Brilliant (2 page)

She'd been moved into Raymond's room when their Uncle Ben had come to live with them. For a while. That was what her mam and dad had said. Uncle Ben would be staying “for a while.” Sometimes her mother called it “a little while.” But the “little” had disappeared when Uncle Ben kept staying, and Gloria began to think that her bedroom wasn't hers anymore. And Raymond, she supposed, began to think the same thing. His room had become
their
room.

She looked into her room sometimes, when her Uncle Ben wasn't in there. He hadn't done anything to it. He hadn't touched her pictures or her other stuff. It was still pink, nearly everything in it. The only really new thing in the room was her Uncle Ben's smell. It was kind of an adult smell. A mixture of soap and sweatiness. There were none of his clothes lying around, and just one book that wasn't hers. She'd looked at the cover, but it had looked boring, about a war or something. Except for the fact that she didn't sleep or play in there anymore, it was still Gloria's room. So maybe her Uncle Ben really was only staying for a while—but the while was a bit longer than they'd expected.

Maybe.

“Rayzer?”

He still wouldn't answer.

She didn't like her bed. It wasn't a real bed. It was just a mattress on the floor. She'd liked it at first. It had been fun, nearly like camping. But not now. Her face was sometimes right against the wall, low down, at the baseboard, nearly where it joined the floor. It was cold there. Always—even when the rest of the room was warm. And she could hear things sometimes—she thought she could. Behind the baseboard.

Gloria wished she had her own bed. That was all she missed, really. She had her duvet and her pink cover. But it wasn't the same.

“Rayzer?”

She said it a bit louder. Nearly her regular talking voice.

Maybe he was asleep. She kind of liked that, the fact that her big brother had fallen asleep before her.

She tried again.

“Rayzer?”

“What?”

“Are you not asleep?”

“That's a stupid question.”

“I bet you were asleep,” said Gloria. “And I woke you.”

“I wasn't,” said Raymond.

“Bet you were,” said Gloria. “Prove it.”

“Easy,” said Raymond. “You said ‘Rayzer' four times.”

She heard him moving, turning in his bed.

“Didn't you?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I think. Why didn't you answer?”

“Didn't want to.”

“I knew that,” said Gloria. “I knew you were awake.”

“What d'you want?”

“Can you hear them?” said Gloria.

“Yeah.”

Gloria was talking about the grown-ups downstairs. Her mam, her dad, her granny, and Uncle Ben. They were downstairs in the kitchen. Raymond's bedroom was right on top of them.

“They're mumbling again,” Gloria whispered.

“Yeah,” said Raymond.

The house was full of mumbles these days. Mumbles that often stopped whenever Raymond or Gloria walked into the room. Mumbling was what grown-ups did when they thought they were whispering. Whispers only stayed in the air for a little while, but mumbles rolled around for ages, in the high corners, along the window frames, all around the house. The mumbles had almost become creatures. Gloria imagined she could see them. They were made of dust and hair, pushed into a ball, with skinny legs that barely touched the walls and ceilings as they slid along the paint and glass and wood.

The mumbling had started when their Uncle Ben had come to live with them. Or just before he came. Gloria didn't like the mumbles. They worried her. But she didn't blame her Uncle Ben for them.

Neither did Raymond. He didn't like having to share his bedroom with Gloria, but he didn't blame his Uncle Ben for that, either. Gloria was a pain in the neck—and in other places too.

But Raymond knew all little sisters were like that. It was one of the rules of life. And sometimes sharing the bedroom wasn't too bad. Like now. Raymond had always been a bit afraid of the dark. Just a small bit. He was nearly two years older than Gloria, so he went to bed half an hour after her. It was a quarter of an hour for each year. That was the rule, his dad had told him.

“Who made the rule?” Raymond had asked his dad.

“The government,” his dad had answered.

His dad thought he was funny.

Anyway, when Raymond had gone up to bed, he'd always left his bedroom door open a bit, so that light from the kitchen downstairs could get in and push away some of the darkness. He'd always hated it when he saw Gloria's door closed, with her stupid sign: “Keep Out—This Means U!!!” Because Gloria wasn't scared of the dark. And that had made Raymond feel terrible, and ashamed.

But now, with Gloria sharing the bedroom, Raymond wasn't really scared of the dark anymore. And he didn't have to say anything about it, or be grateful or anything. It was just a fact.

“Mumble, mumble, mumble,” said Gloria, now.

Raymond did a deep, man mumble.

“Mummm-bull.”

Gloria did a lady one.

“Mimm-bill, mimm-bill. Know what we should do, Rayzer?”

“What?”

“Sneak down, under the table.”

“Cool.”

It was the night before Saint Patrick's Day. There was no school the next day, and they'd already been allowed to stay up later than usual.

Gloria heard Raymond getting out of his bed. She stood up on her mattress.

