘Why’s he a hole?’
     ‘She,’ I correct, wondering if Dad actually knows it’s a woman. ‘And she’s annoying Dad.’
     ‘Is Mum a hole then?’
     I shake my head. I heard Dad call her much worse.
     ‘Beyond time!’ Dad says as the Punto peels off to a side road. The engine roars beneath Dad’s foot, and the car seat sucks me into it. I used to love when Dad did this, but I’m older now, and the TV says that speed kills. A boy in the year ahead was killed in a car crash last year. Martin. Mrs Hendron had taught him. Mam said it was the reason she retired. The whole school went to his wake and his funeral. He was put into a box, with purple lining, and had his hands joined with rosary beads, like he was praying. His eyes were closed and I thought he might just be sleeping. But he wasn’t. I had seen him around the school but didn’t know him or anything.  I still cried. Lots of us did. It was a different sort of crying, the sort that made tears fall before I realised I was crying. The priest said that Martin was free, with God, in paradise, but I saw them put his coffin in the ground. It was small, too small, like they made a mistake.  Mum moved out the next week. Now she says she’s free. Whenever I cry about Mum and Dad I think of Martin’s grave, and sometimes I feel like part of me went into the ground with him. I cry without realising I’m crying a lot now.
     ‘Right, in,’ Dad says as we pull up to the house, parking beneath the shade of the tree. Joey spiders his way over the top of me before I have my seatbelt undone.
     There’s a crunch beneath my shoe as I step out; a sky blue shell cracked wide, and beside it the sprawled bony frame of a chick, its body red raw, its head a purplish bruise spouting a yellow beak. Its eyes are closed like Martin’s were, probably never opened. It must be a starling. Mrs Hendron loved birds and taught us about them. Starlings have blue shells, are the sign of Spring, and fly together in large swarms, like big black clouds, but I can’t remember what that’s called. I look at the branches, thick with leaves, and wonder if its mother has noticed it’s gone, if she’s looking for it, or if she’s up and left and flew away to a new life. I can’t see the nest, and the branches shiver in the wind.
     ‘Hurry up, kiddo,’ Dad calls as he opens the front door and Joey darts in past him, grabbing at the chippy bag like a dog to a bone. I step over the corpse, minding to ask Dad to bury it in the ground, like Martin was, and I follow in their wake, closing the door behind me. Joey’s already got two chips protruding like tusks from his mouth and a lone sausage in his hand when I walk into the kitchen.
     ‘Up to the table,’ Dad says.
     I take my normal seat, across from Joey, beside what used to be Mum’s seat. I wonder if Martin had his own seat at his table, and if his mum or his dad still sets a place at it. Dad rummages in the bottom of the bag, then hands me my cheese burger.
     ‘One cheeseburger with red sauce, hold the cheese,’ he says as I open the wrapper, the same joke he says every time, and I smile as usual. Joey laughs and sprays the table with fragments of food.
     ‘I missed yous,’ Dad says, light and happy with a smile which falls quickly, and he looks at Joey and me, then to the empty chair. He pulls the chair in closer to the table with his toe and clears his throat. I lift my burger and Joey says mhmm,or something like that.
     ‘Oh,’ I say, after my first bite.
     ‘What?’ Dad says.
     ‘There’s no red sauce on it.’
     ‘I told them, I fucking told them, the useless shower—’
     ‘It’s fine Dad.’
     ‘— bastards. Every fucking week with them. I swear —’
     ‘I’ll get some from the fridge.’
     ‘— the price they’re charging and they can’t even get —’
     ‘Dad, it’s fine.’
     ‘— simple order right. Utterly useless.’
     Joey’s picture from yesterday is flapping from the fridge door, with its jagged three figures; the blue one being Dad, me in some sort of a pink dress, and Joey in his favourite colour green. We’re all standing on grass, the same shade as the Joey figure. There’s an odd shaped sun overhead with aggressive beams piercing across the scene. My hair is well past my hips, one leg is longer than the other, and my left eye is outside of my head. All three of us have deep grins sketched on to our faces, carefree, happy. There’s a gap between the Dad figure and my own, almost big enough to fit another figure into.
     I return to the table with the cold bottle, Dad’s face is almost as red as the sauce I splatter over the once-melted-now-solidified cheese. The chippy sauce always tastes better somehow.
     Joey plays Soldiers with his last few chips, and Dad and me eat our burgers without saying much more. Mum can eat and talk at the same time, and it’s quieter without her here. Dad will take us home to her tomorrow, and she’ll be waiting at the door, smiling, her new short hair tucked back, and she’ll wave to Dad, and he’ll not, and I’ll hug her, and she’ll ask me if I had a good time, and I’ll say that I did, and maybe it’ll be sunny and we’ll sit out in the garden and Joey will spin around and around on the wobbly swing, and she’ll have made soup or pasta, and I’ll go to sleep on the squeaky bed, and maybe Joey won’t have one of his nightmares and maybe we’ll sleep through the night.
     ‘Want to watch a moooooovie tonight?’ Dad asks, stuffing his empty paper wrapper back into the bag along with Joey’s leftovers.
     ‘Yeah,’ Joey shouts, jumping from his chair.
     ‘I’ll just go up to my room,’ I say. ‘Want to read my book.’
     He just looks at me — Dad — for what feels like ages, then nods. ‘Just you and me then champ.’
     Joey throws some air punches. ‘Can we watch Frozen?’ he asks.
     ‘Again?’ Dad asks. ‘No. I’m sick of being told to let it go. And it’s a girly film anyways. What about Peter Pan? Or Bugs Life? Or Toy Story? Eh, missy, where do you think you’re going?’
     ‘Up to my room,’ I say, pushing my chair into the table.
     ‘Toy Story, Toy Story,’ Joey cries.
     ‘Yeah, I know. Give your old man a hug first.’
     He opens his arms wide and I fall into them, breathing his cosy musky scent.
     ‘Love you kiddo.’
     ‘Love you Dad.’ I say.
     ‘You got a friend in me,’ Joey sings.
     Dad releases me and I am free to fly upstairs, leaving my sky blue shell behind.