“I still have to wait for results, Dad.”
He lets go. “Who cares about results?”
“Erm, UCAS? The universities?”
“You’ve aced them. Coral’s academic skills have rubbed off.”
“I’m glad you’re so sure, Dad.”
Dad’s not listening. “We should celebrate! This is the best summer ever. No more school, getting ready to leave. Have you got any weed?”
“Dad …”
“No, course.” He nods to himself. “Is that my shirt?”
“No, it’s mine.”
“Hmm. Looks like one I used to have.” He sits back down and finishes rolling his cigarette.
“I’m just here for coffee,” I say. “You want one?”
The kitchen is a thin sideboard city of dirty dishes and hanging pans.
There’s still half a large glass bowl of tar-black coffee in the diner-style maker.
“How’s my big sister?”
I pretend I haven’t heard him as I search for the least dirty cups and swill them out.
“Did she get you a gift? I bet she got you a gift.”
I bring the pot through and Dad holds up his empty cup.
“What was it, vouchers? Coral loves her vouchers.”
“No gift needed, Dad.” I pour. He raises a finger.
“I’ll get you something then! What do you need? I could get you a new sketchbook?”
“Still got the last one, thanks.”
“Anything in it?” he says, his smile almost desperate.
“Not really.”
His face drops for a second. “Can’t rush ideas, Mars. New trainers then?”
“From the man who doesn’t even own a pair of socks?”
He lights his cigarette. “I do own socks! I have multiple pairs of socks. Casual socks, dress socks, sports socks.”
“Yeah?”
“Just because a person doesn’t reveal something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Besides, socks are for sheep, Mars. I want to feel what I’m walking on.”
“How convenient.” I nod towards the small room full of paper. “Busy night?”
Dad blows smoke. “All part of the process, my young padawan. Did Diane seem pissed off to you?”
“Not particularly.”
“Excellent.” He sips his coffee. “I’m getting closer, Mars, I can feel it.” He moves his fingers like he’s playing piano in the air.
“That’s great, Dad.” I go back to the kitchen and pour coffee for me and Diane.
“You sure you don’t have any weed? Even a little resin?”
“Dad, please,” I say, carrying the mugs into the living room. “How many times? I don’t smoke.”
“Well, you should. You’re nearly eighteen; you’ll be at uni soon. Poetry readings and squat parties.”
“It’s not Greenwich Village in the fifties, Dad.”
“Very funny, Mars. I’m just saying, you should be experimenting at your age. Poking out of the box.”
“And what box is that, O wise one?”
He takes a long pull on his cigarette. In his white vest and brown trousers, his unruly hair pushed back, he looks part beatnik, part mad scientist. A man who operates just off the pulse, who believes in conspiracy theories and who, some days, completely forgets to eat.
“Well, if you have to ask, it might already be too late.”
I exaggerate a sad face. “I guess I’ll just go downstairs and get back in my box then.”
Dad’s face turns serious. “I’m proud of you, special girl. You did it.”
I stare at the coffee mugs, feeling your name running down the corridors in my head. Scratching the walls. Banging doors. You did it.
“Don’t be too proud yet, Dad. Results aren’t till August.”
Dad shakes his head and picks a stray tobacco strand from his lip. “Please. Pass. Fail. F. A-star. Just labels, Mars. You’re not a can of beans. Life is process.”
He smiles the kind of smile that makes it easy to imagine him as a cheeky five-year-old, crayoning the walls with ideas.
“Get back to work,” I say, and I walk out of the room.
“I’m getting close, Mars. Really close. I feel it!”
I kick through the blank paper, heading back to the stairs.
Once every ten years, a novel comes along that makes all the rest look at each other and say, “What the hell do we do now?” Baker’s daring debut is that book, and, if you are at all interested in where contemporary storytelling is heading, I advise you to read it.
– Quentin Quince, the Times Literary Review, on Dark Corners by Karl Baker
Karl Baker.
Award-winning debut writer.
Giver of half my genetic code.
Barely capable of looking after himself.
Still working on his second novel seven years later.
“You OK, Marcie?”
Diane’s face is wrinkled up like she’s trying to read Latin.
“What? I’m fine.”
I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here, holding two coffees.
“It’s just … you looked, well, drunk.”
“I was just thinking.”
I pass her a mug.
“Thanks. Your phone beeped a couple of times.”
Probably Cara. “Thanks.”
“Just thinking, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“I hear you. So do you think you’ll be around more over the summer?”
“I don’t know. I guess. Not much else to do.”
“Great. That’s good.”
We both stare out of the front windows either side of the shop door.
Diane sips. “It’s nice to hang out, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
Still staring.
“Did he say anything, about me?”
I sip. Hot, bitter coffee on my tongue.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Doesn’t matter. I like your shirt. Is it new?”
“No.”
“Cool.”
The shop is one square room with the till in the centre next to a thick supporting pillar. The layout hasn’t changed since Dad bought it nearly three years ago – four small display tables, one in each quarter: new and contemporary fiction; classics and historical stuff; non-fiction; and children and teen.
It used