Lessons for a Sunday Father by Claire Calman

when we got back, but Nat said I was being a silly baby and I wasn’t to ask her and he’d never talk to me ever, ever again if I did. I wasn’t being a baby, I just wanted to know. Mostly on Sunday evenings, we all watch TV or a video. Mum sits at one end of the couch and Dad at the other and I go in the middle. Nat lies on the floor in the front. He doesn’t like being on the couch with us because he says he likes to spread out and anyway he can never sit still and Mum has to tell him to stop fidgeting.
    When we got home, it was all quiet and there were no lights on and Mum clapped her hands together the way Miss Collins does at school and then she said right, if you’ve any homework still to do, off upstairs and finish it now. I did mine then I went in Nat’s room and he said, “See, told you Dad wouldn’t be here. You’d only have made everything worse if you’d asked Mum.”
    “Why can’t they say they’re sorry and make up, then Dad could come home again?”
    “Because they’re both, like, totally clueless and if you haven’t worked that one out by now then there’s no hope for you.”
    So I stuck my tongue out at him and said he was a big horrible pig with greasy hair and I ran out and banged his door. I ran into my room and wedged the chair under the handle in case he tried to get me back. Then I went all the way along the shelf above my bed and shook every single one of my snow shakers. I’ve got seven altogether. My best one is the one Mum and Dad got me when they went to France on their anniversary last year and Nat and me went to stay with Nana and Grandad. It’s got the Eiffel Tower in it and it’s supposed to be night-time but instead of snow it’s got gold glitter in it. I gave it an extra shake then I knelt on my bed with my nose right up touching the glass so all I could see was the world inside it and I made believe I was in Paris all on my own with no Nat or Mum or Dad or anyone. I was doing pirouettes right on the top of the Eiffel Tower and there were lots and lots of lights and all around me was sparkly gold snowflakes floating down.
Nat
    He’s not coming back. I said he wasn’t and he’s not. All that stuff Mum came out with about it just being for a little while is total crap. It might work with Rosie, but she can’t expect me to buy it. Some of his clothes have gone. I went into their bedroom and looked in the wardrobe. Before, his clothes were all on the right and Mum’s were on the left. The clothes were all squashed up because Dad says Mum’s got too many things, God knows why, she doesn’t wear a quarter of them, he says. Now her stuff’s all spaced out and there’s a gap at one end, like his things were never there at all, like he never even lived here.
    Mum told us we would see him next weekend and that we can phone him whenever we like. She said he’d phone Wednesday and we could decide what to do at the weekend. I won’t be here when he phones. I’ve got swimming practice. My tumble turn’s too slow. Jason sees his dad only on weekends. He stays at his dad’s every other Saturday night and they go out and do stuff on Sunday.
       *   *   *
    I looked in the cupboard under the stairs. His fishing things were still there. He wouldn’t leave without them. Maybe he will come back. There were his rods in their covers. The big green umbrella. That funny little tent to keep the wind off. It’s not a proper tent really, no groundsheet or anything, but it’s better than nothing when the wind’s cutting along the coast or coming straight at you off the sea. We used to go a lot, Dad and me, down off the beach. I’ve got my own rod. Dad bought it for me one Christmas. The reel bit alone cost loads of money. It’s a proper one, a grown-up one. Rosie’s got a stupid little girl’s rod because she’s only come with us once or twice and then only so she wouldn’t feel left out and Mum said we had to take her and not to be a pair of spoilsports. She never