Micah made a face. ‘Don’t want to go.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s embarrassing, like.’
‘Just tell everyone you went to the dentist.’
‘Yeah.’ He looked at me, seeming very young suddenly. ‘But it’s scary too, innit?’
I reached around him and picked up the kettle. ‘Really scary. But most things are, I reckon.’
Micah grinned at me. ‘We’re a right pair of scaredy-cats.’
‘Totally.’ I filled up the kettle and turned it on. ‘What time’s your appointment?’
‘Half ten, but Mum says we have to leave at quarter to, even though it’s literally round the corner.’
I thought that perhaps his mum was scared about the appointment too. I didn’t know her very well – Micah was really the only one of the family that I had anything to do with – but she seemed nice enough. More engaged than my mother had ever been, at least. Though judging anyone’s parenting skills by my mum’s was a fairly low bar for them to jump.
‘So we have almost an hour,’ I said now. ‘Can you do something for me?’
‘Is it your phone again?’ Micah said with an exaggerated sigh. ‘Because I’ve told you how to download those apps so many times, Steve.’
‘Stevie,’ I said automatically. ‘And no. Why not try some art? I’ll do it too.’
Micah drank the milk left in the bottom of his cereal bowl and put it on the side. ‘What kind of art?’
‘Whatever you want. How about collage? You can tear some pictures out of magazines.’
He looked alarmed. ‘Like sexy pictures?’
‘No, urgh,’ I said. ‘Stop being such a teenage boy. Fancy it?’
‘No.’ He wandered over to the sofa and threw himself down. ‘Maybe.’
I’d raided the recycling pile at Tall Trees where the residents were still committed to reading printed editions of newspapers and magazines and now I put them all on the coffee table. ‘Here,’ I said. ‘Have a look. Think of it as a kind of creative meditation.’
‘Riiight.’
‘Do it for me,’ I said. I plonked a sheet of paper and some Pritt Stick down too. ‘You’re helping me.’
‘Fine.’ He smoothed out his sheet of paper and picked up theSunday Times Magazinefrom the top of the pile.
For about forty minutes, we tore out pictures and stuck them down in companionable silence. My own collage was a mishmash of stuff. Pictures of drinks and elderly people and rainy streets – a glimpse into my life, really. But Micah’s was lovely. He’d gone with colours, starting with dark pictures at one end of the paper, fading into light at the other end.
‘This is amazing, Micah,’ I said, looking at it in awe. ‘Did you find it useful?’
He shrugged. ‘Bit.’ He stood up. ‘I should go. Mum will be doing her nut.’
‘Do you feel less worried about the appointment?’
‘Bit,’ he said again.
I stood up too. He towered over me in his gangly teenage boy way, and shrugged once more. But then he gave me an awkward hug. ‘Thanks, Steve.’
He headed for the door.
‘I’m proud of you,’ I called as he went down the stairs.
