Granddad turns out of my room. This is terrible. Why did he do his list? Why did Mum and Dad have to go away? It’s Sunday. I’m not working on a Sunday. Even God took Sundays off. I glance at the clock again. Five past eight. Five past eight! I’m supposed to be asleep and dreaming, not waking up to a nightmare.

The Grass Cutters

I stand by the front door, squinting in the sun.

‘Ah! There you are,’ says Granddad, peering at my fingers. ‘Have you washed it all off like I said?’

I show Granddad my hands.

‘Umm,’ he says. ‘You still have some brass cleaner under your nails, but you can wash them again when we’ve done this.’ He points at the lawn of long grass and daisies. ‘I am thinking we start here, at our bottom left corner.’

‘But, Granddad,’ I huff. ‘It’s so hot and I’m so tired.’

‘Then we should get it done before it gets hotter.’

Granddad turns away from me and walks to the corner in his blue gardening overalls. He hasn’t worn them since last summer. When Grandma was alive they used to walk around the garden together, pruning the roses, and when she got too ill to do that he used to cut the roses and put them in a vase in their bedroom.

I look across at my house. All the windows are closed and there’s an empty space where Mum and Dad’s car should be parked. I feel bad for wishing they would come back, because Granddad hasn’t looked this happy in ages.

‘So, we start here. Come on.’ He smiles as he beckons me. ‘Oh, can you move the gnomes first?’

I look at Grandma’s gnomes, four of them posted like guards on every corner. Me and Grandma gave them names – Boris, Horace and Morris, and the fourth one is called Francke (after Granddad) because he looks grumpy, like he’d never let anyone through the garden gate. I laughed when Grandma told me that. But I’m not laughing now as walk around the lawn picking them off the grass and putting them safely in the flower borders.

‘Wonderful,’ says Granddad. ‘Now we can start.’

I trudge across the lawn to where the grass meets the garden path. Granddad takes a tape measure out of his pocket and crouches down.

‘The blade is sixty-six centimetres wide, but we measure in sixty centimetres to allow for the overlap.’ He holds one end of the tape against the path and measures sixty centimetres out from it. ‘Right, now you put one of your sticks in the ground, right there.’

I look at the two sticks in my hand, joined together by a long piece of string.

‘Come on, Felix,’ says Granddad. ‘It does not matter which one.’

I press one stick into the ground.