Andrea Levy
I knew something was odd at home when, after we had eaten our dinner, my dad followed my mum, Carl and me into the living room to sit down. This usually did not happen. Dinner was just an interruption from my dad's jobs around the house. On Sundays after church Dad was always fixing, painting, adjusting or mending. He was always, "in the middle of a job", that required his full, silent concentration and a monkey wrench(1). If I ever asked him what he was doing he'd say, "Fixing something, so don't come bothering me now."[...]

But this was not the only strange thing. It used to be strange for us to go into the living room at all. It was always kept for best with Mum's carefully embroidered runners on the sideboard and school photographs of Carl and me smiling and showing our teeth in various stages of hideous development. [...] Now we were adults, however, we could go in the room any time we pleased, our parents convinced that we would no longer damage one of the glass ornaments or spill out tea on the furry fireside rug. But as I walked into the room I saw six, maybe seven of my mum and dad's boxes piled up in a corner. My eye was drawn to them because they were out of place and nothing was ever out of place in that room. The boxes were also full, sealed across the top, bottom and sides with wide brown tape.
"What are these doing here ?" I asked, going over to them. I turned round and watched as Dad looked at Mum, Mum looked at Carl, Carl looked at Dad and then back at Mum. But nobody looked at me.
"What's going on ?" I looked at them all one by one. Then another strange thing happened : my dad spoke first.
"Sit down, Faith" he said. He began to finger the knuckles on his hand, feeling each one in turn. He used to do this when it was time to discuss the "could do better" bits in my school report. I began to get scared.
"No, I won't sit down." I wasn't sure why I said that but I felt like someone in a film who was about to be told something that