How I Live Now

7

The next day, without actually saying that we were abandoning our plan to live in the barn we kind of gravitated back toward the house to have a bath and get clean clothes because if you want to know the truth about how romantic it is to sleep in a barn, it isn’t very, due to the hay itching and the bats and how cold it gets at night even though it’s supposed to be spring.

Back at the house Osbert was annoyed because he’d had to milk the goats himself and it was Piper’s job, and it turned out that Aunt Penn had called from Oslo and told him she was doing everything in her power to get home and in the meantime there was some money in the bank account to tide us over, and she’d already spoken to the bank manager about us getting it. Osbert said she sounded more worried about the world than about us, but he didn’t seem annoyed at being second best and Piper said It’s because she knows we’ll be fine.

For a second while Osbert was talking about Aunt Penn, Edmond’s face looked very pale, but he was facing Isaac so I couldn’t be absolutely sure and when he turned around again he looked fairly normal and said There are people all over the world who will help her if they can. And that was the end of the conversation.

The good old Royal Mail didn’t seem to have any clue that there was a war starting up and that day there was a letter from my dad, and one from Leah. Dad yammered on a lot about Davina the D and how she was feeling what with the pregnancy and all, like it was preying on my mind that she might be feeling uncomfortable when in fact I just hoped her ankles would swell up like balloons and her breasts would sag down to her knees and the silicone in them turn to cement. There was a little something stuck on at the end of the letter about missing me, and how I should be careful not to become a Victim of the Terrorist Threat and had I managed to gain any weight blah blah blah.

Leah’s letter was much more entertaining, with reports that Ms. Cool Herself, Melissa Banner, was going around telling everyone that she and Lyle Hershberg were Hooking Up. Well if this banner headline is true, I swear to god I will assign all my worldly goods to the Salvation Army and I’d say there’s no danger of some religious tuba player ending up with my DVD player given that Lyle was famous for telling his last girlfriend Mimi Maloney that if she didn’t Satisfy His Needs at least three times a day he’d have to find relief elsewhere and Melissa Banner is the world’s most famous living professional virgin. Leah walked in once on Lyle Satisfying His Needs all by himself in homeroom when everyone should have been at school assembly and she said Well well well Lyle Hershberg, don’t look now but there’s a Smurf with a hard-on in your pants. Or at least she claims that’s what she said but not to be disloyal or anything I’ve always had my doubts.

I wanted to talk all this through with Leah right then and there and I nearly cried with how much I missed having a cell phone that worked and e-mail even if I did have a hundred and twelve wacky cousins instead.

So I sat down and wrote back all about Edmond and Piper and Isaac and the animals and the house and the war, and I made it sound even better than it actually was, and by the time I finished the letter I’d convinced myself that This Was the Life oh yes and Boy Had I Lucked Out. But it’s easier said than done to convince yourself that god has smiled on you when the actual fact is that you’re living with strangers due to the evil workings of your wicked stepmother not to mention your official next of kin.

Then in came Osbert again with a face like a dead pigeon and said there were more attacks this time in the U.S.A.

And when, to seem interested, I said How terrible, where? He said Pittsburgh and Detroit and Houston only he pronounced it Hoos-ton. Well part of me was happy they hadn’t bombed the Upper West Side and part of me started having this pretty good fantasy about Dad and Davina all bandaged up and limping and trying to come live here with us and us saying We are just SO SORRY but the airports are shut otherwise we’d simply LOVE to have you, really we would.

I tried eating a little bit of bacon today because Edmond particularly asked me to but it tasted like pig and I gagged.