Gloria and Raymond had this secret thing, a game. They'd sneak back downstairs—only on the weekends—after they'd been sent to bed, and only when the grown-ups were in the kitchen. It didn't really work in the other rooms. They'd sneak down the stairs and along the hall. They'd creep into the kitchen on their hands and knees or sliding along on their bellies. They'd crawl in under the table, and they'd stay there. For as long as they could.

They couldn't touch the adult feet or they'd be caught and the game would end and they'd be sent back up to bed. The first time they did it, they'd only lasted two minutes and fourteen seconds because their dad moved his foot and felt something.

“There's a dog under the table,” he said. “But we don't have a dog.”

Then they saw his big face, upside down, looking at them.

“Messers,” he said. “Get back up to bed.”

And their mam grabbed and tickled them when they were climbing out from under.

“You scamps!”

It became something they did nearly every Friday and Saturday night. It was brilliant, because their parents always forgot. And their granny—she forgot too. But their granny forgot nearly everything, so she didn't really count.

But one night, when they were under the table for thirty-seven minutes and fifty-one seconds, Raymond and Gloria realized something at the exact same time: Their parents knew they were there. They were in on the game. In fact, it had become
their
game: Pretending they didn't know their kids were under the table. Their parents owned the game, not Gloria and Raymond.

It was the way their mam and dad were talking to each other—that was the giveaway. And what they were saying.

“Here, Pat,” said their mam. “You know the way Gloria and Raymond are asleep in bed?”

“I do,” said their dad.

“Well,” said their mam. “Will we eat the chocolate we hid in the secret place where they'd never, ever find it?”

“Good idea,” said their dad. “They'll never know.”

It wasn't funny, and not because Gloria thought there was a hiding place for chocolate that she'd never found. (She didn't.)
What wasn't funny was the fact that the game was over—Raymond and Gloria had been caught. And, actually, they might have been caught ages ago but they hadn't noticed. Their parents, even their granny, had been playing with them, like three cats with two mice.

Raymond and Gloria got out from under the table.

“Oh, look,” said their mam.

“Were you under the table?” said their dad.

“All the time?” said their mam.

“Ha, ha,” said Raymond. “I don't think.”

Gloria had cried. She hadn't meant to. Her parents never really teased her. But it felt like they'd been teasing her for ages—forever—and she'd only just found out. She hated being teased. She hated it.

Her parents knew they'd gone too far, and they felt guilty. Gloria sat on her dad's lap while her mam made them all hot chocolate.

“Time for bed,” said their mam when the chocolate was finished.

Gloria's dad kissed the top of Gloria's head, then Raymond's.

“You can sneak under the table any time you want,” he said.

“Yes,” said their mam.

But they didn't.

Not for ages.

Weeks. Months. Nearly a year.

Their parents missed it—Raymond and Gloria could tell.

“Make sure you stay in bed now,” said their dad, the next Friday night.

They stayed in bed.

“No sneaking under the table tonight,” he said the following night.

They stayed in bed.

“Did you fall asleep last night?” their dad asked Raymond on Sunday morning.

“I fall asleep every night,” said Raymond. “Can you pass the milk, please?”

Raymond and Gloria both agreed. They'd never sneak downstairs again—until they knew the game was theirs again.

They even forgot about the game.

Then one day, a few days after Christmas, Gloria was in the kitchen and she dropped one of the charms from the new bracelet her granny had given her. It fell under the table, and Gloria went in after it. And she remembered.

She said nothing until she was alone with Raymond.

“Hey, Rayzer,” she said.

“What?”

He was playing tennis against himself on his new Wii.

“Remember when we used to go under the table?” said Gloria.

“Oh yeah!”

And they started again.

That night, they crept down the stairs, down the hall, into the kitchen, under the table. They stayed there when their parents and their granny stood up. They stayed when they heard their parents going up the stairs. And they waited.

“They'll catch us if they look into our rooms before they go to bed,” Gloria whispered.

They listened.

They heard the toilet. They heard the water going on, and off. They heard a cough, and gargling. They heard a laugh—their mother. They heard silence.

“They didn't check.”

They'd won.

And they won again, and again—and again. They crept and they slid, and they were sure their parents never knew. The best bit, the biggest triumph, was sitting under the table. For minutes. For more and more minutes. They stayed absolutely still. But it was hard. Their noses got runny, their ears got itchy. Burps climbed slowly up their throats and knocked at their teeth to get out. Their legs and bums went numb, then dead, then back to jumpy life. They bit their arms to stop laughing.

It went on for months.

And it got even better when their Uncle Ben arrived. Now they had to slide through four sets of feet and legs. Being under the table was like being in a cage, and the grown-up legs were like the iron bars. But these iron bars wore slippers or had holes in their socks, and some of them even had hair in the gaps between the socks and trousers. So it was funny—especially once, when Raymond leaned out and pretended he was going to pull one of the black hairs on their dad's shin. There were the legs of the table too, and the chairs. They made the secret space under the table even more like a cage.