Exposure Read Online Free PDF Page B

I?'
    'What do you mean
"I don't know"?'
    'I mean I don't know, Mum, because you won't tell me anything about my father, will you?' he said. And then he left the room, left the eggs, left the tea untouched, because he knew perfectly well he had said the unsayable.
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    'What are you thinking, Dad?' Luke said.
    'Me?'
    He always said that: 'Me?'Always the avoidance, the delay tactic, as if he hoped to find there was someone else in the room to whom the question was really addressed.
    'You just looked funny for a minute.'
    'Oh ... I was just wondering what the traffic will be like on the A2. That's all.'
    'Right,' Luke said. 'Look, you don't mind if I listen to my Walkman, do you?'
    'No! By all means,' Alistair said. 'You listen.'
    'Thanks.'
    It was a relief to both of them not to have to make conversation. They had never had much to say to each other. Luke often dropped things or spilled his drink when his father came into the room. When his sister was around he felt like the odd one out and he couldn't understand why they bothered with their long, exhausting arguments when they were not going to change US foreign policy or President Mugabe's whatever it was, anyway. He loaded the dishwasher with his mother or had a look at what she had been doing to the garden while Sophie and his father stayed on at the table. In the past couple of years, since he had been earning a really good salary, he had gradually stopped feeling upset by it. He had stopped feeling so—stupid.
    He believed in his mother's love in a way he could not believe in his father's. Not that this was because he and his mother 'really talked' the way some people did, going into details about their relationship problems and sex lives and so on. No—his mother parcelled out her love neatly and hygienically: she put flowers by his bed, remembered if he had a doctor's appointment, got him fluffy towels for the flat. That was her vocabulary: it was restricted, but it was sincere. He could never tell what his father was really thinking when he thumped him on the back and said, 'So, how
are
things, Luke?', looking as though he would rather get away to his study than suffer a long explanation. Sophie thought he imagined this. She said he should grow up and stop the childhood angst routine. The infuriating thing was, there was no 'routine' when he was away from home. He was cool and confident as far as his friends were concerned: he was the guy people called to find out what was happening ... The 'routine' appeared as soon as he went through the front door. And his family thought it was the real him!
    That Alistair had a background he had always kept hidden was the beginning of an explanation for the gap that lay between them. Luke did not know what to say about this, or about the scandal—though this was more out of concern for himself than for his father. It was almost impossible to contemplate what his father had done without a sense that the sky might fall in, let alone actually say something about it. A few times in the past week, he had realized Alistair suspected he was about to refer to it and seen fear, actual terror, in his eyes. He had never seen his father so much as unnerved before, not so much as taken aback.
    Luke felt like a teenager again. It was terrible how quickly he had regressed in his two weeks at home. For a moment he felt embarrassed by the reflection of himself, sulky and slouched, headphones on, that the car window gave back at him. He was twenty-eight. But why be embarrassed anyway? Why go to all the effort? Both he and his sister had apparently stayed at around seventeen in their parents' minds, anyway. They were both openly amazed when he was up by midday. Normally he would have had to go out to the garden for regular cigarettes, gritting his teeth in anger, thinking did they not know he made £75,000 a year? Had they
seen
his flat? But it was not in his interests to emphasize his autonomy right now. He wanted to be a child